Comment by crtified

Not to suggest that analogies solve anything, but perhaps it adds large-scale context to mention that throughout history various (and frequent!) events of technological disruption have had similar effect upon particular fields of work.

I used to work in land surveying, entering that field around the turn of the millennium just as digitalisation was hitting the industry in a big way. A common feeling among existing journeymen was one of confusion. Fear and dislike of these threatening changes, which seemed to neutralise all the hard-won professional skills. Expertise with the old equipment. Understanding of how to do things closer to first-principles. Ability to draw plans by hand. To assemble the datasets in the complex and particular old ways. And of course, to mentor juniors in the same.

Suddenly, some juniors coming in were young computer whizzes. Speeding past their seniors in these new ways. But still only juniors, for all that - still green, no matter what the tech. With years and decades yet, to earn their stripes, their professionalism in all it's myriad aspects. And for the seniors, their human aptitudes (which got them there in the first place) didn't vanish. They absorbed the changes, stuck with their smart peers, and evolved to match the environment. Would they have rathered that everything in the world had stayed the same as before? Of course. But is that a valid choice, professionally speaking? or in life itself? Not really.