Rapid changes in technology may be leading to some “Wild and Cwazy” new professions and changes. It is not out of the realm of possibility that you might encounter some or all of these in the future.
- Coach “Watson”: The new NFL season is upon us. Starting this year, NFL players will have RFID chips embedded in their shoulder pads. These will provide a wealth of data on every player’s movement on the field. To consume and use this information, enter Coach IBM Watson. Imagine if your team’s coach knew every formation, every players’ strengths and weaknesses, the impact of the partisan 12th man, the weather conditions – and then called the best plays! IBM’s Watson may indeed be able to do that. There is a Coach Watson for hire in our future. This is not one that the puritans will like.
- Data Hostage Negotiators: With the exponential growth of enterprise and personal data – and the hacks and leaks we hear about every day, a new breed of negotiator may be emerging. A Data Hostage Negotiator will assist you in retrieving your data back from those who are holding it for ransom. You may even have Data Integrity Specialists whose job it is to determine if someone has altered your data, the newest threat vector in the information security space. Since cyber-crime is not likely to go away anytime soon, these jobs might be in high demand.
- Skyways Controller: With the inevitable proliferation of drones andskycars (cars that fly and drive like the Terrafugia shown below), we will need a different kind of controller, one who helps manage the lower skies (the middle skies being for planes and higher skies for spacecraft). Someone better take charge before we are all under threat of falling objects from the sky.
- Uber Fleet Commander: The scenario here goes like this: Uber will soon have self-driving cars and these will deliver passengers, groceries, laundry and anything else that needs transporting (perhaps including Amazon and UPS packages?) A Fleet Commander is in charge of making the best utilization of those vehicles and making sure you or your merchandise is delivered on time.
- Robot Personality Designers: As robots invade our professional and private spaces and take on more of our workloads, we are likely to get a little picky about the personalities of these assistants. Personality Designers would ensure a robot is suitably aligned with appropriate personality and cultural adaptation for its environment. Not just diction and accents, but humor, response rate, interpretive latitude, even visual integration. Want to change your robot’s personality? That may require another visit to the RPD (Robot Personality Designer).
- Robtors or Robotic Actors: Robtors have no egos, don’t demand high salaries, work as long as you want them to, do their own stunts, don’t throw temper tantrums, memorize their lines instantly – and never even need a bathroom break! Add in the proper robot personality designer, pepper with a million facts beyond any method actor’s capacity to intake in role research – and voila, a Robtor is born. Did we care if the tall purple-people in Avatarwere humans or not? I predict the era of a superstar Robtor is around the corner.
- Smart Fabric Designers: As fabrics are embedded with electronics and getsmart, we are likely to need a new kind of designer-engineer, one who will be able to re-imagine the use of clothes, shoes, hats etc. ‘Wardrobe malfunctions’ could evolve beyond our current conception. Beyonce, Niki Minaj and others are already planning tours with smart clothes. I would like my shoes to have embedded GPS maps so that I know where to go. Just kidding, but not by much. How about self-coordinating clothes, socks, shoes etc. “Computer, I want to wear what Matt Lauer is wearing this morning!
- Custom Implant Organ Designers and Gene programmers: Each day in the US, 21 people die waiting for transplants that can’t take place because of a shortage of donated organs. Many potential recipients succumb before the right match can be found. The creation of organs outside the body, using 3D printing of tissues, creates a need for a new genre of experts to custom design an organ with the right gene sequencing for implantation.
- Weather-Crafters: With far better knowledge and understanding of how weather works, we should at some point be able to customize weather in small areas, whether that is more rain on a farmer’s farm or clear weather at Wimbledon during the tennis tournament (and we are not talking about a roof). Someone will have to be able to work the computations and create the modelling and delivery of such localized weather. “I would like to order dry and sunny for my golf this weekend”.
- Robo-Authors: This is not about obituary writing. That has already been automated, as are an increasing number of news reports that we think are written by human correspondents. No, here we are talking about a Robo-Author who will pen the first New York Times bestseller. Personalized books are next. I would like Budapest Hotel with a dash of James Bond.