Automation is inevitable. Eventually most of our jobs will be replaced by robots. Don't read that last sentence as a "potential dystopian future--" it is completely, absolutely, concretely true. The only variable we don't know is how much time it will take to get there.

It will start with the blue collar jobs: cashiers, waiters, gardeners, etc. But if you think just because you are in a white collar job you're safe, that is also false. Maybe the only industry left to boom will by psychiatrists, so that we have someone to talk to about the sudden dominance of technology in our life.

For instance, doctors and pharmacists are essentially knowledge basins. That's what computers do best. Removing intelligence and the years of knowledge, and other than an emotional comfort, what can doctors do? Eventually, doctors or healthcare professionals in general will just take on a role of comforting.

The problem is, computers are faster than us at getting knowledge. Some coder writes a program or downloads some software onto the computer and suddenly it has 4 years of medical knowledge or medicine knowledge, or both. What took a human 8 years to learn took a computer less than 30 seconds.

And the code they write can be copied and pasted to another million computers. But not humans. Sadly, we cannot just copy and paste what our friends learned into our own brains.

The power and capability of learning of a computer is only constrained by the power and intelligence of the coder.

Have you seen Lord of the Rings? I don't exactly remember which one this takes place in, but there is a perfect metaphor.

In the movie, there is a war between good (humans) and evil (orcs). To make a human adult soldier, it takes around 18 years. But orcs are just mixed from some weird puss from the ground, and are just created as an orc, without the development stages like childhood or teenage years.

I'm not saying computers are comparable to orcs. The problem is our technology is advancing so fast but the average human is not. Most people do not know how to code or have any inkling how computers work.

But if the only way for humans to get skills is lengthy and expensive (lower tuition pls Auon), how anyone ever justify hiring a human over a computer which can just download skills? And as computers get smarter and faster, how can we even keep up and control them?

I think the answer lies in books. Books are our human form of computer programs and downloads. Books let you download anything from an emotion, knowledge, or a new form of thinking. For instance, if you want to download motivation and inspiration to work harder, read Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers. It is essentially copying an expert author's knowledge into our own brain.

The availability of books and libraries is crucial if we want the entire human race to be able to keep up and not be left behind in our fast evolving technology age. We need to keep PBS and funding for public education as high as possible if we want our society to evolve in fluently with our technological advances.