Don't Fear The Future – How To Make Yourself Indispensable
“Let us make our future now, and let us make our dreams tomorrow’s reality.”
In a world in which machines are rapidly getting super-smart at any task we can throw at them, what are humans even for?
The question is a realistic one to ask. It's damn near impossible to see where many of our jobs fit as technology does laps around us. When your job consists of mainly repetitive tasks, machines kick you to the curb.
"Anything that can be automated or calculated ultimately will be," said Chris Anderson, the brain behind TED conferences.
Anderson highlighted a specific TED talk in which IBM demoed their Watson super-computer. It gave him the uneasy feeling that almost no profession will go untouched.
Watson was tasked with diagnosing a patient with six specific symptoms. Anderson said in this same time, "doctors scratched their heads and ordered a range of tests to get more data. Watson, in just a few seconds, read through 4,000 recent relevant research papers, applied probability algorithms to each symptom, and concluded with 80 percent certainty that the patient had a rare condition only one of the human doctors had even heard of."
You can picture the collective "Oh shittttttttt" form on the audience’s lips. The fear and panic of what's in store sweeps over your ego like a tsunami. It smashes your glasshouse of security into a million little kaleidoscopic pieces.
Let’s take it one step further. Imagine a world in which all your knowledge in what you do at your job is available at the click of a button to anyone. Oh right, if you have a smartphone, you're already living in that reality. Knowledge is no longer what gives you security in your career.
This is where the biggest gap exists in our society. School is still pushing out students for the industrial age. It's like graduating and instead of your parents giving you a laptop, they hand you a chalkboard, a feather pen and a new saddle for your horse.
Before you go running for an airplane barf bag, know that the future is exciting if you take the steps to make yourself indispensable.
When Anderson dove into answering the question of what humans are for, he shared what should be a rather obvious next step for humanity.
"Humans are for being more human than we've ever been. More human in how we work. More human in what we learn. And more human in how we share that knowledge with each other."
I say obvious because when we try to compete in realms where things can be automated or calculated, we lose 100% of the time. As Anderson points out, "most humans, for most of history, have made a living doing the same thing over and over again."
And the fact we've already stepped into this new reality is probably coming as both toe-curling terrifying and winning-the-lottery thrilling.
Human potential is a path that taps into what makes us unique beings. It's this limitless sense of adventure that lets us climb the world's highest peaks, allows us to leave footprints on the moon, and pushes us to solve the world's most pressing problems through global connection.
No one can say with absolute certainty what the future will look like, but Anderson has a finger on the pulse of what it will probably include:
More innovation - "With the massive capabilities of a connected world available to us, there is a huge advantage for those who can genuinely innovate."
More creativity - "Robots will make a lot of our stuff, allowing for an explosion in demand for a genuine human creativity, whether in tech invention, design, music, or art."
More utilization of uniquely human values - "Human-to-human services will flourish. The doctor of the future may be able to ask for Watson's brilliance in diagnostic assistance, but that should allow more time for that doctor to really understand the human side of things with her patient."
Contextual knowledge - "Big picture thinking, knowing the way all the pieces fit together." Careers, business and life are about connecting the dots between things that already exist. We can take them one step further by breathing life into ideas that come from cross-pollination.
Creative knowledge - "The skill set obtained by exposure to a wide variety of other creative humans. Rather than taking what our parents, friends, teachers or any one specific person or group say as absolute truth. A deeper understanding of humanity comes from listening to all of them. Taking in what we know about the world from a massive variety of sources that challenge our thinking."
If you're feeling lost about where to begin, I've spent a lot of time writing about how you can start to develop these skills.
So you can start to breathe a sigh of relief because I know you'll be prepared for whatever comes your way.
But if you decide to bury your head in the sand and ignore the writing on the wall, you'll face the same opposition to innovation Henry Ford met: “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”
Are you pushing for a faster horse, or are you ready to take a ride in a Tesla?
Anderson brings back a sense of optimism by sharing: "We're entering an era where we all need to spend a lot more time learning from each other. And that means far more people than ever before can contribute to this collective learning process. Anyone who has a unique piece of work or a unique insight can productively participate. And that includes you.”
