This is the ‘Information Age’. It is a time of incalculable and unpredictable change. It is a time when no person or organisation can plan very far in advance, because technology will more than likely develop in a way that will cause a dramatic effect on anything we can think of today. As I write this, the medium and long-term future of every workplace remains in a state of unpredictability.
This is me in 1980 working as a finish artist putting a magazine together by hand - what ever happened to that hat?
Six months from today, a job that seems permanent and irreplaceable may quite suddenly vanish. In fact, the whole business may become commercially nonviable. I enjoyed a short period of stability in my working career between 1977 and around 1980, after that, my world would never be the same.
Over the last twenty five years many of the jobs I’ve had, either no longer exist today or have changed so much that they require a completely different skill set.
One company I worked for in the late 80’s was bankrupted by the release of a cheap piece of software that, ‘to add insult to injury’, was virtually given away by it’s developer; Microsoft. (more about that in another post)
Have you had a job that no longer exists thanks to technology?
How secure is the job you have now?