Technology Will Replace Essential Workers

Coronavirus pandemic stay-home orders, essential workers, and the need to learn an essential new skill-set.

My daughter is an essential worker at Target, and is very worried about getting infected by SARS-CoV-2 Coronavirus (COVID-19) as the public continues to shop at Target. She would LOVE to stay home and not risk hers and her son’s health.

Robots will eventually replace my daughter’s job in retail.

100 years ago a Switchboard Operator was an essential worker. That job doesn’t exist today, just like my daughter’s job won’t exist forever.

I used to do manual paste-up and layout for The Sacramento Observer newspaper in 1983. Then I lived through the invention of the Apple Macintosh, and within a few short years my entire skill-set was obsolete.

I had to learn everything from scratch on the Mac. It was scary, but Steve Jobs didn’t care if I was out of a manual newspaper paste-up job. And I knew people who weren’t able to make that leap from manual layout to desktop publishing.

There’s no such thing as job security!