Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Future of Work

By 2015- the traditional notion of an individual's job and work-related role will be recognised as outdated in developed countries. Output will be measured in terms of flexible value-added criteria or contributions to the goals of the organisation, together with social utility, rather than in terms of hours worked on a particular job.

The traditional office will also become redundant as the wireless web expands, allowing information workers- fifty percent of the workforce, to operate from home or local social hubs such as coffee bars as already occurring- (Ref Future Cities). All such centres will be linked seamlessly via the Internet's multimedia Grid/Mesh Utility supporting Web and Cloud Infrastructure. This will also enable enormous time and energy savings for workers and the planet in general, having a beneficial impact on the quality of life for millions.

By 2025- most tasks, even in the traditional labour-intensive sectors of health, construction, manufacturing and transport will be largely automated or robot-assisted. Projects will be managed and resourced on a real-time basis within the Web's global knowledge network- (Ref Future Web), with creativity and innovation recognised as critical competitive inputs.

Boundaries will blur between traditional full-time, part-time, contract and volunteering modes of employment as well as between worker and management roles, with most workers sharing time between their own creative projects and enterprise applications- the two often overlapping.

By 2035- organisational boundaries and work practices will be fluid and porous, with individuals moving freely between projects, career paths and virtual organisation structures; adding value and in turn continuously acquiring new skills, linked to ongoing learning programs.
The semantic distinctions between workers and management will have disappeared and robots will perform a large proportion of operational roles without human supervision. Union roles will have morphed to largely providing advisory, research and support services.

By 2045/50- work will relate primarily to the generation of new knowledge and services, by combining human, robot and web intelligence to maximum potential. Most processes will be fully automated both at the operational and strategic level within the context of the intelligent enterprise. New products and services will be generated from concept to design to production within days or hours. Individual creativity and skills will remain in high demand but will increasingly will be amplified and modulated within the context of the Web's cooperative decision-making and intelligence capacity.

Welcome to a brave new world.

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