Futurist: The worker of the day before two days after today

A long-time reader pinged me the other day and said when you are releasing lesson three of the aware module of the AURA training model. I released it on Saturday, October 19. One of the primary reasons for releasing AURA Aware to people is what I am thinking about. I've been thinking about the workforce or workers of tomorrow. I have looked at several issues, problems, and concerns in my IT career as technology slowly became integral to human life. More people today have cell phones than at any other time in the history of the world. Of course, that isn't fair because, in reality, cell phones have only been around for 35 years or so. Cell phones existed in a lab for the first few years and later became released products in the wild. But that's the starting point for today's discussion, which is the worker of tomorrow.

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Before anybody asks me, no, this is not the outline of a new Disney ride. The Disney attraction, The World of Tomorrow, has always been one of my favorites. But I believe it is only at Epcot. I always loved going there. We will talk about the augmented human workforce created as machine intelligence begins to permeate society, which is already embracing technology slowly.

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I have traveled for many years internationally. I cannot tell you how many countries I landed in, and without the age of a translation device that I carried in my bag, I would not have been able to get from .8 point B. I didn't speak the language and frankly didn't have enough time before the trip to learn the language. And that is the initial implementation of machine intelligence to benefit workers—live translation. Several tool kits are already available that allow you to preload a lot of language into your cellular device and use that language for local use. In other words, you can take your cell phone with your translation device and translate languages on the fly. They work pretty well, And in many cases, they come with you and the person you are speaking with. In other words, you can hand the person one of the earbuds, and it will translate from your language, whatever that is, to whatever language is being spoken. In other words, if I'm speaking English, which I normally do, although we could argue that I don't necessarily speak English particularly well, And you speak Italian, the earbud for the person that speaks Italian will speak in their ear in Italian translating what I've said in English. Of course, it is also true that vice versa. It will take Italian speakers, Italian, and English. The power of translation improves communication.

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The next area is a voice-to-text. I've talked about several tools, but I do voice-to-text pretty effectively. They allow you to take meeting notes during in-person meetings or cellular or other phone calls. Using your cellular device and a connection to an AI system to transcribe the spoken information into written information, I know, as I have used a number, if not all, at this point of the web. Meeting Solutions does that as well for meetings that are held online. The tool kit that Wall Augment workers in the future will actually be supported on that cell phone they're carrying in their pocket.

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Those are too quick and ultimately very simple use cases. Live translation of another language to what you speak and conversion of notes from a meeting or event for later reuse. The advantage of digital notes versus analog notes is that you want them to be digitized, and you can easily search them and reuse them in other things. Those two use cases are significant evolutions for the workers of tomorrow, and we've already seen the power of GPS. The simple addition of GPS capability to cell phones meant that suddenly, you could get from anywhere to anywhere easily.

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But the last evolution I'm gonna talk about, and you'll notice that both of the use cases I've discussed mention that it was a capability delivered on your cellular device, is the reality of the device you will be carrying. I traveled the world for many years carrying a six 10-pound laptop. I still feel the pain in my shoulder from All those years of carrying that heavy laptop. Now, suddenly, I will be able to carry just myself. I believe that is what the workers of the future will carry. Simply put, a cell phone and potentially a couple of add-on devices, the phone's capacity delivers the add-ons, or the add-ons are delivered within the software on the cellular device.

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Many things, of course, will be added to the capability of a cell phone today. As we look at the expansion of 5G and the eventual release of the 6G standard, we will see more and more connected capacity on the devices we carry. As we look at more and more voice-to-text communication, we will reduce the reliance on a laptop. In fact, it is my prediction, and I've made it clear before, that the cell phone will replace the laptop as the predominant business device globally in the next five years. All of this, with a worker augmented by capabilities that they could certainly do themselves, but the machine intelligence can do it for them, both faster in the sense that it won't get tired and better in the sense that the worker won't be distracted. Taking notes during a meeting means that a potentially large portion of your attention is spent writing or typing the notes. With these tools, you will no longer do that. With these tools, you can suddenly go anywhere, anytime, with your single device and speak to anyone in any language! The augmented worker of the future will be more productive.