Looking Into The Future of Technology
By Katrina Park
Have you stopped to think how dependent on technology we are today? It’s hard to imagine what life was like before the internet and mobile phones! Technology runs our lives these days. Smartphones, tablets and computers – we really can’t seem to function without them. These days we’re so used to having immediate access to an abundance of information at our fingertips, and a fast paced social and business life – all aided by technology.
In a very short amount of time, technology has exploded in the market, who knows what is on the horizon and what new innovations and inventions are to come! It’s crazy to think that we can now control our entire life on a single brick of technology, our phone! And that less than 15 years ago the iPhone didn’t even exist. Nor did Uber, Instagram, WhatsApp, and the list goes on…
By 2025, we’ll lose over five million jobs to automation. So how do you ensure that you remain relevant in the ever changing technological world? When looking for one of the best jobs of the future, the major consideration needs to be on what jobs will expand dramatically in the next decade. Jobs in tech of course tick this box.
Technology is embedded in everything we do, improving the ways we live, work, and experience the world. But there’s a larger transformation at play–a shift beyond digital into in era where tech is built into every single interaction.
Although no one can accurately predict what jobs will look like in the future, there are five skills that will be essential to your future success.
- Mental Elasticity and Complex Problem Solving:
The future is going to bring about problems you’ve never seen before in a world you’ve never experienced. In order to solve these problems, you’ll need to have the mental flexibility to think outside of the box, see the big picture and rearrange things to find a solution. Luckily, this skill is highly developable and simply takes practice. The more difficult problems you tackle, the stronger your brain will get!
- Critical Thinking:
Technology may be able to automate many of the jobs that currently exist, but you probably wouldn’t trust it to do your critical thinking for you; as such your future career will require you to have excellent critical thinking skills. You’ll constantly need to be analysing various situations, considering multiple solutions and making decisions on the fly through logic and reasoning.
Worried about robots stealing your job? The more creative you are, the less likely you are to lose your job to a robot! While robots may be better than you at calculating and diagnosing problems, they aren’t very good at creating original content, thinking outside the box or being abstract, yet.
- People Skills:
Machines might take over eventually and technology is going to get much more advanced, so us humans have to stick together! If you want to succeed in the future job market, you’ll need to learn how to manage and work with people (and robots), which includes getting in touch with your emotions, having empathy and listening,
Even though science, technology, engineering and maths jobs are super hot right now, don’t expect them to go away in the future. As technology progresses, you’ll need to have more advanced STEM skills to keep up. Learn how to code.
Now that you have the skills, what jobs can you apply them to? Already jobs exist now that had never been heard of five years ago: the role of data scientist, which is in huge demand, is one example. Here are the top 6 jobs of the future!
This may be the oddest future job but it’s totally necessary!
Think about it. Humans produce 2.6 billion pounds of trash annually, and what do we do with it? Throw it in landfill. There is no way this practice is sustainable so we’re going to have to think about something else to do with all of our rubbish. Unfortunately, just packing our trash Wall-E style isn’t going to cut it. In comes future you! A world renowned trash engineer who’s solving the earth’s waste problems one wrapper at a time. You could turn our rubbish into clean gas! Or figure out a way to make it combine to make it strong enough to construct buildings with! The possibilities are endless but it’s up to you to come up with the award winning ideas.
Software developers are the creative minds behind computer programs. Some software developers create applications, like adobe – while others build systems – like Microsoft. All software developers create software to meet user’s needs. And they also tend to work alongside computer programmers.
Today, there are ever-increasing in-person and online coding boot camps that help train those to move into the software field, so a traditional academic education is becoming less of a requirement.
Projected Future Growth: 22% through 2022
Web Application Developer
Web application developers use programming languages to create software that meets client specifications. Developers may work in multiple programming languages and operating systems. Out of the seven tech careers in this list, a web application developer has the most coding boot camps available to them at this time.
Projected Future Growth: 23% by 2022
Mobile App Developers
Creating mobile applications on iOS, Android, and other types of phone systems – most popularly Instagram, Facebook, snapchat, etc. According to Computer Training Centres, companies across industries need mobile application developers, including video game studios, advertising, and marketing firms, media companies that recognize mobile as a powerful content distribution channel, government agencies, financial institutions, and many more. A mobile app developer is listed at number 3 of the top 10 best jobs of the future by Think Advisor.
Projected Future Growth: 23% to 32% through 2020
Machine learning engineer
Machine learning engineers are advanced programmers who develop AI machines and systems that can learn and apply knowledge. These professionals perform sophisticated programming, working with complex datasets and algorithms to train these systems.
We see every company becoming an AI company; and as that happens, AI will become a top investment area for any tech department. Machine learning engineers are going to be very high in demand.
This job doesn’t actually exist now. With digital locks becoming the norm, in the near future digital locksmith’s, who are experts in dealing with digital locks, will start to be employed. Their primary function will be to get people out of locked cars or into their homes when technology fails. Since no technology is 100-pecent perfect (there will always be defects), a digital locksmith will save the day.
A few of the jobs listed above are already in hot demand today, and no doubt the future. Whilst some of them require a formal degree, many of the skills associated with each job can be obtained through self-learning and boot camps. So this is a great time to take advantage of all the learning resources available to you before the market gets too saturated.