The World Economic Forum (WEF) Future of Jobs Report 2016 listed the following as significant technological drivers of change in world society and will have huge impact on the type of jobs for the world labor force. Papua New Guinea, as a developing country and consumers of technological products and services, they are surely going to have an impact on the society as whole. Particularly the young generation in tertiary institutions now. They need to be aware and learn to adapt as they enter the workforce after graduating. The list in order of ranking, highest to the lowest in the report.
1: Mobile internet and cloud technology
The mobile internet has applications across business and the public sector, enabling more efficient delivery of services and opportunities to increase workforce productivity. With cloud technology, applications can be delivered with minimal or no local software or processing power, enabling the rapid spread of internet-based service models
2: Advances in computing power and Big Data
Realizing the full potential of technological advances will require having in place the systems and capabilities to make sense of the unprecedented flood of data these innovations will generate.
3: New energy supplies and technologies
New energy supplies and technologies, such as renewables and hydraulic fracturing (fracking), are shaking up the global energy landscape and disrupting powerful players at least as much as yesterday’s oil price crises did, with profound and complicated geopolitical and environmental repercussions.
4: The Internet of Things (IoT)
The use of remote sensors, communications, and processing power in industrial equipment and everyday objects will unleash an enormous amount of data and the opportunity to see patterns and design systems on a scale never before possible.
5: Crowdsourcing, the sharing economy and peer-to-peer platforms
With peer-to-peer platforms, companies and individuals can do things that previously required large-scale organizations. In some cases the talent and resources that companies can connect to, through activities such as crowdsourcing, may become more important than the in-house resources they own.
6: Advanced robotics and autonomous transport
Advanced robots with enhanced senses, dexterity, and intelligence can be more practical than human labour in manufacturing, as well as in a growing number of service jobs, such as cleaning and maintenance. Moreover, it is now possible to create cars, trucks, aircraft, and boats that are completely or partly autonomous, which could revolutionize transportation, if regulations allow, as early as 2020.
7: Artificial intelligence and machine learning
Advances in artificial intelligence, machine learning, and natural user interfaces (e.g. voice recognition) are making it possible to automate knowledge-worker tasks that have long been regarded as impossible or impractical for machines to perform.
8: Advanced manufacturing and 3D printing
A range of technological advances in manufacturing technology promises a new wave of productivity. For example, 3D printing (building objects layer-by-layer from a digital master design file) allows on-demand production, which has far-ranging implications for global supply chains and production networks
9: Advanced materials, biotechnology and genomics
Technological advances in material and life sciences have many innovative industry applications. Recent breakthroughs in genetics could have profound impacts on medicine and agriculture. Similarly, the manufacture of synthetic molecules via bio-process engineering will be critical to pharmaceuticals, plastics and polymers, biofuels, and other new materials and industrial processes.
Source: https://reports.weforum.org/future-of-jobs-2016/