How You Can Benefit From The Automation Apocalypse
Way back in time, I wrote about seeing gaps in the market. Today, I spent a couple of hours reading about some (possibly) bleak news: Adidas are planning to bring their manufacturing plants from Asia back to Germany. It sounds great unless you’re from Asia, except for one problem: The test factory is going to be automated.
Naturally, across the internet this news was treated as though it were the coming of SkyNet and the first step towards us being turned into biological batteries to feed the machines, ala The Matrix.
The idea of automation is pretty scary. Driverless cars, efficient AI and those kiosks at McDonalds where you order your cheeseburger without any chance of it getting your order wrong are going to cause massive upheavals in the way that the economy works.
This isn’t a blog about the impending doom of civilisation though. This is a blog about how you can make a living as a writer and online business person. Let’s just bear the above in mind though when you’re reading the rest of this article.
Technology Is Constantly Progressing… Whether Good Or Bad
I was about thirteen when I made my first website. It was on the now MSN Spaces and it was dire. I was still pretty proud of myself though, and I quite enjoyed it. Fast-forward a couple of years, and I was writing HTML code. I learned how to code in HTML, then CSS and later PHP.
That’s all pretty much redundant now. I can create better websites in WordPress without ever having to touch a piece of code. What would have taken a developer – or team of developers – a few weeks in the 90’s is now done completely automatically within minutes. (If I want a bespoke design, then I can do that too – I learned how to create a wireframe for a site, create an HTML document from that and then a WordPress theme from that based on a £12 Udemy course. )
You can create an ecommerce store now which is completely automated. Everything from the marketing to the product lists to the shipping – even technical support can be largely automated with support ticket systems and the like.
This has all been encroaching for some time, and it’s not going to go away. There’ll be protests like the “Taxi drivers versus Uber” thing we had last year. It won’t matter though.
Your Job Might Be Automated In The Future… And There’s Little You Can Do About It
For writers, there are already pretty good natural language processors that can create almost readable scripts. Luckily, there’s a big caveat to the almost in that writing is a very difficult skill to do without understanding the wider problem of context – which computers aren’t so great at.
Even so, there are a ton of things you should be aware of as a writer when it comes to automation; both good and bad.
Firstly; the bad. (Let’s get it out of the way.) Whilst writing is a long way off in terms of a robot’s skillset, you’re going to have to compete in the future with better spun software. You need to understand why hiring you is a better investment than getting some black-hat internet marketer to spin a million words. HINT: It’s a variation on what I just said above about context.
Also, a lot of your ancillary work will be automated. A lot of copywriters double as Adwords optimisers or social media experts; these systems are a lot easier to automate than sales copy, so they’ll go first.
But that brings me to the good side; a lot of your work will be automated. As tech gets better, admin time gets cut down. For a quick example, you can use automation to post your latest articles to all your secondary web profiles like Twitter, Facebook and the like. Also, like I said above, if you’re more into the business side, you can build ecommerce stores, affiliate sites and all sorts of other cool stuff without really worrying. Testing your services in new markets is going to be easier than ever as well.
You are going to have to keep up to date with these things though.
Keeping Up To Date With How Technology Is Progressing Is A SERVICE Itself
Remember at the beginning of the article, where I mentioned my Gaps in the Market article and said that this wouldn’t be about the impending doom of the human race?
This is where I point out a gap in the market in most industries: Automation is becoming an elephant in the room. Like I wrote about in “Time To Get Offline Clients,” most business owners are not going to know about technology.
I was talking to someone recently who worked for a company where they have nobody working for them that knows about computers. They weren’t a small company either; their turnover is in the millions per year. Think of the average family restaurant or local vehicle repair shop in your area; they know about fixing cars or cooking pasta or, let’s face it – we’ve all had a doctor who can’t use a computer either. These people are losing money form not knowing about technology and are probably scared about future developments meaning they get left behind.
You, dear internet reader, could easily create something which helps them navigate the deep, dark and scary waters that is an ever-increasing rate of technological development in their field. It doesn’t have to be complicated or expensive… and if I weren’t so busy, I could have a prototype of a service like this set up in a week.
(I’m actually feeling a bit nauseous that I’ve given that idea away, so I won’t elaborate further. For those who are reading this before I change my mind, be glad this is still a tiny blog so I share these thoughts with you!)
Final Thoughts: Be A Cyborg Warrior (?!)
Progress is inevitable. Some of the people who’ve commented on articles about subjects like this have spent hundreds of hours researching the impact of future tech developments and automation to a massive degree – only to use that research to argue with each other on the internet.
I recommend not doing that, and instead riding the wave for as long as you can. Think about how you can use technological advancements to make your business offerings better, even if it’s in small and seemingly inconsequential ways. If you can save five minutes a day doing some stupid admin task, then why not save five minutes?
For those of you who love tech and automation, if nothing else you can use these opportunities to help other businesses deal with these advancements.