There is an urban myth going around, that as we get closer to 2030, robots will be running the world and human workers will be the exception, not the rule. REALLY??!!

There has never been a generation that didn’t believe the next generation was undoing all the wonderful advancements of the previous. Where we didn’t lament and fear for the future and look with disdain and disbelief at what the next generation sees as important and ordinary.

The reality is that we are entering a new dawn of work, heralded by a digital revolution, the likes of which we have never seen before and for which there are no ground rules, no certainty and many competing horizon landscapes and possibilities all simultaneously vying for our attention and action.

This new era will have many machines and much technology and increasingly the role of these machines will be to take over the routinised production and eventually service jobs.

There is nothing good that can be said about people losing jobs and livelihoods. To say it has happened before and will no doubt happen again, does not make it any easier for those facing uncertain futures. But what this sensationalist story doesn’t speak of are the many new industries, new jobs, new opportunities, new work styles and new definitions of work that have and will continue to evolve and rise in the place of the fallen.

This is not a story of better or worse, this is a conversation of different and appropriate to the time. It is a response by the world to the world as we know it now and want it to be tomorrow, and not meant as an indictment on what it is used to be.

This is also not a grand conspiracy theory cooked up years ago by mad scientists, or by some secret advanced robot club where they decided to band together and take over the world without us knowing or realising it, but rather this is because increasingly humans have chosen to have their goods, services and lifestyles produced in a way and at a price that has made mechanisation the only sensible and profitable solution to the problem of wanting and having things.

We need to stop anthropomorphising technology, it is only a box and if we truly wish to send it back from whence it came we could collectively, or privately, use the off switch, but so few do or want to.

So what we have is an evolving physical world; a digital world barely out of its infancy and still to show its true adult potential; changing culture; burgeoning technology; increasing population and endless desires and possibilities all mixed together and simmering in a large pot we call the future.

Now that I’ve got that off my chest, Sky Business TV’s Peter Switzer and I continued our ongoing series of chats looking at the future of work, by asking will robots be the preferred employee in the 2020’s and beyond and if so what and how will humans do to make a living?

Watch this segment now (8 mins 39 secs), share it around and let’s keep talking about the future of work.

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