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TWO FUTURES
There are two possible futures for the professions. Both of these rest on technology. The first is reassuringly familiar to most professionals-it is simply a more efficient version of what we have today. In this future, professionals of many different types use technology, but largely to streamline and optimize their traditional ways of working. In the language of economists, technologies "complement" them in these activities. The second future is a different proposition. Here, increasingly capable systems and machines, either operating alone or designed and operated by people who look quite unlike doctors and lawyers, teachers and accountants, and others, gradually take on more of the tasks that we associate with those traditional professionals. New technologies instead, in the words of economists, "substitute" for professionals in these activities.
For now, and in the medium term, we anticipate that these two futures will be realized in parallel. As we do today, we will continue to see examples of both uses of technology. In the long run, however, we expect that the second future will dominate. Through technological progress, we will find new and more efficient ways to solve the sorts of important problems that, traditionally, only very particular types of professionals have been able to tackle. This presents an existential challenge to traditional professionals, which is one central theme of our book The Future of the Professions.
WHY DO WE HAVE THE PROFESSIONS?
We begin The Future of the Professions by asking a fundamental question: Why do we have the professions at all? Various theorists have tried to make sense of the professions and their dominance in many walks of life. Some of these are "functionalists," concerned with the different roles that the professions perform-for instance, correcting imbalances of knowledge, strengthening the moral character of society, or maintaining social order. Others are "traitists," more interested in the particular features of the professions than the functions they perform. Like zoologists, they try to identify and classify different species of occupations, drawing up exhaustive checklists of important features and organizing their specimens in careful taxonomies. Most of these theorists, from a variety of perspectives, are fascinated with the "exclusivity" of the professions, their ability to ring-fence, isolate, and effectively exclude others from large expanses of knowledge. There...