In the days that mark the fall of the Berlusconi government and the Italian economic crisis (remember? we predicted it in the old site) I am as discouraged as all of you The moment is difficult: we can only get out of it if all levels of our country change by looking to the future rather than to the past.
Some jobs will still survive in the future, let's be clear: but there is a whole series of jobs that don't exist today and which could be useful in the near future. Let's use common sense: 60% of the jobs that will exist in 10 years have not yet been invented. I'll hypothesize and insert some here, for future reference (then in case don't say we didn't tell you). Many of the changes already visible today will cause the demand for some job roles to skyrocket, and this will sometimes happen very quickly. PS: Don't turn up your nose when you read these works: if they seem strange to you it's only because they don't exist yet.
New jobs by 2020
1. Architect of Augmented Reality - Beyond the paintings that we will put in the house and the new flavors that we will give to food, the future will seem really boring if our reality has not increased in some way.
2. Foreign Currency Advisor - According to many strategic finance agencies, 20% of all online operators develop investment packages in currencies other than their own country: the field is ready for new current accounts and consultants from different markets.
3. Urban agronomist - Why send food all over the world and by any means when they can be grown or raised at zero kilometer? The next generation of products may even be located underground, or there may be stores that directly grow the products they sell.
4. Work colony manager - Even in Italy a 40-year-old (when he is lucky enough to have one) sometimes finds himself having already changed jobs several times during his career: within 10 years, if the situation does not change, a 40-year-old will find himself having done even more than 10 jobs . 'Work colonies' are a new type of organized structure designed around objectives to be achieved: a sort of 'virtual workforce' that can be fully hired whenever there is demand for a project. Whoever manages such groups will be able to successfully cope with ever-increasing demand.
5. Contest Producer – One of the major trends of the near future will be to develop contests based on incentives of various kinds to solve problems of all kinds: within a few years every large company will give its name to some 'challenge' to obtain clean engines, or better energy, or (who knows) better performing space carriers. Something similar to what is being created today among companies interested in giving their name to a recently built stadium, in short.
6. 3D printer - In some courses today 3D printers have already been introduced, and soon the demand for three-dimensional products printed on request will skyrocket: this business will give rise to a whole series of professional figures linked to the technical use of these tools and their maintenance, as well as the operation of the software necessary to translate a customer's request into a finished object, 'printed' and sent to its destination.
7. Interactive editor - Already in the next few months we will begin to evaluate the efforts of large publishing houses to launch (or convert) literature in 'simple book' form into increasingly interactive applications, which allow content to go beyond current limits and eliminate the gap that exists it is today, for example, between a paper book and an audiobook.
8. Social educator - It's clear: since the advent of the internet we have started to learn from each other: wikipedia is the largest and most complete encyclopedia in the world, and we are writing it ourselves day by day, just to give an example. The point, however, is: how much of what we learn from others is educationally valid? How to discriminate right information from wrong information? Establishing and organizing truly influential and reliable user groups or user-based systems is one of the challenges we will find in the near future. It is on the effectiveness of these new online 'agoras' that much of our knowledge will depend tomorrow.
9. Privacy consultant - If you think you have lost a bit of privacy today, know that this is just the beginning: we are all human beings and we don't always say things we wouldn't regret one day, or we don't always make acceptable choices: protecting transparency like confidentiality will require increasingly specialized figures.
10. Wind turbine repairer - The proliferation of wind turbines around the world will drive a huge demand for repairers who do not suffer from vertigo and are able to solve the new problems that the development of this industry will encounter along the way.
11. Personality developer - Voice services combined with increasingly intelligent computers will soon allow us to 'dialogue' with machines, developing requests and obtaining responses in forms of interaction that will gradually resemble a dialogue more and more. At that point, the purchase and development of 'personality packages' will allow us to give our 'companion' a more pleasant character: on the other hand, you want to give the satisfaction of asking Shakira mode to call us a number from address book?
12. Medical Nanologist - Many health problems today can be ascribed to single cells or small groups of cells: medical professionals capable of working at the nanometric level designing diagnostic systems, remedies and monitoring solutions (a cross between a computer scientist and a doctor) will have great request.
13. Ethical philosopher - Each new technology creates a whole set of unforeseen ethical consequences and implications: the inevitable ethical questions will require a new form of 'industrial wisdom' and professional figures capable of acting as conscience and guide for politicians and entrepreneurs who will find themselves make choices about one technology or another.
14. Transplantation agent - The demand for organs is exploding: the globalization of availability will soon bring out the demand for professionals able to track, identify and make available healthy organs (from willing donors, hopefully).
15. Geriatric Services Provider - With the increase in life expectancy, the number of people in their 80s, 90s and 100s will increase significantly: this increasingly large group of citizens will create a strong demand for services aimed at these age groups, which are currently not present on the market.
16. ET3 engineers - The next major ground transportation project could be a passenger and freight system based on a network of magnetic vacuum tubes (we talked about it here). Operating at less than 2% of the current costs of cars, trucks, trains, ships and planes, this new transport system would give rise to a series of services and professions related to all aspects of its implementation.
Work by 2030 and beyond
A certain number of technologies present today only on paper will require more time to be introduced on the market: when this happens, in any case, they will bring with them the demand for professional figures connected to them. Here are a few:
17. Drone courier - Drones will be used to send pizzas and products, remove garbage, snow and debris, monitor traffic and pollution, and to change batteries in our cars: shippers equipped with large fleets of drones will experience great economic success.
18. Ecohacker - Specialists in plant and tree modifications, capable of creating personalized fruit, hedges suitable for specific spaces and 'grown on site' wood products will be successful in the market arising from the new possibilities of natural genetics.
19. Cloner - Developing 'virgin' copies of a human being will really be similar to creating soulless monsters: when uploading technology (we talk about it here) it will be developed, however, the clone will welcome the personality of the original subject and will be elevated to the rank of a human being.
20. Manufacturer of biological spare parts - The transplant agent we were talking about a few lines above (in vogue just a few decades earlier) will already lose its place when science is able to develop and mass produce healthy organs from scratch (as is already happening at a research level today: we talk about it here).
21. Biological broker - A future characterized by an exponential increase in life expectancy could be characterized by a huge inequality between a 'Methuselah' population because it is rich and able to pay for long-life drugs, and a class of 'poor' who live less. An intermediate figure could intervene by providing this last class of population with 'extensions' in exchange for money, capable of providing a few more decades of life each time. Perhaps the term 'time bank' will have a completely different meaning after 2050.
22. Geoengineer - This is a new generation of climate control specialists. In the future we will move from the era of weather forecasts to that of climates generated by humanity capable of controlling some forces of nature on a localized scale.
23. Specialist in nano-weapons - Many of the weapons of the future will unfortunately be too small to be seen with the naked eye: naturally their danger will be infinitely greater. New experts halfway between military and IT will be able to control them, develop them, modify them and (hopefully not) use them.
24. Earthquake Therapist - Everything we know about the core of the Earth has been provided to us by indirect evidence: there are no maps of the Center of the Earth, no accurate diagrams, no knowledge of the changes that occur in this vast area: It is a lack of knowledge that has cost us 226.000 human lives last year alone. This may change when we have greater awareness of how the earth's crust moves, and we can develop models that allow us to make daily 'earthquake forecasts' just as we make meteorological forecasts today.
25. Robolavaggio - A little common sense is enough: if robotics will develop in the next decades, we will have to wash these gadgets. Automatic washing systems or industries born from this armature (specific cleaning products, accessories, etc.) will arise accordingly.
26. Mnemosurgeon - In the future, a branch of medicine specializing in the removal of trauma, negative memories or destructive behavior dictated by accidents or mental disorders may develop.