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RE: Automation: An age of unseen prosperity
Yes. They're concerned about their livelihoods no doubt. It's hard for people to see that things will be better in the long run, when they or their friends have invested so much energy into a pursuit which is now obsolete.
It takes about 4 years for a London cabbie to gain "The Knowledge" - that is, to learn the intimate details of the London streets. It's an comparable level of knowledge to gaining a university degree... But when GPS navigation devices came out, London cabbies really should have taken a hint and realised that The Knowledge might not be so valuable for much longer. I guess it's hard to see what the future holds when you're so invested in the present.
Yeah. It's just part of modern culture, to cultivate 'secret knowledge' and then do everything to be a gatekeeper when the knowledge stops being secret. Hell, I work in IT, and any time someone will listen, I will explain everything I know about what caused their problem and how to avoid it again until they tell me to shut up so they can get back to work.
If your job relies upon no one else having your knowledge, you need to either restructure your job, or get a different career, because that model is dead.
That's a nice quote, though it's funny to think about. We all have access to so much information for almost free... If a specialist is going to provide value, he has to be very good to know more than Google, smarter than Google, faster than Google, or do things in a more accessible way than Google.
Well, really, you don't have to be that good to be better, smarter, faster, or more accessible than google. A lot of the time, it's not what you know, but what you know about what you know, or even what you know about what you know about what you know about google. anyone can find the information eventually, but the more complicated your job, the longer it will take them, and time is money. So don't rely upon other people not being able to know stuff. Just rely upon the depth of your knowledge. They can get it eventually, but that's a lot of effort, and people often don't care to learn. I still have people who don't know the difference between a router, a modem, a server, or the internet.