The Future Should Still Have Room for People

A widely cited 2013 Oxford study estimated that 47% of US employment was at high risk of computerisation within roughly two decades. That was an estimate of susceptibility, not a prediction that 47% of jobs would disappear.

It is one of the most quoted figures in the conversation, and it has often been repeated without that distinction. The disruption has been real, but adoption has been slower and more uneven than the headline number can suggest.

It has not, so far, matched the scale of that original risk estimate as a count of jobs lost. I'm interested in technology when it brings people into better conversations, not when it tries to make the conversation unnecessary in the first place.

I think that gap, between the forecast and the outcome, matters for how much dread to actually carry into a Tuesday. Real change is happening, slower and more unevenly than the headline number implied, with room still very much intact for the parts of work that were never really about output alone.

Six people standing close together, looking at screens, are still looking at each other in between, still negotiating, still deciding something together that none of the devices in their hands are actually deciding for them. I don't think the correction makes the disruption fictional.

It just means there's more room in the actual timeline than the loudest forecast left space for. The future the forecasts describe and the future that's actually arriving keep turning out to be different sizes.

I'm choosing to build my own worth on the parts of the smaller, more honest one that still clearly need a person in the room.