What will happen in your profession in the future -- say ten years from now?

If everything works out we might finally cure all forms of cancer

Hopefully they never invent that hairstyling helmet I saw on The Jetsons.

Our Computer Overlords will simulate the growth of iCorn.

Oh crap I read it as what will happen to your profession in 10 years.

New uniforms will finally be approved.. submitted for approval this year.

Robot security officers will put me on the unemployment line.

More responsebility and less patient-contact.
More academic, I think…
I’m a nurse, btw…

I expect unemployment will remain about the same.

Probably some type of breakthrough that allows for hobbyists to keep new kinds of fish and coral that were once thought impossible.
keeping coral alive in a fish tank was near impossible 10 years ago…

I expect my profession to pretty much go the way of the blacksmith: there will be little demand for it, the old practitioners will die off, few young people will choose to enter it, and aside from a few pockets of die-hard traditionalists there will be only isolated hobbyists, antiquarians. and curators of lost arts to perpetuate the craft. For them it will be a sideline because there will no longer be enough work to pay the rent.

I am an editor.

There might be vaccines for tuberculosis and malaria. There will not be a cure for HIV. People will die of untreatable “superbugs” in hospitals due to antibiotic resistance and lack of new medicine. There may be a global influenza pandemic.

@shilolo well that’s cheered me up.

No more web design. Users create their own sites with blocks they grab from the web. I will be a full time designer for PRINT industry again.

It’s already starting. People will love living in apartments because they have flexibility, have someone else to take care of maintenance and repairs, and if they are unhappy they can move without getting lopsided in a mortgage.

I work in computers. It’s impossible to know where we’ll be in the next 5 years, let alone 10. No one saw the netbooks coming. Ubiquitous computing will be big, that’s for sure.

@Jeruba, seems you and I are headed down the road to being Luddites. Technology is going to make us obsolete. Either that, or we will have to learn to lick the boots of our shiny metal masters. :-)

I’d love to open my own massage clinic, but first, I have to pass the national and state exams so I can become certified and licensed. I just took my school final exam on Monday. On my way baby, yeah!

We (librarians) will still be trying to teach students to use critical thinking skills when using information from the internet or its next incarnation. We will probably be working with people more and more remotely as they access information from home. Either that or we will be totally supplanted by virtual libraries and the profession will be moribund.

@janbb: my collection has been virtual for years, and people can access it online. Our role has already changed. We no longer have to spend much time finding things, although occasionally we have to track down something obscure.

What we do mostly, these days, is consult. I think of us as research consultants instead of librarians. We’ve taken on more of an educational role, in showing people different ways they can approach their data.

I’m wondering if something similar might happen to traditional librarians? Helping people discover what they want, amongst the millions of volumes available for their Kindle. Libraries might also buy rights to distribute certain books to a certain number of people, subsidizing access for various groups deemed to need the help.

What do you think?

I’ll be interested to see how film and TV mutate. Even with the capability to cheaply create their own stories, people still like watching professionals at work! Even with CGI and related technologies, they’re not the same as actual actors. I’m sure there will be changes in the delivery of finished product to the audience, but the production of programs and films probably won’t change too much.

Mine probably won’t change much. People will still need to take their dogs to day care.

In the next 10 I may be a Sergeant First Class or a First Sergeant.

-Sellz (US Army)

@Sellz: yes, but will humans still be on the battlefield, or will all the fighting be done from the comfort of an aeron chair? On the other hand, will wars be about killing and subduing the other side, or about winning “hearts and minds?” It’ll take a whole new set of skills for soldiers to be able to win the cultural battles. Is there a chance in hell that the military will have to take on that duty?

Film will become less and less prevalent, and I’ll cry… or maybe it will experience a resurgence, and I will rejoice!

I’ve seen several episodes of Future Weapons on the Discovery Channel and if any of that technology is going to be viable in the next decade, I’m going to have some really cool toys to play with in the military before I retire.

I’d also like to see us out of Iraq and Afghanistan in 10 years and this is something that I’ll fervently wish to happen as soon as possible.

@evelyns_pet_zebra & Jeruba: I see an excellent future for editors. Someone will have to bring order to the chaos of online communication when paper and ink are out of style.

I see the the future of teachers changing but not diminishing. I am currently the teacher of record for a program called Cyber High in our school. Right now I am dealing with 90 students. Many are seniors who screwed up in 9th or 10th grade and now want to bring up D’s or make up F’s. A few are kids who have health issues who can’t get to class regularly, there are very academic students who can’t fit required career ed and health ed classes into their schedules. The level of these on line classes is about the same as our regular classes and require a greater amount of work since the students can’t just skip the activities and pass the finals. We are now looking at AP classes on line.

So what will the teachers of the future do? About a third of the students can’t complete for various reasons

1. Teachers would be able to provide class environments that match student needs including individual attention and seminar instruction.
2. Teachers would be able to do common planning so that school would not be discrete bits and pieces. It would provide connections and reinforcement of subject matter.
3. Rote learning would be done on computers and critical and creative thinking skills would be provided by highly trained humans.
4. There could be a wider range of electives to whet student interest and act as “the spoonful of sugar”

@galileogirl ;
Sounds like the concepts incorporated in my Jr High some 30+ years ago! (With the exception of the computers obviously. )

@ daloon I typed a long response to your comment yesterday and then the I.E. gods decided to shut me down so I will just say, I think both you and I and galileo girl for teachers are seeing the same trends and similar future role for teachers and librarians: teachers of critical thinking, organizing materials and for libraries, providing access to data that is not freely available. It is is interesting to me that libraries are enjoying a great role as providers of both free entertainment and job search information in this economic downturn. Maybe everyone won’t be buying their own Kindle and downloading books, maybe there will still be a place for bound books and physical libraries?

@daloon We already are.

@Judi LOL Unfortunately the powers that be will probably see this as an opportunity to downsize education into a robotic sausage factory instead of something that could move civilization in positive directions.

@Sellz: yes, you are supposed to win hearts and minds, but what I was talking about was serious training to help do that. Serious training would include language instruction, history, cultural fauxs pas, relationship training and a lot of other stuff that my prejudices suggest the army would look at as sissy stuff, that they shouldn’t do. Their job is to shoot the guns.

@galileogirl ; I hope we are having a cultural reversal going on. Now that we are realizing that Government is not entirely bad maybe we will decide that schools and our children’s future are worth a dollar a week more in taxes. We might even decide that in the richest country in the world, basic health care should be a human right. Wow!

@daloon Negative. We already have everything you just named. We’re in Iraq. The Army’s job is more than just shoooting guns and weapons. Much more.

-Sellz

@Sellz: that’s cool! What kind of cultural and language training do you get?

We take courses before going into another country/culture. Culture Readiness Courses and also we have language courses. And a TON of correspondence courses.

-Sellz