At the first few industry conferences I attended, I sometimes caught the other attendees and reporters staring at my laptop. It was clearly a relic from another era—perhaps the same era that spawned the boom box or even the one when 8-track tapes were still cool.

But now the 10-pound laptop is gone. My new one could be lifted with one finger. Almost. It’s certainly as THIN as a finger, even with the lid closed.

This wisp of a sleek, black machine fits right in with my desk setup: a peripheral keyboard, docking station, mouse, speakers, a phone whose ring sounds like Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry voice, and two flat-screen monitors.

But don't applaud how far I’ve come in technology. My two monitors still sit on two stacks of large, olive-green books embossed with gold letters -- bound volumes of a great old magazine called Life Insurance Selling.

It turns out that Vol. 18 - 1946; Vol. 41 - 1985; Vol. 71A - half of 1996; and Vol. 63 – 1988 make two perfect, ergonomic stacks for my monitors.

The sleek black instruments of technology stand in contrast to the dignified volumes they rest on, a reminder that what we do every day rests on that foundation of the past.

And they remind me of our industry’s rapid change over the past decade.

Looking at those hardbound volumes, I remember fellow employees at now-defunct companies who thought they weren’t expendable – until technology replaced them. These days, I’d bet very few of us still think we are irreplaceable employees.

But what about the jobs we hold? Are they replaceable?

The more I read about automation and AI’s potential effects on white-collar jobs, the more dread I feel. Not for myself -- I think the wave will hit late in my career -- but for my children’s generation just beginning or developing their careers. And for the generation not yet in the workforce.

Sure, many predict America’s workers will be okay as we adjust to automation. “Don’t worry,” they say, “It will free up your time to pursue the fun/important/creative parts of the job” and sometimes adding “It won’t happen overnight, so there’s time to prepare.”

Some recent articles have taken a more dire tone. Or simply come to more ambiguous conclusions. Like this blog, I guess.

Today we published an article by Bloomberg reporters, who interviewed a nameless executive at a major Wall Street bank about his take on automation.

In public, like many executives, he’s upbeat about automation. But in private, he wonders what will happen to young people just entering the financial industry. And what will he tell his own children about how to pick a career?

How can you pick a career if you don’t know whether the industry it's in will be around by the time you’re finished training for it?

And that’s one big problem right there. We don’t know what will actually happen nor how it will all unfold.

Maybe the workplace will adapt and evolve -- it did when the internet came into the workplace. Or maybe it won’t, and workers in many professions will struggle to find a career that suits their skills and personality while letting them earn a decent living.

Researchers are diving in to study automation and the workforce, as well as machine learning, where the software learns from experience and is better able to do its job. But they don’t know if their predictions about our jobs – dire or rosy – will come true.

Meanwhile, algorithms are looming. In some industries, if not most, they’re quietly making decisions people used to make. Or they're learning as they go -- Siri anyone? Software today is teaching more software to do parts of your job and my job in the future.

It’s unsettling. It’s infuriating. It’s potentially wonderful. Wonderful?

Sure, depending on what’s left.

Maybe it will actually be those fun parts of the job that the C-level execs always promise technology will free up our time to do. The fun parts where you realize “I’m getting paid to do X. Wow!”

Those are the parts you tell people at gatherings when they ask what you do. The parts you tell your kids or your nephews or nieces when they wonder what you do all day.

Maybe the big wave of automation that’s been promised (threatened?) won’t come in time to disrupt you or your job. But what do you tell young people wanting to pursue a career in your industry? What do you tell your kids when they say “I want to do what you do”?

Instant Insights /

Will our jobs be as easily replaced as our technology?

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