[delucain]

Currently, they certainly are not. Our education systems (non-higher education) are largely designed to produce good workers for a manufacturing/labor economy that we're (relatively) quickly automating out of existence. And our higher education systems are being "dumbed down" to handle the influx of students not capable of handling the old curriculum.

Anecdotally, most of my extended family couldn't write a line of code if their lives depended on it; nor could they design a serious science experiment or write a novel. They aren't trained for those things, and that training has to start young or come with serious motivation, time, and effort. Not one of those people have any interest in learning those things.

I think it's possible to have a knowledge based economy, but we would have to drastically redesign our education systems and our culture in ways that I find it hard to even imagine how we would do so.

But, I think it's only a matter of time before we gain more skill in writing programs that automate out even the most complex knowledge based jobs. Watson is already showing the potential to be a better doctor than any human. The program named "Emily Howell" can already write symphonies that pass whatever the musical version of the Turing Test is. How long before we apply those things to all the other knowledge based jobs? What'll be left? More automation and maintenance programmers? How many of those will we even need?