Human body part designers and guided Space tours? Get ready for the jobs of the future
Human limb designers and space junk archaeologists will be needed in the future, as jobs and societies become more technologically advanced.
Around 65% of school pupils will move into careers that don’t exist yet, according to the US Department of Labor, as robotics and artificial intelligence move into the mainstream.
The Future Laboratory, a consultancy that tries to predict trends in 14 industry sectors, has teamed up with Microsoft Surface, whose devices are designed with students in mind, to look at the jobs which today’s students will be undertaking by 2025.
Called the “Tomorrow Jobs” report, the study looks at what the creative careers of the future might look like and it has identified 10 job categories that don’t exist today, along with the skills needed in order for students to future proof their careers.
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- Space Junk Archaeologist: Spacejunk Archaeologists will locate and explore debris orbiting our planet. These specialists will conduct guided tours of abandoned spacecraft and defunct satellites, while also collecting, archiving and deciphering each recovered item
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- Memory Storage Specialist: By the late 2020s, software-brain interfaces, pioneered by teams of neuroscientists, will have started to enter the mainstream, allowing mass audiences to read and capture thoughts, memories and dreams. Memory Storage Specialists will help people to use these systems to increase the storage capacity of their over-stretched minds, providing services that allow them to dip in and out of treasured memories and experiences at will
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- Rewilding Strategist: Natural ecosystems will be stretched to their limits by 2025 as our world tries to cope with 9bn humans living in resource-hungry mega-cities. Rewilding Strategists will stitch together viable ecosystems in stressed landscapes, using patchworks of flora and fauna from all over the world. They will reintroduce plants and animals that have been extinct in a region for centuries – so wolves and beavers could make a comeback in Britain – and manage assisted migrations in order to create resilient and vibrant landscapes in the face of advancing climate change
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- Battery Innovator: One of the main barriers to a completely sustainable energy infrastructure will be the struggle to store power for the days when the wind doesn’t blow or the sun doesn’t shine. Battery Innovators will combine elements and organic materials to invent new battery storage capabilities, for on and off-grid use. They will also oversee the introduction of superfast charging facilities to cope with the power demands of our ever-growing reliance on the Internet of Things in a hyper-urbanised world
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- Human Parts Designer: Over the next two decades, bio-engineering advances will extend the average healthy human life to 100+ years as the growth of replacement tissues and organs becomes an everyday and affordable proposition. Human Parts Designers will combine a design aesthetic and skill set with bio-engineering know-how to create a huge range of customised human limbs, either to perfectly match the existing skin tone, musculature and colour of the rest of a person’s body, or to provide new fashionable looks or enhanced functionality for particular jobs or sports
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- Virtual Habitat Designer: By 2025, tens of millions of us will be spending large chunks of our lives working, playing, travelling and socialising inside virtual reality environments so immersive, interactive and realistic that they will be almost indistinguishable from the real world. Many members of future generations of architects and interior designers will spend their careers building entirely in cyberspace
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- Ethical Technology Advocate: Over the next decade, the long-awaited era of the robots will dawn. A combination of exponentially increasing computing power combined with breakthroughs in artificial intelligence technology will see robotic personal assistants, manual labour technicians and customer service representatives begin to be integrated into everyday life
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- Digital Cultural Commentator: As the rise of visually-based social media networks such as Instagram and Pinterest demonstrates, tomorrow’s Generation Z audiences will think visual first in their engagement with culture. By 2025, an ability to speak a shared visual language will be vital to connect academic experts and the increasingly influential social media mavens who help mass audiences to discover and enjoy the arts. Meanwhile, brands seeking to build deep cultural relevance in a constantly-shifting commercial environment will need to find new ways to plug into centuries of human creativity and heritage to talk a visually-led young audience
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- Freelance Biohacker: By 2025, the field of medicine will become the latest field to crowdsource innovative solutions to everything from new vaccines to genetic modification
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- IoT Data Creative: By 2025, tens of billions of connected consumer products will form a global Internet of Things generating a tsunami of real-time data. Clothing brands will communicate to consumers through smart tags, vending machines will alert re-stockers, and greater industrial automation will be achieved