GoKawiilYou Are Not Your Job
I'm Jacob - I run Sancho Studio a software consulting studio - I write about cryptography, craft, and human experience.
Saying "I am a software engineer" is beginning to feel like saying "I am a calcultor" in 1950 now that digital machines can use electrical circuits to count, add, multiply - it's not long until they'll be able differentiate a non-continuous function... You're beginning to feel less-than-useful.
This bothers a lot of people for a reason (I think) that has nothing to do with the technology. The fear isn't really about losing a job title, it's about losing the story you tell yourself about who you are.
It's worth reminding ourselves of how narrative plays a role in this transition. We're the storytelling species. We wake up and narrate ourselves into existence. "I am a software engineer". "I am a doctor". "I am a teacher".
These statements feel like facts, but they're fictions we've constructed and believed so thoroughly that we can't separate them from our actual selves. Our ability to believe our own stories is called the secret of our species' success. Collectively we use our stories to build societies, culture, religion — on our own, we use our labor to build identity.
Half your life is spent working. It's reasonable that we build a self around it. In fact it's effortless. At its core, identifying by our labor is a silent assertion that "I am what I do" which is no more true than "I am what I eat".
I like Susan Fiske's research on how humans judge each other shows something worth sitting with. When you meet someone, you assess them on two dimensions. The first is warmth - do you believe they mean you well? The second is competence - do you believe they're capable?
The order matters. You evaluate someone's warmth first to gauge their intent before ability. Before you even care whether someone can do something, you need to know "will this person hurt or help me"?
My technical skills are being disrupted by machines - that's fine I'll go do other things. Being replaced is what is "supposed to happen". We don't mourn the telephone operator. We don't build statues for bank tellers.
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