Watching BBC’s Robert Peston’s brilliant documentary “How the West Went Bust”, it strikes me as the first documentary which actually densely connects the financial crisis of 2008, the current European debt crisis and the meteoric rise of emerging markets while portraying the utter lack of production as the symptom of a cultural problem: the West’s consumerism and living in on credit vs the East’s focus on production and saving up money. The gist of it is that in the nineties and noughties, North America and Europe have been living on a wealth level that has never been realistic and was always supported by debt and in the end is unsustainable. In the coming years, Peston argues Europe may see its wealth level drop by as much as 30%.
观看BBC的罗伯特·佩斯顿的精彩纪录片“西方是如何破产的”，这是第一部将2008年的金融危机，当前的欧洲债务危机和新兴市场的迅速崛起紧密联系在一起的纪录片，同时将生产的完全缺乏描绘为文化问题的症状：西方的消费主义和生活在信贷与东方的重点是生产和储蓄了钱。它的要点是，在90年代和20世纪90年代，北美和欧洲一直生活在一个从来都不现实的财富水平上，总是由债务支撑，最终是不可持续的。佩斯顿认为，在未来几年，欧洲的财富水平可能会下降30%。

I am actually even more pessimistic than Peston’s documentary since it doesn’t expose one great issue: the automation of labor by computers and robots in the coming decade.
我实际上比佩斯顿的纪录片更悲观，因为它没有揭示一个大问题：未来十年计算机和机器人的劳动自动化。

Many jobs are simply ripe to be automated when artificial intelligence, machine learning and other technology’s abilities increases in the coming years.
当人工智能、机器学习和其他技术的能力在未来几年增加时，许多工作已经成熟可以自动化了。

Future software will be able to replace bus, train and subway drivers. The majority of the transportation industry will be left jobless. Self-moving cleaners will be able to clean train stations and most developed nations and metropolitan areas have already switched to digital charge cards, removing the need for transport workers to check for tickets. Future software will introduce self-driving cars (which Google is actually ready to launch already as it waits for the law to catch up), which will make taxi drivers jobless.
未来的软件将能够取代公共汽车、火车和地铁司机。运输业的大多数人将失业。自动移动清洁工将能够清洁火车站，大多数发达国家和大都市地区已经转向数字收费卡，不再需要运输工人检查车票。未来的软件将引入自动驾驶汽车（谷歌实际上已经准备好推出，因为它正在等待法律的出台），这将使出租车司机失业。

Future software has already replaced a large part of retail stores. With many of us buying anything except for clothes and food online. Clothing faces the challenge of fitting them online. However, future software will also make it able to scan your body’s entire dimensions and fit clothes virtually. And online stores are already increasing their focus on grocery deliveries with Amazon introducing same-day delivery.
未来的软件已经取代了很大一部分零售商店。我们中的许多人在网上买东西，除了衣服和食物。服装面临着在线试穿的挑战。然而，未来的软件也将使它能够扫描你的身体的整个尺寸和适合的衣服虚拟。随着亚马逊推出当日送达服务，在线商店已经越来越关注杂货店的配送。

Future software will be able to replace pharmacists, as computers will be able to receive a prescription digitally, analyze patient data to see if it does not create a negative effect with other medication and then ship it to people’s homes.
未来的软件将能够取代药剂师，因为计算机将能够以数字方式接收处方，分析患者数据，看看它是否不会对其他药物产生负面影响，然后将其运送到人们的家中。

And I am not only talking about low-skilled labor, I am even talking about the higher skilled jobs that require college and university degrees
我说的不仅是低技能劳动力，我甚至还指需要大专和大学学位的高技能工作

Future software will be able to replace HR recruitment, finding the right candidate for a job by using semantic analysis of resumes and connecting online data about the person to see if it can be a match. There will still be a human necessary to put the data in and get the data out but that person will not be an business or psychology graduate, it will be someone highly skilled in programming and able to modify or write applications to fit his/her need.
未来的软件将能够取代人力资源招聘，通过使用简历的语义分析和连接有关人员的在线数据来寻找合适的候选人，看看是否可以匹配。仍然需要一个人来输入数据和输出数据，但这个人不会是商业或心理学毕业生，而是一个精通编程的人，能够修改或编写应用程序来满足他/她的需求。

I could go on forever, but you get the point.
我可以一直说下去，但你明白我的意思。

So what’s left? 还剩下什么

Not much I think.
我觉得没什么。

The classic argument is that we are simply in a technological revolution which shakes things up. Like the industrial revolution did. What happens is that many jobs get lost but many new jobs get added. And yes, many jobs will in fact be added., but these jobs will be in developing software and maintaining hardware.
经典的论点是，我们只是处于一场技术革命中，这场革命使事情发生了变化。就像工业革命一样。事实上，许多工作岗位流失，但许多新的工作岗位增加。是的，事实上，许多工作岗位将被增加。但这些工作将是开发软件和维护硬件。

Now, the industrial revolution created factory jobs to do the tasks that the mechanical machines could not do such as packaging and sorting goods.
现在，工业革命创造了工厂工作来完成机械机器无法完成的任务，例如包装和分类货物。

The technological revolution’s added jobs will essentially consist of jobs that automate tasks. Every tasks of which it is cheaper to develop software/hardware for to be automated will be automated. As Marc Andreessen said “software is eating the world”.
技术革命增加的工作岗位将主要包括自动化任务的工作。每一个任务，它是更便宜的开发软件/硬件是自动化将被自动化。正如Marc Andreessen所说：“软件正在吞噬世界。

Now this development by far does not just apply to Europe, but to most of the world. But in the case of Europe I am much more pessimistic about its future since we seem to be unable to educate our people with the jobs that are needed. We are graduating masses of people with degrees like business administration (like myself), social sciences, liberal arts when we could be teaching our children in elementary school basic programming as a part of the curriculum to create a strong foundation to develop further until they graduate from university as well as integrate robotics, AI, engineering and physics into the curriculum from an early age. The quality of the degrees of the huge amount of Chinese engineering students is questionable, but at least there is more focus on that area there. What does it say that most high educated starter jobs are now turned into ‘traineeships’ to re-educate a (for example, social sciences) candidate for years before they can actually start working. Shouldn’t we save that time and teach them what they need to know earlier?
到目前为止，这一发展不仅适用于欧洲，也适用于世界大部分地区。但就欧洲而言，我对它的未来更为悲观，因为我们似乎无法用所需的工作来教育我们的人民。我们正在毕业的人都拥有工商管理（像我自己），社会科学，文科等学位，当我们可以教我们的孩子在小学基本编程作为课程的一部分，创造一个坚实的基础，进一步发展，直到他们从大学毕业，以及整合机器人技术，人工智能，工程和物理从很小的时候就进入课程。数量庞大的中国工程专业学生的学位质量值得怀疑，但至少在这方面有更多的关注。它说什么，大多数受过高等教育的起步工作现在变成了“实习”，再教育（例如，社会科学）候选人多年前，他们可以真正开始工作。 难道我们不应该保存这些时间，早点教他们需要知道的东西吗？

The classic argument against that is that university should be about learning, for the sheer goal of learning. It shouldn’t be a job factory. And I agree but it’s not sustainable anymore financially to do that. It’s a luxury from a different time. It was amazing to have it when we were doing fine, but we’re not doing fine anymore.
反对这一观点的经典论点是，大学应该是关于学习的，纯粹是为了学习的目标。它不应该是一个工作工厂。我同意，但这样做在经济上是不可持续的。这是一种来自不同时代的奢侈品。当我们做得很好的时候，拥有它是很棒的，但我们现在做得不好了。

So there’s two choices. Keep education like it is, and accept a significant decrease in wealth and suffer huge unemployment. Or transform education to focus on technology and teach every kid to code and make stuff, in the hope that you’ll then be able compete and have your labor force write the code or build the robots that will replace the the world’s jobs. And, choose fast.
所以有两个选择。保持教育现状，接受财富的大幅减少，遭受巨大的失业。或者改变教育，把重点放在技术上，教每个孩子编码和制作东西，希望你能够竞争，让你的劳动力编写代码或制造机器人，取代世界上的工作。选择快速。

P.S. I’m on Twitter too if you’d like to follow more of my stories. And I wrote a book called MAKE about building startups without funding. See a list of my stories or contact me. To get an alert when I write a new blog post, you can subscribe below:
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