As an Educator watching this episode of south park, well, I had to chime in. Under personal circumstances I’ve seen how effective and “optimized” our systems are from the internal side of working alongside professors, some (not all) who would curve the class to a higher grade if the average grade was too low (I assume to maintain status quo), while many students merely a waver away from passing. Including future Doctors, Scientists, and Economists.
So it’s as funny as watching Idiocracy manifest but rather sad to realize, the aspects of handymen being the only possible labor power of the future under AI normalization.
Most individuals grew up with the Step A to Step C path process to education and a “successful future”, but we see often how too many Architects graduate when the overall economy already has so many, new graduates find themselves with a large educational debt and no means to pay it off in the career path chosen back in the day in High School.
Not only that but Universities and for profit educational corporations have made their campuses resemble a resort of some type rather than a place of higher learning, adding in lazy rivers to attract more students. It is a business strategy but others could argue there are more effective ways for improving the educational centric environment, however I tangent from the point.
The idea that this pathway was so widely encouraged to manufacture Business professionals, Doctors, Dentists, and potentially much of the American GDP professionals in the service economy we have created, will degrade over time as more and more educated people get replaced by optimized AI models. The ever “Rusting Old Economy” will expire with all of these jobs being more optimized by AI algo’s, like it or not this is going to happen.
From my perspective I really feel over the time of a century of highly educated individuals, the information has gone so vast, the types of learning paths for each individual subject can be so vast that the optimization of one individual in a subject is prone to faults and error. Which in turn can be optimized by a Machine Model.
However, not many consider the labor side of education, learning operation of machinery, handiness in repair of electric, mechanic, metallic, wood based products, hell even assembly of an Ikea product can and will become a new flourishing environment for the future for those that can interact with reality if the Metaverse doesn’t take us in first.
The Labor market is ripe for individuals willing to self-develop in todays day, the YouTube/online/cat video watching audience, to find yourself a dependable source of education (yes even YouTube), absorb some new skills, buy some tools and practice to perfection at home and expand on those physical skills that cannot be replaced (yet) due to limited technology in real life precision of mechanics.
This is the future of the Handyman, one that can be given a real life problem and present a practical solution, a skill that is much lacking in todays general population of “if broken buy new replacement” generation vs the old “break it and fix it” mindset.
Do you have a broken outlet? Do you know how to turn off the right fuse for the section of the house/apartment and then apply tools to replace it yourself? Can you at least look at some video instructions and troubleshoot your own in parallel? Or will you just call a Handyman? Questions that the new generation will need to ponder and answer for their future experience and success in a Rusting Service Economy.
So while the episode had a major focus of the new gen changes in culture with Cartman changing into a minority black woman and having the odd fantasy of the Pandering stone, the underlying economic observation is very striking to current trends.
Consider myself, finding a self sustaining job as an educator in all subjects registering as a freelancer on online gig jobs, the new Gig economy has its place in our current economic chaos. If you have a skill to provide, there is a way to find an audience to distribute to, remember this! My talent is providing simple to understand snippings of information that helps students understand different perspectives using TakeLessons as my host and some other High School Online support systems: https://www.excelhighschool.com/
and a private tutor in programming, advanced mathematics, even data analytics:
https://tl.page/christoph?bookwithme=yes#reviews
(Shameless plug in recent advances in my personal career path as educator, if your interested in expanding your knowledge consider a mentor such as myself or thousands of other tutors available at your online finger tips!)
The point I’m making is, our culture is having a deep thought about itsself, how it fits in improving personal lives and the outcomes of success to help those in our direct cultural community. The first step is self-improvement and this is the time and year to begin (if you haven’t already) expanding a skillset you wish to fine tune and find a way to make a career! Hobbies are the best careers because you get paid to do what you love!
I like to watch popular shows to see the focus of the general populace, and between all the reality drama TV and a dark comedy with a hint of self-manifesting predictions, South Park definitely thought deep about this one if you scratch below the surface of the latest episode of Joining the Panderverse.
Stay strong, self-develop and grow friends!
You must be logged in to post a comment.