Yeah, and I think that would be OK. I'm not certain about it, but I think that a lot of the time and energy that goes into support could go into development instead, and most people would be happier. For example, clients that are paying me to fix things might pay me instead to make new things for them that would better fit their needs.

I'm not under any illusion that it would work that way for everyone. But, I can't think of a single support-level person (whether consultant, phone, on-site, or otherwise) that's been doing it for more than a few years that's really happy with it. It can be exceptionally frustrating to be the go-between between users and fluky systems. So, at the very least, it would eliminate a necessary evil that makes a lot of people unhappy.

It might also result in fewer jobs to go around. But I don't think so.

>It might also result in fewer jobs to go around. But I don't think so.

It would result in more wealth and efficiency, not more jobs. Capitalism says nothing about jobs, only wealth.

We don't really (in western society) have a mechanism for transferring wealth beyond trade, labor, and government fiat. In the absence of busywork created by government fiat, we're going to have a hard time socially speaking midwifing an increasingly efficient world where redundant jobs get replaced with technology and processes.

This will continue the trend of increasing wealth stratification as whomever has control over the means of production will be subject to the will of others less and less, and be able to keep more of their profits.

Incidentally, this means it'll be fantastic to be a programmer, and terrible to be a laborer.

If a novel solution isn't found, the best many could hope for is a service job or medieval-style patronage of arts as production and maintenance of product pipelines requires fewer humans.

You're missing that software which works perfectly still wont do what you want magically. Just because it works on a terminal server doesn't mean it will select and install itself on your cluster when you want it.

Just because it generates reports promptly without crashing every time doesn't mean it will know which reports to generate or which data to pull from, or how to include your new office statistics.

Just because your phone synchronises email when abroad without messing up doesn't mean it knows which email addresses to forward to which people.

Support people would then be primarily involved in using technology to help businesses do things, instead of primarily using technology workaround other technology's problems.

You brought up some great points there but couldn't those be generally classified as training? When I think of support I think of people who help the customer to analyze problems and fix them. If support people are spending time holding the customer's hand then I'd say it isn't fair to be tasked with support and training.