Location doesn’t matter in the future.
You can work from anywhere. Work will be competitive and informal/hands on education will be valuable. Artists will be in good shape and Dr’s will see more robots replacing them. It will be the networking economy and we will need people who can connect with robots.
Empathy, communication skills, management and leadership skills and entrepreneurial skills are going to save you.
We will need lots of cross pollination with business and schools. Find out what your expertise is and find a way to bring it to the community. Those who hand make items, or manufacture items by hand, will be good. Artists should be fine. Innovation wins.
When is all of this going to happen?
Let’s look at the numbers predicated on research:
- by 2025 one in three jobs will be robot replaced, displacing 140,000,000 workers.
- By 2020 millennials will be 50% of the workforce, and by 2025 it will be 75%.
What does this mean for rural?
Figure out how to connect digital to physical and provide the space for it.Artificial Intelligence, Autonomous machines, augmented reality, data management – all of these things are here already. How can you make more room for them in your small towns? How can you provide a wonderful empty building for living and working in your town?
Learn how to use augmented and virtual reality. Workers are now training in real time with virtual reality. A car mechanic can watch an engine being repaired and it appears in front of him virtually. He can work on his own engine at the same time. Learn how to fly a drone, get a license and think of all the opportunities coming: rural deliveries, transport blood in rural Africa, building virtual and augmented reality for clients, to name a few.
Businesses working with students, kindergarten through college, will be vital to provide workforce, ideas and skills. They are the future, and they are here now.
Think differently about farming. Vertical farming will show up in lots of places. People want to be more responsible for they eat. Organic farmer will go to a new level. How you can use that in your small town? What kind of robotics will be need to be built to plant and harvest the crops with no humans? There will be 4 billion more people on the planet by 2025, and we will need to feed them.
Idea Friendly Towns will be the most prepared for the future.
The ability to live in the present and prepare for the future will matter. The crowd will create new ideas, and be more innovative. The future will be built by people working together, and we will get there by taking small steps.