The Future of Work This is for folks who don't mind stretching their imagination a bit. Let me review some of the things that are happening in today's world. A recent news article stated that in spite of the decreasing jobless rate, the number of retail jobs has been dropping rapidly. An article in Business Insider calls it a retail apocalypse. According to the article, in the retail industry, "Since October about 89,000 workers in general merchandise stores have lost their jobs, which is more than the number of people employed in the entire US coal industry." ( http://www.businessinsider.com/retail-job-losses-are-hurting-the-economy-2017-4 ). This loss is due to the rapid expansion of online merchandising. But this is only one example of the point I want to make. According to an article in Scientific American, two professors at Oxford University published a study estimating the probability that "702 occupations would soon be computerized out of exist...
My alarm clock goes off every morning at eight, except for the few times when I have a breakfast date. Usually I wake up about an hour before that, or at least I partly wake up. It is important that I remain in a “not quite awake but not quite asleep” state, because I consider that time as the germination period for whatever seeds happen to have blown into my head.