We are a long ways from the 1889 story of the commissioner of the U.S. Patent Office, in which he was ready to close up shop and famously uttered “everything that can be invented has been invented.”
Unfortunately, when people reference this guy, it’s usually to point out how wrong he was and to show how amazingly far technology has come. Technology and patents have gone parabolic since he has uttered those words. Technology has even been taking over jobs and has been doing so for years. Have you walked into a bank and dealt with a virtual/video teller yet? This is a trend that will not be stopped.
Bureaucrats are only perpetuating this trend with rules and regulations. California just passed a $15 minimum wage that will be implemented over the next few years, and you can bet that this will cause higher unemployment and give robots more jobs that would otherwise have been done by humans.
Pew Research recently found that 65% of Americans now believe their job will inevitably be done by a robot. The rate of change that is happening today in our world is exponential due to technology, and many will hang on to the past, refusing to change, while others will adapt and thrive.
Look at Blockbuster, who was once a weekly childhood stop for my family. They failed to innovate with the times and have been replaced with the Internet and digital downloads. Blockbuster is now nothing more than a nostalgic memory.
To even attempt to imagine what the world is going to look like in 50 or 100 years would be a fool’s errand, because it’s impossible to anticipate the direction technology will go without an understanding of where the technology will be.
Technological change is inevitable. There are two ways to combat this. One is to stay on top of it by maintaining viability in the economy. And two is just simply profit from it.
Don’t fall by the wayside in a rapidly changing technological world.