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Modern job landscape changing fast, but at what cost?

Watching the garbage truck's mechanized arms grab and raise my fully loaded plastic garbage can off the street, hungrily ingesting its contents, I thought about a winter long ago when I was a "swamper" on the back of one of those trucks -- a job that like so many jobs in today's automated world -- is now obsolete.

With subzero temperatures and biting wind, it wasn't the most pleasant job I ever had, but it paid well, and I made a lot of friends along the route -- people who would often proffer tips and gifts. All considered, however, it was a job I'm glad I only held for a few months.

For quite a few summers I counted fish for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game on the Alaska Peninsula and the south end of Kodiak Island. We manually counted the fish with little clickers called "tally whackers." That job has also gone the way of automation -- with sonar counters installed on most of the state's big fish weirs.

I started thinking about other jobs that during my lifetime have fallen victim to the advance of technology. These include the manufacture of camera film, typewriters, incandescent light bulbs and tubes for radio and television sets, 8-track and cassette tapes, and vinyl records (although there is resurgence in interest in records among some music lovers). Jobs such as elevator or switchboard operator, service station attendant, and shoe repairman are things of the past -- although I do believe there is a shoe repairman on Fireweed Lane in Anchorage.

A long time ago my father told me that if I ever found myself working on an assembly line and a robot suddenly appeared that performed the same task, I'd better start learning very fast how to operate and maintain that robot.

A recent report from the Oxford Martin School's Programme on the Impacts of Future Technology states that the next 20 years will see 45 percent of America's workforce replaced by computerized automation.

The changing job market is glaringly obvious when you observe how many college graduates can't find work. And the pace of change is quickening. I read recently that about 65 percent of today's grade school students can expect to someday be working in jobs that don't exist now.

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Some have called this changing career landscape the "new normal." To me it's rather frightening, but then young people are more resilient than people my age. I'm sure they will learn how to navigate through the changing career landscape and hitch their wagons to technology, wherever it takes them. Energy and food production, water distribution, communications, medicine, science, and the fledgling industries of robots and drones will all need educated and highly trained workers.

It seems like we'll always need people who can build and fix things, like engineers, architects, mechanics, plumbers, carpenters, electricians and equipment operators.

I considered the career of writing safe and sacrosanct until I saw a sports news story that was crafted by a computer. Granted, a person fed the statistics and other pertinent information into the computer, using a standard format. But it was an eyebrow raiser to see what the computer actually composed.

When it comes to machines and computers, I admit to being old school. If I were ever sent to a newly colonized planet for the purpose of modernizing a primitive society, 50 years later they'd still be carrying water in buckets and communicating with tin cans connected by string. I'm sure the Peace Corps would not want to send me anywhere, terrestrial or extraterrestrial.

I'm sure today's garbage truck driver enjoys the comfort of his warm cab as the mechanical arm methodically and swiftly scoops up the sleek, green receptacles. But it seems that on his weekly rounds, he might miss trading jokes and stories with a steadfast partner, the "swamper," who rode on the back of the truck in all types of weather.

The modern, mechanized trash loader is probably more efficient and doesn't need health insurance or lunch breaks. But then, unlike the "swamper," it doesn't smile or wave back to you.

Frank E. Baker is a freelance writer who lives in Eagle River contact him at frankedwardbaker@gmail.com.

The views expressed here are the writer's own and are not necessarily endorsed by Alaska Dispatch News, which welcomes a broad range of viewpoints. To submit a piece for consideration, email commentary(at)alaskadispatch.com.

Frank Baker

Frank E. Baker is a freelance writer who lives in Eagle River.

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