The Job Of The Future

Tom Brokaw said something yesterday that made it into the papers today. Brokaw predicts that in ten years, printed newspapers will have vanished and will have been replaced by online editions. I'm guessing that this is bad news for a lot of people in the hard copy production of newspapers. This got me to thinking about jobs that are destined to vanish, the victims of technology. Take cashiers for instance. Right now they are under assault from these self-service scanners and people who skip them altogether by shopping online. The next thing will be radio frequency id chips that will allow you to simply pick up an item and a computer will know you have it. Add to it the chips that are creeping into bank card and before long all that will be left to do is to bag your stuff. The growth in retail cashiers is not promising. I think anyone who has a job selling to the public in a way that requires face-to-face sales is doomed, unless they have some added value or knowledge. Daughter Sneed, one of the foremost online shoppers in the country, almost never leaves her house to shop. Sneedlet One doesn't know that not every kid gets his underwear from the USP guy, or as he calls him, The King of Queens man. It seems to me that one of the great things the internet does is to provide information that we previously had to rely on sales people to give us. Using the internet, we can instantly make price comparisons and get consumer information. In the past we had to rely on sales people to provide this information. This makes insurance sales people, travel agents, car salesman and a host of others largely irrelevant. I haven't had an actual insurance agent in years and years and I'm no worse for the experience. In fact, I am better off because my premiums are lower by eliminating the middleman. Same with travel agents, they used to be vital, now they are mostly unnecessary. Of course, there are jobs that will thrive in the future. Healthcare workers, package delivery folks, skilled computer workers, content developers and creative folks, engineers, scientists, teachers, restaurant workers and lawyers just to name a few. There is one job that seems to have particularly strong job growth. I didn't really know much about it until I started looking at my spam folder in my Google Mail. A lot of people are involved in the business of penis enlargement. Judging by the twenty or so emails it get each day offering these fine products, I have to conclude that it is a growing field. Pun intended. Things in this blog represented to be fact, may or may not actually be true. The writer is frequently wrong, sometimes just full of it, but always judgmental and cranky