Small teapot tempest over the short film, Humans need not apply:

Horses aren't unemployed now because they got lazy as a species, they're unemployable. There's little work a horse can do that pays for its housing and hay.

Some folk interpret this to say that "non-skilled" people might be out of jobs in a few decades, thanks to the information economy or some other drivel.

It is, however, drivel.  Here's why: Our code will simply get worse.  You know those idiots that apply for developer jobs that can't even spell Java, but have the audacity to pretend that they're experts?  You know how you can't believe that they've actually held the jobs that are on their resumes?

Newsflash: These horrible coders have held those jobs, and, in the future, will continue to get them.  What's worse?  Their code, as horrible as it is, on some level, works.

Code will simply get worse.  Folks who were non-skilled are already getting shunted into college where they might not have as strongly twenty or thirty years ago, precisely because of these (and other, more nefarious) changes in our economy.

It's time to stop thinking they're not ready for college, and realize that what used to require the brightest minds -- thanks to the scarcity of jobs and price for companies to enter a once much more expensive market -- won't any longer.

As Ben Thompson says, we're not horses.  We can learn to adapt by learning new skills.  Unfortunately, some of us can't learn real well.  The difference in 40 years is that those folk won't be digging ditches (which, the PC-ness in me requires I say, is insanely hard work, having done it for our water pipe a few years back), they'll be doing today's equivalent of "data entry" work, and not doing it horribly well.  And that won't matter.

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