[ddkto]

Yes, absolutely - skills move from mainstream to niche, but are still required! For example, a much smaller proportion of the population knows how to farm today than 100 years ago, but it's still important :)

(And sometimes these mainstream, practical, everyday skills stick around in funny ways: https://www.hillelwayne.com/post/linked-lists/)

[JoeAltmaier]

It's a problem either way.

Innovation stalls, improvements take longer to materialize. Machines become obsolete but there's nothing to replace it yet.

Fewer people in fundamental roles is a risk, a danger to our economic chain. We could become quite vulnerable, even crash.

[atmartins]

I disagree. I think it's about pivot time, not having a warmed up stable of skilled workers just in case. Nature never optimizes for that and it shouldn't. We should lazy-load that skillset if and when it's necessary. We have writing to carry knowledge forward. Also, video and other media. People are smart and I'm sure a large cohort could be assembled with the right amount of money in fairly short order. As long as that's cheaper than keeping a battalion ready just in case, then I'd argue it's the "correct" way to approach it.

[MichaelZuo]

What are you doing to help solve this problem?

[salawat]

"What can one do in the face of a relatively shrinking population?" is the more interesting question to me.

As someone whose managed a team before, there is a minimum population of people practically required to sustain a particular corpus of actionable information without suffering severe degradation in terms of said information's application.

Once one ends up below that point; things tend to go the way "from scratch rediscovery required", until such time as the population of people capable of acting on it is restored.

Whether that actually happens is a prioritization decision balancing against everything else that still has to be done.

[JoeAltmaier]

Have three boys! All successful engineers. One even knows hardware and assembler!