Taking a fresh look at the future

15.1 The future is recognized, not predicted

A child is approaching the choice of a field of study. At 16 or 17, deciding what to spend the next several years learning is difficult enough. What often troubles parents most lies beyond the school or subject itself: will any of it still have value when their child graduates? Which professions will still need people in 10 years? Which jobs will AI change? Could something learned over several years already be outdated by graduation?

These are reasonable questions. A choice has real costs—time, tuition, years of youth—and a particular person will bear them. Nobody wants to see change coming and simply pretend nothing will happen. So we consult employment data, industry reports, teachers, practitioners, and AI. Strangely, more material does not necessarily bring greater agreement. Some predict that certain jobs will quickly disappear; others expect the tasks to change. One person favors a direction, while another offers an entire argument against it. Each account can sound complete.

One fact is easily overlooked: we are asking for an answer about 10 years from now, but all we can obtain today is an interpretation of that future, made by people today using today's information. The future will not give us its answers early merely because we need certainty more urgently.

Prediction often expresses a wish to remove uncertainty

Why do we like predicting the future so much? I increasingly feel that curiosity is only part of it. Often what we want is certainty. Knowing in advance which industry would grow, which profession would disappear, or which place would offer more opportunity would make today's choices easier. We imagine finding the right map and following it all the way. That wish is not childish. Long-term choices really are costly. The difficulty is that reality seldom provides a map that remains unchanged for 10 years.