Between expensive bills, ecological transition and energy communities, we are only now starting to understand that one of the jobs of the future will not be related to artificial intelligence, the cloud, or big data. It will be a profession that is now almost two centuries old, which had a roaring season a long time ago, and which lately was very little considered: the electrician.
It has been calculated – the Washington Post did – that, in order to free ourselves from fossil fuels, in the United States alone in the next twenty-five years it will be necessary to install or activate over a billion electrical appliances of different nature. And the same will happen in Europe. How many electricians will be needed? There is no exact number yet, but there will be many. Lots of them.
Think of electric cars and their columns, solar panels in apartment buildings, induction cookers in our no longer gas kitchens .. If the watchword is “electrify everything”, the answer is only one: we need electricians. The thing is surprising to the point of wondering: how did we not think about it before, when we predicted the end of the working class and blue-collar workers for the benefit of the so-called knowledge workers and then those with solid computer skills.
Mind you, in the future they will need more and more experts in artificial intelligence, cloud, machine learning and cybersecurity. Those skills remain necessary. But in a world that tries hard to change skin, the digital and immaterial dimension is not enough; but the skills and abilities of those who know how to connect electric wires and batteries will also be needed. It is the world of atoms which fortunately resists that of bits.