I remember talking to the careers advisor at high school. He basically said that I was really only good for some kind of simple labour work. He wasn’t condescending or anything; I couldn’t’ve agreed with him more actually. “Just between me and you,” he said at the end, “I actually envy your position.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“You’ll probably end up being a plumber or something. It’s not as though they’ll bother inventing a machine that’ll stick its hand down the toilet to grab a shit.”
I contemplated that for a moment: ‘a machine with hands.’
“I started out as a typesetter,” he continued; “I used to organise little metal characters into a tablet that was used to print the pages of the paper. You’ve probably never heard of it.”
I hadn’t.
“I then began developing personal photos; I’d use chemicals in a darkroom to extract images from the film.”
He didn’t say anything but I hadn’t heard of that either.
“After that I bought into a Blockbuster video franchise. I had to shut it down after about five years; Internet downloading and piracy forced me out of business.”
The conversation reminded me of a project I’d done in humanities. It was called ‘Obsolete Jobs.’ We learnt about men delivering ice because people didn’t own fridges, others lighting street lamps because there was no electricity, and people employed to push the buttons of the lift because they didn’t trust you with the technology.
It really made me wonder about our short-sighted outlook. Even with the pace of society and technological advancements people are confident their jobs will be around forever.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“You’ll probably end up being a plumber or something. It’s not as though they’ll bother inventing a machine that’ll stick its hand down the toilet to grab a shit.”
I contemplated that for a moment: ‘a machine with hands.’
“I started out as a typesetter,” he continued; “I used to organise little metal characters into a tablet that was used to print the pages of the paper. You’ve probably never heard of it.”
I hadn’t.
“I then began developing personal photos; I’d use chemicals in a darkroom to extract images from the film.”
He didn’t say anything but I hadn’t heard of that either.
“After that I bought into a Blockbuster video franchise. I had to shut it down after about five years; Internet downloading and piracy forced me out of business.”
The conversation reminded me of a project I’d done in humanities. It was called ‘Obsolete Jobs.’ We learnt about men delivering ice because people didn’t own fridges, others lighting street lamps because there was no electricity, and people employed to push the buttons of the lift because they didn’t trust you with the technology.
It really made me wonder about our short-sighted outlook. Even with the pace of society and technological advancements people are confident their jobs will be around forever.