[revision] The point of making any particular social impact using current social narratives draws out the vividness effect. That is, in decision-making or problem-solving people draw from memory the information that seems to fit the situation. At this “now” moment we are post-recession where wealth and careers look different than in 2007. Physician practices are still adjusting to Obamacare, businesses are assessing employees through psychometrics, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan still reverberate, cities and states are near bankruptcy and so on. These memories don’t leave behind stable references for solving today’s problems. While media channels compete for ownership of the general narration of every issue, as consumers we live with short-term memory about the past recession.
Some examples of competing narratives that require our thoughtful consideration: A firm we've all heard about, 23andMe.com, has captured imaginations by offering data (mail ordered) about our personal human genome and yet the National Human Genome Research Institute as part of the NIH leads the world in breakthrough genomic research. One is a stop-gap to fear about carrying bad genes, the latter a world-scale health research center for good.  Another, gas powered cars are 100 years in perfecting but Google envisions driverless cars using proprietary technology and gizmos no mechanic has seen before. Lumosity.com is banking on the neuro-craze just by playing digital games and yet, a few U.S. states don’t object to citizens smoking weed and depleting their brain functionality. Many leading tech firms want us to put sensors on our bodies to share live bio-streams with busy friends; privacy groups warn us of security issues to mitigate over-exposure. In the vividness effect model of assessing information we can choose the narrative that appeals to us and this will likely become framed in memory. Or, we could dig deeper into the autonomous automobile, for example, and learn much about merging GPS, radar, AI, sensors, etc. that prove how experimental autonomous cars really are. Then we can ask, is this the future? 
The vividness effect is occurring as an ideological battle over who will cast the “future”. Have you noticed nearly all leading technology firms are proclaiming, as if prophetically, how we will live in the future? They are brand-structuring narratives as if their product is at war over which technology will rule the future. Complexity added, their strategies include disruption; the latest goal championing company culture. In my own assessment of future life and things I've concluded that this epic battle for controlling the future is inherently marketing.
Branded future order competes with what is most vividly memorable about the future; that is, Hollywood created epic wars perpetually occurring in the universe. Movies, not brands, have beaten the path to all future worlds and that time is about cosmic wars. Even with vivid images from current wars, none of which are resolved, the brand-created internet-of-things future by tech marketers is competing against Hollywood. Movies have resolution and more essentially, don't embrace a prophetic role by telling us, "this is your future". No, we can imagine for ourselves and choose what to believe about the future. We should be able to do the same concerning technologies like asking, do I really wish to have a neural connection with all humanity and share my private thoughts?

The Great Recession left most of us with few positive memories and even today stories in the WSJ and NY Times can be found about people and businesses facing aftershocks. Is it any wonder we're trying to get past the  most vivid memories of recent times? We walk out of the theatre dazzled with Hollywood special effects and face the humanity-of-things so vividly before our eyes.

RPW

The use of the word "Great" is fixed permanently on periods of distress in American life: the Great Depression, the Great Recession, while at the moment we await the Great "AI-something." Once again, the workforce is under stress and this time, "great" may not prevail against the word, existential. 

We hold these self-evident eras of American history containing our true individual stories of job loss for the history books. Now, as the new millions live another "Great" era in technological progress, the acceptance of job losses is labeled, inevitable. I'm the first generation, they say, that will not prosper beyond my parents, own a home, live without huge debt, manage a one-track career to retirement, receive social security. Neither existential nor inevitable sound hopeful.

Many people after losing their career in the "Great eras" came back in the workforce. There were low-pay jobs to be found in their gap in 2008-2012.  For millions of others the lengthy period of adjustment turned into a lifestyle because, with hindsight, the big data revolution progressed into the AI revolution.

For today's college graduates the hiring realm looks no different than their education rigor in that, unrelenting testing cued for memorization is superseded by hyped science-driven theories in psychology+neurology, thus, enacting many new hire benchmarks.  As a result, new hires expect wondrous diversity in their workplaces. Quickly, they'll began realizing that businesses are nominally diverse, political, assume a posture of mini-cultures comprising people who statistically benchmarked alike. Predictable people in predictable cultures. 

Recycled professionals have been to the world’s woodshed. Recycled workers experienced family and financial chaos, re-skilling, managing relational complexities in non-career jobs.  But unlike much of the TikTok generation, experienced recycled pros didn't need constant affirmation about their opinions and social media content. The Great Recession’s trials tested their character, strength and life purpose.

Human stories about change are neither resume nor social sciences benchmarking projects. Companies can pre-test recycled professionals all they want with their corporate competency models and instantly miss true character. A business willing to look at a recycled individual will more likely find genuineness and loyalty.

HR should accept that an increasing population of professionals have career blips, the gap, the weird job, the time of re-imagining all of which bring wisdom that no business school can instill. Character is not taught; it is lived and tested while under pressure.  Act 1 always precedes Act 2.  We are watching yet another "Great" workforce purge awaiting to learn the final label that will stick as the AI industry hallucinates for the entire world how progressive and wonderful it will be to not have a job.

I'd much prefer to work alongside people of strong character who have already fought against the mad world.
Robert Waters, 2016, (v.2 2020), (v.3 2026)

Failing has a new image from all I’m seeing on the bookshelves at Barnes & Noble. If you are a successful business person with a past failure then your book is hot, destined for business school libraries.  But notice that I said, “If you are a successful business person” then…

I’ve also been on LinkedIn for eight years and read more profiles than I could tell you but few share their storied career failures. Leaders, however, will openly tell of the road to wisdom: it most often runs through failure.  I, too, find myself somewhat shrinking back and hiding failure till success arrives. In 2012 I decided to change. I began writing a short book about searching for work during the Great Recession. The main story is about traumatic failure. Suddenly, it transformed into a story of the American experience, not just my own. It became a story about the changing workforce and bio-profiling resulting from an invasion of neuroscience+psychological tests businesses implemented in HR. Abandoning resumes, they fled to predicting emotional intelligence, psychometrics, cultural affinity values - in software.
 
 I told the truth about the end-run toward genetic profiling slowly creeping into big data so that parents and counselors would better understand the future of work placement. They need to know the real significance of enduring being hyper-profiled by businesses right down to their families health factors and neurological test metrics.  Where there is private data employers will find it and apply it within behavioral analytics. Students will be joining a software-selected workforce; that’s not what it’s called but 76% of US corporations are doing it (2014 figure). And their data is still growing.

As for this eBook, it is on Amazon’s Best Sellers Ranked list at 1.652 million – that is, for clarification, lower in sales than 1.6 million other books. That’s not success! Yes, but like all the CEO’s whom once failed and later penned their successes, I went straight to my low point. The real success; what makes the story interesting and original, comes next. We are, indeed, on the path to being genetically profiled. The consequences will be enormous.