I have been reading about the future of jobs and employment since the early 1970’s. Alvin Toffler’s Future Shock or even R. Buckminster Fuller’s ideas about ephemeralization fall in line with much of what we see nowadays. The idea of a job as a place you go to is starting to change. Long term employment (i.e. starting work for some company as you exit school, and then (after 30+ years) retire from the same company) is something which I have heard (since the late 80’s) is firmly in our past.
This is not a topic for the faint hearted, I that there may be some large dislocations coming…
How Mobile is changing the Way We Work
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/how_mobile_is_changing_the_way_we_work.php
Every time someone asks where the ReadWriteWeb office is, I chuckle a little bit, because I’ve worked from a thousand different places over the last year and not one has resembled what most think of as an office. And I’m certainly not alone – one study predicts that the number of mobile, remote workers could increase to 1.2 billion by 2013. This would be impossible without the real-time, collaborative nature of the Web. Let’s take a look at three simple areas that the real-time Web has changed our working lives.
Will There Be Lunch Served At The Meeting?
Do you remember when you used to go and actually sit in meetings, physically I mean? There would be a pot of coffee off to the side and perhaps some sandwiches. Cookies if you were really lucky.
At many businesses, especially those with virtual offices like ReadWriteWeb, the entire day can be one long meeting, with the water cooler and conference room combined into one simple thing – a chat room. Whether it’s Skype, AOL Instant Messenger, Campfire, or any other group chat solution, the need to gather around in a single location is nearly a thing of the past. With services like these, text chat is at the core, but document sharing, voice and even video chat are just a click away. It’s like being in that meeting, passing dossiers around…but without the cookies.
The Future of Jobs
http://www.futurist.com/2011/06/03/the-future-of-jobs
Daddy, what’s a job?” – The future of employment
In the future, people will work “stints” rather than “jobs,” writes Glen Hiemstra
There was a time in history when no one had a job as we think of it. It was only in the last century that the modern concept of a “job” as work exchanged for wages and benefits was invented.
In the past three decades the social and economic fabric that created this employment system has frayed and now is rending before our eyes. Around the world floods of young people face economies in which there may never be a sufficient number of jobs by the standard definition. In older industrialized nations the ability of employers to pay both good wages and benefits is increasingly challenged. Employment has gone completely global. The acceleration of technology has meant that fewer people are required for many tasks.
So what will become of employment in the next twenty to fifty years? Any quick search will offer lists of exotic-sounding jobs of the future – gene pharmers, space tour guides, body part makers, Hollywood holographers, and the like. Such lists are entertaining. They may even be accurate. But they miss the deeper story of the future of employment.
In the real future you will be working at a stint rather than a job. To work at a stint is to become part of a project team for 18 months, followed by joining three friends doing a start-up business that folds after two years, after which you sign on with a multinational which disappears in a merger…and the beat goes on. This requires a reinvention of the social contract around security and benefits.
Since you have become a stint worker, you will have shifted from being an employee to being a free agent. This will not be new, as increasing numbers of us are already free agents in 2011, but for most of us it requires a change in perspective. The biggest change involves learning how to think of yourself as a company of one.
The most profound shift may be the disappearance of employers as we have known them, as they are replaced by amoeba-like networks that come together to complete certain projects and tasks. Consider a feature film production. The project is conceived, some key people flesh out a proposal, funding is arranged, a global network of talent is hired, they work together for weeks or months, and then disband, never to work in that exact combination again.
The places that we work will change, especially for knowledge workers – those of us who commute to offices today mostly to sit and type words on machines, look at computer screens, and talk to other people in person and by phone. Tomorrow’s machines will make today’s computing and communication look primitive, as they enable full 3-D, immersive and visual interaction with others in real time wherever you are. Data and information will be in the Cloud – available everywhere, all the time. Thus, we will come to the office only when it is really desirable to get together. The offices themselves will consist of inviting meeting and collaboration spaces, and “hotel” stations for free agents to plug in. The typical company may use half the office footprint it uses today for the same number of people.
By 2050 a surprising amount of work will be done directly by intelligent machines. Think of how certain jobs have become similar around the world, using the same technologies, processes, designs and so on. Consider engineering, construction, manufacturing, transportation, wholesale and retail services, even hotel and restaurant work. Watch a re-run of the IBM computer “Watson” winning the TV game show “Jeopardy” the week of 14 February 2011. Imagine this machine with 20 years more learning; add in improved vision and better dexterity for robots, and with the right economic scenario it is easy to imagine literally millions of jobs currently performed by humans being done completely by machines.
In such a world where fewer people are needed to produce all required goods and services, what will people do? The answer may be surprising – replace technology with a world made by hand. More people, rather than fewer, will be working the land by hand, making things by hand, teaching, and entertaining others in person. Many people will work in this way by choice as a counter-weight to an overly technological world. It is even possible that, in one particular economic and energy future where the global economy retracts drastically in the face of energy shortages and climate change catastrophes, work will become more human-centered and less technological by necessity rather than choice.
