Your job/purpose hasn't been invented yet, I mean what woiuld someone like Bill Gates have done if computers hadn't been in their early mass market stages when he was a teenager? Is it possible that for some of us our "thing" is waiting to be invented?
So indeed some jobs are just obscure not extinct. But those skills are mostly vocational, only taught by doing with a masters supervision ... as such aprentiship is the only really practical way to learn and only those with access to a master can really expect to do some. Its the rareaty of those qualified to teach that is the greater obstical because by definition the world only needs a handfull of such people. I would be less worried about goverment funding and more woried about employment law. You can only take on an aprentis between 16-18 if you have a training orgonisation that offers a qualification to go with the aprentiship. You can't do a t level or city and guilds course in flint knapping hence no one of school age can do them as aprentiships. That's true for a lot of these obscure skills.
That said this is rather tangental. Because we were talking about jobs that don't exist yet not ones that are obscure or obsoleat.
One thing though that may be a purpose for me but sadly not a paid job is I'm hoping to join in the task of preserving the 507001 emu train
This is the story of so many who could see trajectories in philosophy and the human sciences and scientists who knew they were out of time - that what they knew possible, they also recognised a lack in technology for. The philosophers stone is an easy reminder. I'm not sure anyone could've dreamed we'd need a super collider to make it happen.
I kind of think the world has changed too much for my job to work like I was a street musician and guitar teacher .. people seem to value street music much less with having instant access to music and people get lessons online now so I went to work retail which I enjoy dont get me wrong but i do miss it sometimes playing some music for an hour having a blast and on bad days making 3 pounds or so for a whole day on good days I could do a 3 hour day and make 60 pounds
Plus also people only see you as a good singer if you have perfect tone they seem to ignore harmonics and being able to hold a tune
Peter, there are lots of things, like flint knapping which I only used as an example that are still needed, mostly iin the heritage sector for repairing old flint walled buildings. There are lots of things that are really skilled and those skills are in danger of dying out because nobody does them anymore. Things like thatching, coppicing, dry stone walling, but where does anyone go to learn these things? Especially if one lives in a city and has no nearby agricultural college where inspiration may be gained, how many schools or careers advisors would even think about suggesting such things. Even basketry an old craft is making a huge comeback due to people's preference for basket coffins as eco friendly and renewable, there's a real market for those skills, but where would one find out about them and would one be laughed at or discouraged by careers advisors Is there any funding for learning such skills?
OH NO! WHO HAS LEFT? It upsets me when this happens.
Well the issue here is the difrence bettween a job and a hobby. Flint knapping is mostly a hobby nowerdays. The people who actually get paid to do it are mostly getting paid to do it and then write about it (researchers) or do it while others watch (historical reinactors). A few people who do arts and crafts might do flint knapping as part of making larger peices. But flint knapping on it's own isn't really a job anymore. Technology can destroy jobs as well as create them (https://youtu.be/nyu4u3VZYaQ)
You do get obscure jobs though. Like sword smithing. There are people who hand make swords and armore even to this day. It's just very obscure and hard to get into. But I think people know the job exists.
I'm talking about the jobs that don't exist yet. Like before the first train being a train driver wasn't a job. Before the teliphone there were no teliphone sanitisers. If your dream job doesn't exist yet, it's not obscure it actually doesn't exist, but it will one day, the odds are the reasion is technology hasn't developed yet. If it's 1800AD and you want to be a train driver your options are 1. invent and build your own train or 2. wait for the train to be invented in 1804.
But there are cases where a machine was invented for 1 job and then others (usually soon after) realise it can be used for a difrent job. The first quad coptior drones were built as toys. Then some one realised you can atach a bomb to one and now in ukrain there are plenty of jobs operating quadcopter drones as remote bombaders. Some one realised the technology could be repurposed.
I agree that we don't all have one fixed purpose in life, we can have many and not work related, but it does seem that some people arrive on this planet with a vocation or at the right time. I guess too that it will in part be about your personal circumstances, are you encouraged by parents and teachers, how well educated you are, do you have the money to indulge your interests? I think to many of us are put in boxes of what others expect us to be sble to achieve according to parental wealth, post code, class, let alone what abilities we have, so much seems to be what we're allowed to have by others, both family and wider society.
I love this idea.
I think that my thing is in the past. I am jealous of the days of previous centuries when people could catalogue the stars with a simple telescope, or catalogue animal/plant species.
We all have certain aptitudes and had Gates not done what he did, he might have found success elsewhere. I think some of it is down to personal outlook and whether you see yourself as lucky. Some people are more optimistic than others. It might also come down to your environment and upbringing. Some are more fortunate and have better opportunities than others. I don't think we have one fixed life purpose either. And it also might be that your purpose, as you suggest, isn't to do with anything material which has or hasnt yet been invented, but rather ideas, language and people.
This is all hypothetical, of course.
Interesting answers Peter, I think it quite possible that people's thing could be obscure or out of date, I mean what if you were a brilliant flint knapper? How would you know you had such a feel for the stone? Who would want knapped flints in this day and age. I'm afraid I didn't understand what you were talking about in your first paragraph.
Desmond, I used Bill Gates as an example of someone who's time had come, how he did it I don't know, but he did.
Mellowjian, Yes it is more likely that most of us will end up in dead end jobs that don't fulfil us on any level, but this was more of an imaginative question and exercise than a real world problem solving one.
That's an interesting thought that I can't say I've ever thought of before. I'm not sure what my purpose is, although I understand I'm drawn to certain interests like anyone else would be, but I currently feel like I'm stagnating in life.
It'll be neat if your life's purpose has not been created yet, but there's so many things that have already been created, and I can't say I know or understand what's there and what already exists, so it's hard to fathom what does not exist yet.
But I believe that if I get more knowledge in my brain from different areas of life and from various disciplines, that it'll somehow come together at some point in time in the future, to provide solutions that were unseen before.
It's far more possible that we'll end up working in Retail, totally exploited, than it is we'll utilise our alleged genius in the marketplace of ideas.
And as for purpose, forget it. A job and a purpose are rarely the same thing.
It's certainly posible but in that case your ideal job is probably 'scientist' or 'enginear' since you will probably have to invent / make what ever your job is eventually based around. There are a few times where someone else comes along and re purposes a new technology. Vtubers for example used motion capture technology that was really developed for movies / video games. But by and large you need to be in tech or able to splash out on cutting edge tech.
Projekt melody nearly bankrupted her self buying expencive tech at the start of her career. Code Miko wrote her own vTubing softwear.
The short answer is new jobs neiches really only happen when technology advances or there is some major social legal shift. If your dream job doesn't exist yet then it's probably because:
It's also quite posible your dream job does exist it's just so obscure you didn't know it existed.
