Job recruiters or recruitment agencies have already been displaced by websites like LinkedIn, Indeed.com, and Monster. Also, Craigslist has been replaced by other kinds of classified advertisements and other classified websites. If you just browse your social media like Facebook and Twitter, you can see many hiring managers leveraging those social media platforms for recruitment.
Uber, Lyft, and other car-sharing apps are disrupting the traditional taxi, rental cars and chauffeur companies, as well car ownership.
Airbnb, Booking.com, Trivago and HomeAway are disrupting the traditional homestays, traveller inns, hotel and motel industry.
Driverless cars, such as those being developed by Google, will be the next big thing that replaces all sorts of driving jobs like bus and truck drivers.
Drone technology may revolutionize the way products are delivered that will disrupt the traditional postman and post office clerk works. Amazon is trying to make that a reality in deploying drones as part of their delivery services. Drones may also replace air traffic controllers. For years to come, fighter pilots have been replaced by drones on numerous military missions. Also, Drone technology will pose a great threat to logistic companies like UPS, fast food delivery riders and postmen because logistic companies and fast food companies would deploy their drone devices to send goods and deliver a set of pizza to their customers’ doorsteps without the need for workers. Amazon and some fast food companies are already implementing these technologies.
3D printing is growing rapidly, and the technology is becoming better and faster. In a next few years, manufacturing a wide variety of goods could disrupt the manufacturing industry and diminish the importance of logistics and inventory management. Also, it is capable of lowering the cost for home ownership, too, in the next few years, as well as being capable of saving lives with prosthetic limbs and organs that scientists and medical professions have already been successful in doing.
Fast food workers will be the next big disruption because Fast food companies already invested in computerized kiosks which can take orders without the need for manpower. Retail cashiers have also been displaced at supermarkets and big box stores with self-checkout lines for customers to do their own checkout and some even already deployed robots to do human work and serve customers better
Online educational sites like Massively Open Online Courses with platforms like Udemy, Lynda/LinkedIn Learning, Coursera, Udacity, edx, Skillcrush, Codecademy, Team Treehouse and other online platforms have already offered leading university and college courses for free or for a fraction of the cost. This would allow the brick and mortar university and college professors to go freelance and run their courses which is known as micro-education or micro-colleges/universities.
YouTube, NetFlix and Hulu already disrupted the traditional television programmes, cable or satellite TV with a cheaper cost and a wide variety of programmes and movies. This gave people a preference to stream online.
Digital music started with the booming of the MP3 format, later, when Napster came along, it caused the traditional music stores like Tower Records to go bankrupt, due to poor sales. After the bankruptcy of Napster due to heavy fines for their copyright violation — then came along the Limewire, a P2P software that allowed MP3 downloads for free that caused another revolution that was eating the market of a traditional music store until the platform was closed down. However, the birth of Spotify and iTunes digital download and Apple Music, it allowed people to opt for the streaming music services that allow people to download or stream online for their favourite music.
Libraries and librarians are moving online because of the giant free service of Wikipedia have replaced the multi-volume encyclopedia and giant libraries. Here, the librarians used to help people find information and conduct research; now it can be done individually over the internet.
There was a saying ‘Farmers will be sitting idle to dictate things to his machines while his dogs would stand guard beside his master’, this rings true as more food than ever is being produced in the US.
Law will be the next disruption as with the advancement of software like legal technology firms in London already deplying advanced software like Casetext to ease the pain of legal research, making legal documentation easier than ever before. Some have already gone to a further extent to automate the jobs of paralegals, solicitors and law clerks in the near future. Also, with the advancement of AI, a law firm, the BakerHostetler in the US, hired their first robot lawyer to oversee their bankruptcy cases. Legal professions will be replaced by automation where one day you will shake the hands of an AI or a robot to represent you in the courtroom to argue your case and defend you! Now with the advancement of smart contract, legal documentation for contracts and other forms of the contract will once again be facing disruption where one-day legal profession will be fully automated.
E-commerce will be the disrupting the traditional brick and mortar shopping complexes, malls and convenience stores at a fast pace. When eBay came to the market in the 90s, it took the world by storm because you can sell and buy; even trade your goods and unwanted goods to other buyers so that you won’t waste your unwanted goods in your storeroom for people who were real fans of garage items or love buying second-hand goods as an antique. However, with Amazon, an online shopping website where it sold goods, services, Mp3 music and renting movies with the recent Amazon Prime subscription plans, has taken off in the US. Many small shopping complexes and convenience stores were vacated at a rapid rate because people flooded to shop online on Amazon and eBay.
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