Book Byte #109 "The Future of Professions" by Richard and Daniel Susskind
How Technology Will Transform the Work of Human Experts
📣 Curious Quotes from the Author
“If we leave it to professionals themselves to reinvent their workplace, are we asking the rabbits to guard the lettuce?”
“We are advancing into a post-professional society.”
“The deeper issue here is that any changes in the work that people do tend to originate at the level of particular tasks involved, and not with the job in general terms.”
“It is interesting to note, harking back again to the exponential growth of information technology, that the hardware on which Watson ran in 2011 was said to be about the size of the average bedroom. Today, we are told, it runs on a machine that is the size of three pizza boxes, and by the early 2020s Watson will sit comfortably in a smartphone.”
“People generally prefer problem-avoidance and problem-containment to problem-solving.”
“Nonetheless, that know-how is often unmanageable. Avoidable failures are common and persistent, not to mention demoralizing and frustrating, across many fields—from medicine to finance, business to government. And the reason is increasingly evident: the volume and complexity of what we know has exceeded our individual ability to deliver its benefits correctly, safely, or reliably”
“Half of US doctors use the app known as Epocrates, a digital drug-reference resource that computerizes the task of finding out how different drugs interact. This task was once a time-consuming, often inconclusive piece of excavation from a 2,500-page drug-reference manual, known as the Physicians Desk Reference.”
“The Canadian science-fiction writer William Gibson could well have been speaking of technology in the professions when he said: ‘[t]he future has already arrived. It’s just not evenly distributed yet.”
“At the other end, prospective entrants to the professions are having second thoughts about committing.”
“To put this more concretely, we argue that professional work should be decomposed, that is, broken down into its constituent ‘tasks’—”
“Technology will be the main driver of this change. And, in the long run, we will neither need nor want professionals to work in the way that they did in the twentieth century and before.”
“The end of the professional era is characterized by four trends: the move from bespoke service; the bypassing of traditional gatekeepers; a shift from a reactive to a proactive approach to professional work; and the more-for-less challenge.”
📚 Cognition of the Book’s Big Idea:
Society's perception of professionalism is about to undergo a significant shift. Technology has made expert information far more accessible to the general public by digitizing and spreading it online. Professionals are still relevant; their responsibilities are just evolving as a result. Professional knowledge will always be valuable since no one person can master the vast amount of knowledge available today; technology is the tool that will enable us all to succeed.
🛠️Fixing the Tech Industry
I think as we converge into a Global Population due to the ubiquity of the Internet, it makes sense that most of our Economies and Habits will follow suit. AI has already made translation affordable, even available to people with just a phone. The “Universal Translator” from Star Trek is already a very real thing in our lives now.
So does that mean Translators will all be out of work? No, when Professionalism is needed to deter errors, it will manifest it’s need, but I won’t need them to read my an article in Portuguese.
The people that will thrive in this environment are ones who can make connections and produce results that weren’t there before for their companies.
🤝Collaborate with others with this Social Media Prompt:
What is one technology that has benefitted you greatly even if it kind of destroyed someone’s job?
My Software Stack: I use Skool for my Online Community Platform and ClickFunnels for my Landing Pages, Payments, and Email Sequencing. I use Substack for my Newsletter and Taskade for AI Note Taking/Second Brain/Project Management. I use my Personal Amazon Store for Tech and Book Recommendations.
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