Box 9.3 talks about what knowledge counts as important. My first thoughts are of a buddy's recent graduation from Pharmacy school.
While I'm proud of the hard work he has put in over the years, I had a frank conversation with him about the validity of the profession. His starting pay, right out of school, is 120K. As he studied for his boards, I looked at his training program which listed a multitude of medications that I can't even pronounce, their conflicts with other medication, uses, special care requirements, etc.
My question was why most of his job couldn't be replaced by a computer system. After a bit of excuses, he admitted that most of it could. He said a large part of his job was to ensure that medicines weren't being mixed in a bad way and that the doctors weren't messing up on prescriptions. We came to the consensus that a computer system would probably be more efficient and more accurate. Any gray areas would be flagged for a pharmacist's attention. Since this would be a small percentage of prescriptions, a pharmacy could reduce the # of pharmacists from half a dozen to one or two.
The knowledge that he has accrued over the years of school are what he's being paid for; however, when that type of encyclopedia style knowledge may be substituted by a computer program... one has to wonder how long many professions will last.
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3 comments:
I think you make a very good argument for reducing the number of actual pharmacists; or at least reduce their starting pay. I faced a similar situation with people opining that I might be outdated as a sketch artist and be replaced with a software program. That was 16 years ago. I create sketches of unknown subjects for use by police agencies. The process requires interviewing someone to develop the sketch of the face. Over the last 15 years there have been software programs that have been successful in creating images of subjects for use by these agencies.
Unfortunately for these agencies, the users of these programs may not be as skilled an interviewer nor as skilled a technician to create an image that is satisfactory to the witness/victim. There in lies the problem. The product that is created (the sketch) for the investigative bureau needs to be valid, hold up to scrutiny, and be free of suggestion or manipulation. These programs rely on the database of images to be viewed by the witness/victim in order to create the sketch. This methodology offers the dangers of suggestion to the witness/victims’ memory. The methodology that I have used for over 15 years uses no images for selection – just the witness/victims’ memory. It appears that the same agencies that were once using this new software program are realizing that the value of the experienced and trained sketch artist (interviewer) is no match for technology.
We are definitely living in an age of technology where most professions may no longer require people to perform the job functions. We have ATMs for banks, automated messages for almost any number you dial, self checkout at stores, Web MD to self-diagnose yourself, automated postage postage machines, and Wikipedia to teach you almost everything you need to know. Sometimes I wonder if there are any jobs left that no machine could ever replace or do a better job of. I think what it really comes down to is human compassion, interaction, and creativity that convinces us to choose to deal with another person rather than a machine.
...Wikipedia to teach you almost everything you need to know.
Interestingly enough, I would say that Wikipedia is a counterexample to technology replacing humans. Wikipedia is only powerful because of humans constantly reading it, revising it, correcting it. Unlike a traditional encyclopedia, which is written once and left static, Wikipedia is a constant flow of human effort, and is only as accurate as far as real live people are willing to put in effort to making it.
However, what Wikipedia and other crowd-sourced applications might point to is a decommodification of information. The people who write entries in Wikipedia are, for the most part, doing so only because of their interest in the topic and their desire to see correct information disseminated - or correct as they see it. Many of the volunteer writers are not motivated not by pay, but by what could be classified as social motivations - wanting to appear knowledgeable, wanting to gain respect from others, wanting others to operate with knowledge from their perspective ("neutral point of view" notwithstanding).
Now, can you argue that Wikipedia might be replacing librarians? Possibly. But just as there were always people who preferred to go to the card catalog and look on their own and people who preferred to consult the librarian, there will always be people who prefer automated methods and people who would prefer to have someone else working with them.
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