Getting ready for 2050

Transcript: Getting ready for 2050

If someone wants to guarantee being employed in 2050, what qualifications should they acquire?

Eamonn Fitzgerald: It’s very hard to say, looking at 2050 from today. But I would say that jobs involving empathy and care and human contact will be very important. So, critical thinking skills and qualifications that involve medicine and health caremedizinische Versorgunghealth care could guarantee you a job. It is to predict sth.etw. prognostizierenpredicted that by 2050 humans could live to 120 or more. Then, 100 would be the new 60. So, anybody working with people could have a guarantee perhaps of a job.

If, for example, in 2050, you’re living in Hanover, and you want to have your hair cut or coloured, you could perhaps get into your personal rocketRaketerocket and fly to Hong Kong. But my feeling is that you will want to stay in your neighbourhood and talk to a human as you get your hair cut. And if you need to have your teeth cleaned, and you live in Munich or Milan or Madrid, you could fly, using your personal rocket, to Miami. But I think as well, in that time, you will want to be with somebody you’ve seen before and who might understand you.

However, I’m a big fan of science fiction, and many of our listeners will have seen the TV series Star Trek or the Star Trek films, and there’s a famous saying, “Beam me up, Scotty!” So whenever Jim, Captain James Kirk, is on some hostilefeindlich; unwirtlichhostile planet and he’s in big trouble, the chief engineerChefingenieur(in), leitende(r) Ingenieur(in)chief engineer on the USS (US)United States Ship (hier allerdings: United Space Ship)USS Enterprise can use this beamer, which is really a teleportation technology, and Captain Kirk can be transformed from matterMateriematter into energy and then transferred, or beamed as it weresozusagenas it were, to the deckhier: Innenraumdeck of the Enterprise and then converted again from energy into matter. And there he is. So, perhaps in the future, in 2050, if you’re living in Hanover and you want to have your hair done, you could use your beamer and get the best stylist in Hanoi to come to your apartment. Or, you’re living in Munich and you want to have your teeth cleaned, you could use your beamer to get a really affordableerschwinglichaffordable dentist from Mumbai to come to your apartment. That could be done, too. It’s hard to say what jobs and what technologies will be available to us in 2050, but one thing is sure: I will be writing about them in Business Spotlight in 2050.