The prayer of most parents (especially Africans) from time immemorial is to have their children take on either Medicine, Law or Nursing as a career.
Courses like Pharmacy, Engineering and other science related were later added to the platinum list as time went by.
Children who chose outside of the aforementioned courses are generally considered as ‘not so serious’ or inferior to their counterparts who did.
While some parents did it for the continuation of the family career tradition, others did it just to make a statement that ‘my son/daughter is a doctor, lawyer or nurse.’
This career discrimination continued for years and quite a number of innocent children were misled to study a course they have little or no interest in.
The general conception behind this thinking is that those courses never lack jobs and for a large part of the last century, that was true.
Some children for the sake of satisfying their parents’ career urge took the prescribed route and later traced their steps back to their initial interest; in some cases music, sports or arts in general.
However, as the world is gradually turning a global village especially with the invention of mind blowing technologies and other discoveries, the big three are generally losing their age long monopoly as the most sought after courses.
In the USA for instance, thousands of young lawyers already don’t get jobs because of IBM Watson.
With IBM Watson, you can submit your brief and get basic legal advice within seconds, with 90% accuracy compared with 70% accuracy when done by humans.
The App inventors says it is their dream to send all lawyers out of work within the next decade.
So, if you studied law and you thought your legal jargons and lingo will remain exclusive forever, the latest indicators show that there will be 90% fewer lawyers in the not too distant future.
The threat is real. It’s not a joke. Better start thinking dear learned Counsel
Talk about Nursing. Watson is already helping nurses diagnose cancer. It’s 4 times more accurate than human nurses.
And for doctors too, note that the Tricorder X price will be announced this year, 2019.
Tech Companies have already built a medical device called the “Tricorder” from ‘Star Trek’ that works with your mobile phone. It takes your retina scan, your blood sample and you breath into it. It then analyses 54 bio-markers that will identify nearly any disease and even prescribe medications.
Watson inventors also aim to see how citizens will no longer need to see a doctor for consultation or prescription, unless for surgery.
So doctor, it appears softwares are helping us decode those your funny handwriting that only nurses and pharmacists can read.
Very soon we won’t need you again.
Little wonder, a Quartz research says, children born today will study courses not yet in the curricula and end up in jobs not yet existing.
Most of the priced jobs and professions today will be made obsolete by technology.
The basic survival instinct for young school leavers of this age and the future is to key into technological advancements as it happens using such to enhance their career and relevance.
Some wise ones will fare better with technological advancements while the unfortunate ones will fade away with it.