Work in the near future Over the next decade, information
technology, Net connection and reduced communication cost will bring profound changes to how, who and where we work, even the very notion of an employer. You now have a way to track and manage more than simply static information. You also are able to track and communicate events, from production on a factory floor to co-workers whereabouts, to who and how customers are using products. All that information will be much easier, faster and accurate to view and analyze and affect decisions. In a sense, then, digital
technology will transform work into a global supply chain of talent. Calls, sales, purchase, production orders, inventory, delivery tracking, bookkeeping, payment, libraries, books and articles are some examples being rerouted via web network from miles away.
Companies parcel out small pieces of a job online to people around the world. Based on how well they've performed similar tasks earlier, work is distributed to at home workers. As technology allows the individual tasks of many jobs to be done independently, the traditional role of an employer is dissolving. Companies, managers, and employees face big changes in the way they work and live. At home agents work as independent contractors, not employees. I do not think it will happen for everyone and every job. But I think more jobs will become more like independent businesses. Management face to face is being replaced by a remote style. Keystrokes, contacts are tracked and fed into the corporate web. Automated evaluation is becoming readily available. Teleconferences, messaging will become common use. Managers will require new knowledge, skills and styles. Organizational structure will have to change. I think you'd end up with organizations very different from the kinds we have today. You may have organizations with thousands of people spending a few minutes each to do some tasks. Or you may have organizations where many of the things that today are done by people can be done by computers on the other side of the world with oversight from a few people in different places. Mass collaboration, peer production, or crowdsourcing. Collective efforts are exploding online which mines the billions of links that web site owners make to other sites to produce its results. Little bits of time from thousands of people pursuing their hobbies can produce substantial new things of value. That is a pretty new thing in the world.
Some of the issues to debate: All that raises a fundamental question about technology's ultimate impact on workers where all but a tech-savvy few. People losing jobs and companies going out of business at the same time new jobs are being created and new companies are forming. What would unions say. Job vs work. Legal jurisdiction and how to protect and solve disputes. Are governments willing and ready to give away political power. Are people making more decisions for themselves, more highly motivated, more creative and able to be more flexible ? Multicultural vs an universal culture. Privacy and security of information. The critical factors of organization success in the near future will no longer be just economies of scale. In our increasingly knowledge-based and innovation-driven economy, the critical factors for business success are often flexibility, creativity, motivation., responsibility. It will be a matter of assembling new groups of people who never existed as a group before and connecting them in ways that allow us to do the same things in very different ways, or even new things. Instead of all the expertise rethe mind of one person you could have a lot of expertise and processing power spread all over the world.
This has interesting possibilities. ·