Just last week: traffic jam on the ring road, parked the car at the side, took the folding bike out of the boot, rode to the station and still arrived earlier. Train, bike, legs, car \u2014 the combination got me everywhere. And usually first.<\/p>\n
I was never afraid of being overtaken. Not because I was the fastest, but because I knew how to keep myself at the front. I kept making myself present.<\/p>\n
But is that still true today?<\/p>\n
New technologies have so far created more jobs than they destroyed in macroeconomic terms. But that did not happen without shocks, not without bankruptcies, not without families who saw their security evaporate. The big picture offers little comfort if you are the one whose profession disappears.<\/p>\n
First the hands lost ground. People who got their hands dirty were replaced by sturdy machines. Then came the routines. And now people who were used to working with their heads notice that a large part of their thinking capacity is also shifting to AI.<\/p>\n
Lawyers. Journalists. IT people. People we did not expect it of.<\/p>\n
Moreover: today we are not at all sure that this combination of robotisation, automation and AI will once again produce new jobs in which people can be meaningfully engaged. The certainty of the past is gone.<\/p>\n
And me? Do I feel in the meantime that I too can be overtaken? Take marketing for Outward Bound. Or specifically putting an event like Het Nieuwe Normaal on the market. Will I keep succeeding in being heard?<\/p>\n
As a young man I played double bass. Big, visible, present. An instrument you saw standing there before you heard it. Maybe that suited me. I think I always found ways not to disappear into the background.<\/p>\n
But today anyone can arrange an amplifier or a sound box as big as my bass. Agencies, systems, companies, people like me: we are all trying to get through the same noise. \u201cWhen so much is being broadcast, we read and listen less and less. Even when we know the sender.\u201d<\/p>\n
As a result the question shifts. The machine can always produce more than I can. Playing louder is therefore no longer an answer. And so the question becomes: which piece do I want to play? For whom? In which ensemble?<\/p>\n
At Outward Bound we sometimes give an assignment that goes like this: \u201cYou get preparation time, then you go outside blindfolded to lay out two overlapping squares on the ground with a rope.\u201d<\/p>\n
If the group has more than eight people, some count the corners, do the sums and conclude: I am not needed here. I am only in the way. The assignment gets solved without their active contribution anyway.<\/p>\n
Simply standing still seems like a solution for a moment.<\/p>\n
But when we ask follow-up questions afterwards, it rarely sounds satisfying. People found it strange to be there and at the same time have no real place. Sometimes even painful. Even more painful when others do not notice that someone was standing there for nothing.<\/p>\n
We can let the machine run. But in the meantime we also have to ask what happens to our talent and our skill if we simply stay standing.<\/p>\n
Because that is a choice I do not want to make.<\/p>\n
An hour, perhaps. A career, no.<\/p>\n
Physical work \u2192 machines<\/em><\/p>\n Repetition \u2192 robots<\/em><\/p>\n Procedures \u2192 automation<\/em><\/p>\n