Jobsolecence...

Found this over at Instapundit this past weekend. Perhaps this is how we all should approch job hunting. What you see in this excerpt is what a job means today:

We established last week that there are some jobs that are not yet ready for automation. And there is growing demand in some unexpected areas, such as speech pathology. But right now it feels as though we’re losing old jobs faster than we’re gaining new ones.

Why?

Automation is eliminating jobs. Machines are doing it. They are fast, efficient, and relentless. Creating jobs is a whole different matter. Creating jobs requires developing new business models, which means identifying market needs — figuring out what is important to people, what they will pay for. It is a fundamentally creative activity — one that machines can’t perform.

It’s the story of John Henry all over again…but there’s a difference. The same technology that is eliminating jobs also connects us and empowers us in ways unimaginable just a few years ago. Maybe what’s becoming obsolete is not jobs per se, but the idea that they are something that you simply find.

Increasingly, perhaps, a job is something that we each have to create. We can’t count on someone else to create one for us. That model is disappearing. We have to carve something out for ourselves, something that the machines won’t immediately grab.

That sounds difficult, maybe even a little dangerous. We’re all comfortable with the idea of “finding” a job. We search for them; we hunt them; we land them. All of these images assume the job already exists.

But to create something new…what does that even mean? Do we all become entrepreneurs? (I think the answer to that question is yes, although many of us will have to learn to be entrepreneurs within existing organizations.) Ultimately, it means we have to find something useful to do, something so useful that others are willing to pay for it.

What can we do to make ourselves indispensable in this brave new world? Surely machines can't take any job that require good old human thinking and ingenuity.

Also I wonder...What does it mean to have to carve out our own positions? Does this mean we use our skills, experience, and training to create a position tailored for ourselves?

What say you?