Writing on the Atlantic’s website, Alan Jacobs notes the error in assuming today’s leisure activities will be tomorrow’s jobs. In particular he argues that it is a fallacy that most jobs will involve searching and assimilating data (I could also add that machines may replace people in collating and analysing data).
Alan challenges the thesis of Malcolm Gladwell’s book Blink: The power of thinking without thinking. He states
… patience and self-reflectiveness are going to be in much shorter supply than quickness of judgment.
Of course in some situations (like a power grid about to go offline) you do want quick judgement and action. But in other cases more information may not make the situation clearer or suggest an appropriate response. So reasoning and reflection are the skills we need to improve not just how to do a better search.
There’s an ironic saying in that you get paid for doing the unpleasant tasks in life. However, the writer ignores the fact that for certain types of professions where “creative” flow is essential, there may be a long period of mastery (read Outliers). Basically the employor is paying for the prior suffering as obvious scarcity means even if you offer high salaries, there’s just NO warm bodies.
Give you an obvious example, there’s currently a shortage of electronics Patent attorneys. This is not that surprising since both are deep disciplines and law is famous for burnout. Even if you outsource to IP firms springing up in India you will not get the same depth of expertise. Certain fun activities like invalidating crappy patents can be crowd-sourced but the upfront investment in time/talent is once off.
I’d agree with you that self-reflection and deep systematic thinking is in short supply in an attention-deficit world.