<html><head><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body dir="auto"><div>On Oct 31, 2016, at 5:48 PM, David Lubkin <<a href="mailto:lubkin@unreasonable.com">lubkin@unreasonable.com</a>> wrote:</div><blockquote type="cite"><span>Spike wrote:</span><br><span></span><br><blockquote type="cite"><span>I have lived to witness the science of aerodynamics become completely encoded; so much theory became obsolete. Humans do not need to master the intricacies of the science. Correct aerodynamic calculations can be done by people who know not what a shock wave is or why a shock wave can reflect off of an oblique wave. A person with a solid high school education can set up the model and run it.</span><br></blockquote><span></span><br><span>What can humans do to earn their keep is unclear. I'm only marginally confident that I know what *I* can do for the next two or three decades.</span><br><span></span><br><span>My father was world-class in designing analog circuits. Then all everyone wanted was digital, even where analog could be 10^6 times faster for the problem. So the kids stopped learning professional-grade analog design. Which meant that when it became clear that analog was a better answer in some context, there was no one to hire.</span><br><span></span><br><span>I spent many years acquiring prowess in (among other skills) precision programming. Squeezing a flagon of performance out of a shot glass. Then no one cared about saving space or time. Just throw more compute power at the problem. And it did make sense. People-time cost more than hardware. But it doesn't always. Especially as you go either bigger (exabyte analysis, trillion device networks) or smaller (molecular-scale computing) in your problem domain, you need people who appreciate bit tricks, instruction timing, etc. And most who know this stuff have left the field.</span><br><span></span><br><span>This pattern may apply to you, Spike.</span><br><span></span><br><span>The answer for us, specifically, and for segments of the larger population that are seeing the demand for their competencies disappear are maybe in asking:</span><br><span></span><br><span>• Who still needs what I've been doing all my professional life? In what ways am I a better fit than a punk kid or robot?</span><br><span></span><br><span>• What else am I good at that may be of longer-term value?</span><br><span></span><br><span>One likely answer for me: Write more stories and less code. It's harder to find gigs in any kind of engineering the farther you get from forty. But I know personally several sf writers who did or still publish into their nineties.</span><br></blockquote><div><br></div>Excellent observation! And one reason why we should be a little humble when trying to come with top-down policy solutions.<br><br><div><div id="AppleMailSignature"><div style="line-height: normal;"><div style="line-height: normal;"><span style="line-height: 20px; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Regards,</span></div><div style="line-height: normal;"><span style="line-height: 20px; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div><div style="line-height: normal;"><span style="line-height: 20px; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Dan</span></div><div style="line-height: normal;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"> Sample my Kindle books via:</span></div><div style="line-height: normal;"><font color="#000000" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><a href="http://author.to/DanUst" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">http://author.to/DanUst</a></font></div></div><div style="line-height: normal;"><br></div><div><br></div></div><div><div style="line-height: normal;"></div></div></div></div></body></html>