To paraphrase Voyager, when people stop being stupid and evil and when people no longer have acute serious illnesses or accidents with serious injuries and when mother nature stops setting the occasional thing on fire, then I am out of work. I think I’m safe.
Unless, of course, everyone starts picking better parents and eating right and exercising and not smoking. Then we might be laid off, as they’ll need many fewer of us. But there are always people being hit by buses and eaten by tigers, so let’s look on the bright side!
Or maybe not… depends on how many left behinders will want to build houses and have occupancy instead of just moving into the empties. (for my construction business) (come to think of it, remodel might pick up…)
My photo business should pick up. Lots of nude portraits to do.
When people get used to a global production staff.
I currently have a title that sounds like I’m a manager. In reality, I am the US-based face/voice representing approximately a zillion people working halfway around the world with less-than-perfect English. When people stop caring about that, I’ll be gone in a heartbeat. I hope to be doing something else long before that time.
I’m in retail sales with an emphasis on customization. When people get Star Trek- like replicators in their homes and can have the gift of their choice custom created and teleported to their homes, we will be out of business. Other than the total collapse of the worlds economies and annihilation of almost all humanity, someone is Lways going to need to buy something from someone else.
Downloadable knowledge and skills might make my job obsolete–but given how much of my job is responding to individual student needs, it’s gonna have to be a lot better than a one-size-fits-all download.
To put my current job at risk, banks would have to abandon mainframes. I don’t think that will ever happen in our lifetimes.
It would take a few EMPs (Electro-Magnetic Pulses) to destroy every last computer and power system on the planet before my career would be in any serious jeopardy. And even then, we’d have to abolish money and all other things of value that people covet. As noted above, people are just too sneaky.
I’m just a simple country programmer. Any artificial intelligence able to fix itself would put me out of business before long. Luckily the first attempt will be built by human intelligence and it will be a long time before it works right.
Television, film and videogames have made the theatre pretty much obsolete. It’s a reality for me. Fun times.
That’s why I am doing a sensible master’s degree. My master’s will hopefully mean that only the end of all conflict and the abolition of countries would make whatever profession I might have obsolete. Fingers crossed that if that does happen, it is something I personally accomplish around the age of retirement! And that at the same time I un-invent television, so I can go back to the theatre!