Article published by José Carlos Francisco in the March issue of La Gaveta Económica.
Today's writers in general make intensive use of new technologies in their activity, they read electronic books, use applications to summarize, underline and annotate, write with the latest generation word processors and make intensive use of the Internet to search for all types of sources. I don't. I still read ninety percent on paper, write with ultra-thin pilots, and make handwritten notes in wonderful Swedish notebooks. I rarely use the internet, but now I have and entered “status quo” into the Google search engine. The first entry is a British rock band founded in London in 1962. Obviously, I am referring to the state of things at a certain moment, and more specifically, how things are going to change in the Canary Islands and the interests to keep them as they are now for the longest time.
Probably the most obvious driver of change is technological change or technological disruption. It seems obvious to us that the Internet has impacted our lives and our jobs. For example, the media have been transformed, journalists have been readapted with suffering, and the influence and power of the print media has waned. Traditional commerce is being readapted, forced by the unstoppable rise of electronic commerce, and this will have consequences on the price of commercial premises and jobs in the sector. There will be fewer sellers but more delivery people. The stores will have problems, but the transport and logistics sector will remain strong, but threatened by the American and Chinese giants.
On the other hand, there are professions and sectors that are just as threatened as the previous ones, but they will try to defend themselves with regulation and political influence. For example, teachers and taxi drivers. The former have great possibilities at their disposal to improve quality and efficiency, which in turn put their own jobs at risk. The possibility of watching master classes on the Internet from the best specialists in the world, receiving tutorials, taking online studies or sharing a teacher's classes with students from other parts of the world, all connected at the same time and interacting as they do in Universities such as the European one, are also a risk for teachers. Furthermore, social change leaves teachings that were once widely given obsolete, now ostracized, but which the university system refuses to recognize, at least until the current professors and holders retire.
Taxi drivers are suffering from competition on several fronts, basically from the disruptive companies Uber and Cabify. It is a global phenomenon as I saw in Hong Kong and Montevideo in which I coincided with taxi strikes due to the entry of Uber. Fortunately, for our taxi drivers, the scale (mass of customers) of our cities will make the entry of these competitors very complicated and in the short term, the tram or bus will continue to be threats. But in the medium term, we must not ignore alternative mobility formulas such as those that exist in Madrid and other cities, and in the long term, the autonomous car is no entelechy. Taxi drivers will resist and ultimately try to redeem their licenses in exchange for compensation.
The Santa Cruz de Tenerife City Council has been doing precisely this for several years.
Of course, these examples are not new. Other groups in the past have suffered the consequences of new technologies, such as the port sector, so important on the islands. I remember the stevedoring movement in the sixties and seventies in Alameda, Los Paragüitas, La Bodega del Loro, La Pila, La Marina and the Marquesina del Puerto. But along came the widespread use of the container and large cranes that reduced human physical needs, creating a surplus of labor, which only union power has been able to cushion. Even in the Ports, a new wave of technology associated with robotics and artificial intelligence will once again impact jobs. You just have to pay a visit to Singapore and Hong Kong.
What I am trying to point out with the above examples is that the “state of affairs” is going to change. That technology is going to be the main driver of change and that pressure groups, where there are any, will try to delay the change or its intensity, at least until the current generation retires. In any case, let us be alert because many experts believe that 75 percent of the professions of the future do not exist or are being created.
