The Fourth Pivot

Hope everyone had a great July holiday of your choice – one positive about the British is that they are responsible for the most commonly celebrated secular holiday in the world – Independence Day. You know, from them. On average it occurs every 5,5 days. So “Hip, Hip, HOORAY!” for the UK! Truly capital fellows.

I spent my holiday in sun-kissed California, colonizing the womb of a lovely 24 y.o.¹ girl…very cooperative, very willing. She definitely understood the assignment. I am starting to re-think this whole deportation thing….but it got me thinking about the future a bit.

California is the most beautiful state in the Union. Had the Pilgrims (or the Jamestown Colonists, whatever) landed there, we never would have discovered the rest of the country. Sadly it is in the process of being wrecked by the commie dildoes that run it now. Loads of homeless – it looks like 1992 all over again.

“Enjoy today, tomorrow gon’ be worse.”

-Graffiti on the Edison Illuminating Company, Boston, in the late 80s.

For many of us, that is quite literally true. Maybe not in a way we notice daily, but in 5 or 10 years, I think the world will be unrecognizable in many ways. I've been thinking about his situation for a while and what younger guys will be doing in the future for work when they aren't fighting sentient robots. Read on.

So we are in a 4th pivot. What does that mean? It means technology.

The First Pivot – When we change from being agrarian (“Farmville! The Home Game!”) society to a mechanical one – railroads, telegraphs, cars, electrification. “Horseless carriages! Electricity from the wall! What will they think of next? Clearly, the moon will be next!”²

The Second Pivot – When we changed from mechanical to industrial – Mass Production, the Jet Age.

Wow. Can you believe we crushed the Nazis AND the Empire of Japan? Good ol’ American production! These good times we are enjoying will go on forever!

And did you see that three day party that the Shah of Iran threw at the Tomb of Cyrus the Great at Persepolis, celebrating 2500 years of the Persian Empire? Wow. The Persian people really love him – I bet the Persian Empire goes on for another 2500 years!

The Third Pivot – When we changed from Industrial to Computers & IT – IBM, Apple, home computing, the iPhone.

I am the last generation that played outside. Gen Y’s leading edge, two, but Gen X were adults when the iPhone came out. The iPhone is really the gateway between the 3rd and 4th Pivot. But yeah, I remember when we talked on a phone that was attached to the wall by a cord. And when you called a number, you had no idea who was going to pick up. If you had a hot sister, you would get hung up on a lot because the dudes who were calling for her were terrified to talk to you or your dad. Being “online” meant that you would be physically waiting in line somewhere, usually for tickets or a sporting event. Ever slept out for concert tickets? I have. U2’s Unforgettable Fire Tour. We went in a covered wagon. It was a great show.

Oh, and believe it or not Bill Gates was originally stymied by the notion that people would want home computers. It did not..wait for it…compute for him. And now we do all of that on our phones (except me – I still have a home desktop. And two tablets, a Chromebook and two phones, although one is an iPhone 6S+. Basically it’s a museum piece now, but to us in the 80s it would have seemed like something off of Star Trek.)

The Fourth Pivot – When we changed from Computers & IT to AI and Robotics – starting with the Chat GPT and Boston Scientific.

This is where we are now, and what we will discuss.

“That’s great, Uncle Vaz, but isn’t all this new technology super cool? I mean, you used to have to go find some skeevy guy to get weed, now you can have it delivered to you – you can even have the guy pick up some Cheetos and Mountain Dew for you on his way over!”

Stop right there. Is modern tech convenient? Sure, it is. Or was. In the early days of Tinder, you could get some 19 y.o. doe-eyed college slut to Amazon Prime herself over to your flat, rail her out, then send her on her way while she gurgled about it being ‘empowering’ while wondering why she never got your last name.

Now we have strange shit going on. AI? Sure, if you are over 40, you use it like google. Meanwhile, Facebook had to shut down their chatbots because back in 2017, Facebooks AI chatbots started [talking to each other in their own language](https:// archive.is/oNQR6).

Um, guys? How about we stop building SkyNet? Yes, thanks…that would be great. SciFi tried to warn us about this: “The Terminator”, “Logan’s Run”, and “I, Robot” They weren’t supposed to be “How To” guides!

Here's The Important Bit: In the Next 5-10 Years, The World Will Become Less and Less Recognizable Historically, the Pivots represented chaos while old industries died out and new ones arose. There was volatility in the employment markets as the entrepreneurs figured out how to utilize people and people adapted. But what about the 4th Pivot? So if you have been watching the news, there have been significant layoffs. We saw that in the financial industry with the rise of HFT, and now we are seeing it in Silicon Valley. Tech, rather than driving hiring in the Bay Area, is starting to weigh it down.

WRT manufacturing, I recall some time ago that FOXCONN stopped hiring human workers, or at least they announced that they were going to. Human workers are cheap, but you have to pay them, they need to sleep they get sick and die, but robots, while expensive at first, can run 24/7, never get sick, never sleep, never take a vacation, never get divorced, they just need to be maintained.

Where Will The Jobs Come From?

This is smth to think about. With every other pivot, there were new jobs in new fields waiting on the other side. We moved from cottages and farms into factories and from factories into offices. Now we’re moving back to cottages (or apartments, anyway).

For now, I think you can future proof yourself in a trade. And every time someone says “But lawyers can be replaced, too!” I ask how, and it always comes back to discover/doc searches, which most lawyers would be relieved to offload.

Policing is going to be fun once we go full robo-cop. Those Boston Scientific dog things are like straight out of Black Mirror. No thank you.

So right now I’d say: trades, health care (although I did quite well in Intuitive Surgical stock in the early days), cybersecurity, AI/machine learning (more on that in a bit), sustainability/renewable energy (and as an energy guy I will also add ‘regular energy’ because that’s not going away.) STEM (I hope) and some other things. You guys can toss more out in the comments. Maybe providing housing although if nobody can pay rent, well, that’s no good. I only need to keep working for a while longer, although that’s becoming increasingly optional.

In The Future, Either AI is Working For You or You Will Be Working For AI.

We used to say that we had to have a way to make money while we slept. We are going to have to find ways to put AI and such to work for us. I’ve had some success with FX bots. Not sure I trust them 100% - they mostly require little monitoring but you can certainly fuck things up and you have to know what strategies they’re running and you have understand those strategies or you can get zeroed out. I’ve seen it happen with some (other, not the ones I use) bots.

We are probably going to have to focus more on cash flow – and not just us old guys who traditionally did this – but young guys, too, although you can take some of that and put it in BTC etc.

Anyway, toss ideas out and let’s figure out some paths forward for guys. And don’t anyone say “Universal Basic Income” unless you can convincingly account for inflation without some USSR price control BS.