{"id":94956,"date":"2025-03-31T12:48:15","date_gmt":"2025-03-31T16:48:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/danielschristian.com\/learning-ecosystems\/?p=94956"},"modified":"2025-03-31T13:46:07","modified_gmt":"2025-03-31T17:46:07","slug":"the-gen-x-career-meltdown-kurutz","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/danielschristian.com\/learning-ecosystems\/2025\/03\/31\/the-gen-x-career-meltdown-kurutz\/","title":{"rendered":"The Gen X Career Meltdown\u00a0[Kurutz]"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

It\u2019s the end of work as we knew it<\/em><\/strong><\/span>
\nand I feel…<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

powerless to fight the technology that we pioneered<\/em><\/strong><\/span>
\nnostalgic for a world that moved on without us<\/em><\/strong><\/span>
\nafter decades of paying our dues<\/em><\/strong><\/span>
\nfor a payday that never came<\/em><\/strong><\/span>
\n…so yeah<\/em><\/strong><\/span>
\nnot exactly fine.<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

The Gen X Career Meltdown<\/strong><\/a> — from nytimes.com by Steeven Kurutz (DSC: This is a gifted article for you)<\/em><\/span>
\nJust when they should be at their peak, experienced workers in creative fields find that their skills are all but obsolete.<\/em><\/p>\n

If you entered media or image-making in the \u201990s \u2014 magazine publishing, newspaper journalism, photography, graphic design, advertising, music, film, TV \u2014 there\u2019s a good chance that you are now\u00a0doing something else for work<\/a>. That\u2019s because those industries have shrunk or transformed themselves radically, shutting out those whose skills were once in high demand.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am having conversations every day with people whose careers are sort of over,\u201d said Chris Wilcha, a 53-year-old film and TV director in Los Angeles.<\/p>\n

Talk with people in their late 40s and 50s who once imagined they would be able to achieve great heights \u2014 or at least a solid career while flexing their creative muscles \u2014 and you are likely to hear about the photographer whose work dried up, the\u00a0designer\u00a0who can\u2019t get hired or the magazine journalist who isn\u2019t doing much of anything.<\/p>\n

In the wake of the influencers comes another threat, artificial intelligence, which seems likely to replace many of the remaining Gen X copywriters, photographers and designers. By 2030,\u00a0<\/span>ad agencies in the United States will lose 32,000 jobs<\/a>, or 7.5 percent of the industry\u2019s work force, to the technology, according to the research firm Forrester.<\/span><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\n

From DSC:<\/span><\/em>
\nThis article reminds me of how tough it is to navigate change in our lives. For me, it was often due to the fact that I was working with technologies. Being a technologist can be difficult, especially as one gets older and faces age discrimination in a variety of industries. You need to pick the right technologies and the directions that will last (for me it was email, videoconferencing, the Internet, online-based education\/training, discovering\/implementing instructional technologies, and becoming a futurist).<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

For you younger folks out there — especially students within K-16 — aim to develop a perspective and a skillset that is all about adapting to change. You will likely need to reinvent yourself and\/or pick up new skills over your working years. You are most assuredly required to be a lifelong learner now. That’s why I have been pushing for school systems to be more concerned with providing more choice and control to students — so that students actually like<\/em> school and enjoy<\/em> learning about new things.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s the end of work as we knew it and I feel… powerless to fight the technology that we pioneered nostalgic for a world that moved on without us after decades of paying our dues for a payday that never came …so yeah not exactly fine. The Gen X Career Meltdown — from nytimes.com by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[113,356,387,174,86,209,498,260,112,271,840,135,252,18,306,210,37,35,178,264,55,25,15,423,408,199,23,256,239,133,144,436,855,166,480,293,310,66,212,460,466,206,321,299,90,445],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-94956","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-21st-century","category-artificial-intelligence-agents-llms-and-related","category-business","category-career-development","category-change","category-changing-business-models","category-communities-of-practice","category-content-development-aggregation-repositories","category-corporate-business-world","category-creativity","category-culture","category-design","category-digital-photography","category-digital-storytelling","category-economics","category-emerging-technologies","category-future","category-game-changing-environment","category-generational-differences","category-graphics","category-internet","category-journalism","category-lifelong-learning","category-love-of-learning","category-mediafilm","category-more-voice-more-choice-more-control","category-multimedia","category-music","category-new-business-models","category-online-media","category-photography","category-reinvent","category-skills","category-social-learning-networks","category-society","category-sociology","category-staying-relevant","category-student-related","category-surviving","category-technology-general","category-television","category-trends","category-united-states","category-workplace","category-englishwriting","category-youth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/danielschristian.com\/learning-ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94956","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/danielschristian.com\/learning-ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/danielschristian.com\/learning-ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danielschristian.com\/learning-ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danielschristian.com\/learning-ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=94956"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/danielschristian.com\/learning-ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94956\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":94966,"href":"https:\/\/danielschristian.com\/learning-ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94956\/revisions\/94966"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/danielschristian.com\/learning-ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94956"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danielschristian.com\/learning-ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94956"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danielschristian.com\/learning-ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94956"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}