1. Brynjolfsson and McAfee in their book, The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies, point out that although the Fourth Industrial Revolution will bring about many beneficial results, it will also bring about some thorny challenges. “Rapid and accelerating digitization is likely to bring economic rather than environmental disruption, stemming from the fact that as computers get more powerful, companies have less need for some kinds of workers. Technological progress is going to leave behind some people, perhaps even a lot of people, as it races ahead. . . . There’s never been a better time to be a worker with special skills or the right education, because these people can use technology to create and capture value. However, there’s never been a worse time to be a worker with only ‘ordinary’ skills and abilities to offer, because computers, robots and other digital technologies are acquiring these skills and abilities at an extraordinary rate.”

Think about the job skills needed by people who work in libraries. Are the skills they possess “ordinary” or “specialized”? Which library jobs do you think are most at risk if Brynjolfsson and McAfee’s predictions are correct?