For futurist, ‘intellectual capital’ is key

Collecting garbage or making rock tunes for a living?

The good news is, you might have a place in the future, as envisioned by celebrity futurist and theoretical physicist Michio Kaku, who told a packed audience in Manila that the jobs of the future would move away from repetitive skills like several manufacturing functions and into more “common sense and intuitive” tasks.

Kaku, a guest speaker at a business forum organized by the First Pacific Leadership Academy Thursday, shared his views on the jobs of tomorrow and how a country like the Philippines can “leap forward” if it embraces digital technology, infrastructure and new attitudes toward entrepreneurship.

Saying several tasks will eventually be replaced by man-made robots, Kaku noted that people should focus on skills that require intuition, creativity and leadership.

“We are seeing a gradual shift from commodity capital to a mix of commodity and intellectual capital. And that is going to be the currency of the future,” said the regular host at the Science Channel/Discovery Channel, where he tackles topics like Einstein’s dream of a “theory of everything.”

“The losers [of the future] will be blue-collar jobs that are totally repetitive: automobile workers that do the same motion over and over again, textile workers that do the same thing over and over again. However, garbage men will have jobs, every garbage is different. Construction workers will have jobs, every construction site is different. The police will have jobs, every crime is different,” Kaku said.

Stock brokers, scientists, analysts, rock stars and entrepreneurs are likely to have a place in the future as well, noted the physicist.

“You can buy stocks on the Internet, so why do you need stock brokers? Because they sell exactly what robots cannot provide—common sense and intuition,” Kaku explained.

Developing nations, he said, also have a chance to catch up, aided by technology and the Internet, as well as adjusting the way people think. Education is also key for a country to adjust to rapid changes, he noted.

“A nation like the Philippines can literally leap into the future. For example, it used to take 100 years to industrialize a country. Today, you can do it in one generation because of technology transfer,” Kaku said.

Entrepreneurship should likewise be nurtured, he said.

“We have to have the entrepreneurs and visionaries,” he said. “Government has to foster entrepreneurship and a culture that allows for making mistakes.”