What is a dream job?
It is often a dreaded question asked by adults to a young child: “What do you want to be when you grow up?” And there is always a set of “acceptable” answers, yet some people create their own careers; Ge Wang is one of them. Ge makes computer music and with the Stanford Laptop Orchestra he has created new exciting instruments. He uses coded bleeps and blips but also searches for unexpected materials such as an IKEA bowl. The end results is a surprising way to play music. But like all good orchestras the music that is created is both beautiful and expressive. Ge says: “Whatever it is that I’m doing, I love it.”
The word DIY has a bit of a negative sound to someone like me. Images of nuts and bolts as well as glue and fabrics does not really make me excited. But the idea of a DIY orchestra is somehow different at least to me. The DIY concept can be used to create new careers, and new ways of doing things.
One way to get ideas is to use random inspiration. Using random input to explore the future helps to stir things around. Random input is a common technique used in creative thinking, yet perhaps it is not often used when exploring the future. Provoking randomness deliberately is about escaping comfortable routines and creating chances and opportunities beyond your standard routines and world views.
Select something that you like to do.
- I like to make dessert.
Select a random word. Solar power
Think of ideas
- Make a DIY solar powered dessert parlor.
- Engage neighbours in the DIY project and share the parlor.
In the future several high paying jobs may not exist and it is has been predicted that at least half of the undergraduate class of 2017 in the US will end up in jobs and careers that do not yet exist. In the future there may be no librarians, postmen/women or assembly line works. Instead new jobs may be created as a result of “collaborative economies” such as online payment systems to transfer funds and social networks to enable collaboration. Possible future jobs may be crowdfunding specialist or big data doctor. Another possibility is the creation of jobs as a result of damage that we has done to nature, for example, a rewilder could replace roads with wild forests.
Many people will tell which careers offer the best prospects for the future. These predictions are usually based upon percentage growth statistics for recent years. However, the current trends could be disrupted. And if the trend is not disrupted, an attractive job could easily passed by new a job, that is for various underlying reasons suddenly more promising. Another approach is to take the major future trends and use random technique or another creative techniques to come up with different possibilities of new jobs. It could happen that creative thinking could produce far better predictions than growth statistics.
We could also explore which skills offer the best prospects of the future. And here creative thinking is a good prediction. . .