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A dozen surprises about the future of work, Andy Hines

The Technology Horizons Program's research on the Future of Work comes at an exciting time for the intersection of work and technology. Technology has become integrated into virtually every aspect of work. And because we spend so much time working, work really is the place where we most directly feel the impact of developing technologies.

Thanks to everyone who came to Podio HQ and kicked off the new year with a great meetup. Our guest speakers; Ingrid Haug, founder of Usable Machine and Claus Bindslev, owner of Bindslev Nextstep, gave a great insite into how work tools and organisations are changing towards the Future of Work.

After I wrote The Future Of Manufacturing Is In America, With Robots and 3D Printing, commenter and former TreeHugger writer Ruben disagreed, saying "robots are fantastically expensive and resource-intensive. Humans, on the other hand, can eat almost anything put in front of them." True, but humans also need bathroom and coffee breaks, and the occasional birthday cake.

Various items on the Future of Work

As both political parties are reminding us right now, America is in an unemployment crisis. The latest sunny news: a new report says that even if you land a new job, it's likely to pay low wages.) Each week, we're bringing you true stories from the unemployed. "Just to be clear, the day before you graduate, you are the future of America. The day after, you're on your own." This is what's happening out there.

onnected, location-independent, autonomous, global, piecemeal: There are plenty of adjectives that have previously been employed to describe the future of work, but the author of a book on the topic is throwing another contender into the ring - adult. Time to grow up then

At first, there seems a discrepancy: we hear incessant talk of low job growth and economic distress, but see people tapping expensive smartphones and buying the latest social-mobile app. Indeed, the technology and design industries seem unaffected by the recession, set to continue on the same course of planned obsolescence they've been on for decades. But a second look reveals that advances in these sectors are helping people adjust to life in a pared-down economy, in a world where the environment has become a main concern. Our recession isn't happening in a vacuum, and advances in design and technology, Read more: http://www.utne.com/science-technology/the-future-of-work.aspx#ixzz25PFuNAlN

Thomas Power makes the assertion that there will be no jobs by 2030 in the excellent Smarta ebook Smartest Brains 2010 and beyond!

Thomas Power makes the assertion that there will be no jobs by 2030 in the excellent Smarta ebook Smartest Brains 2010 and beyond!

Hi, this is Steven Cherry for IEEE Spectrum's "Techwise Conversations." This is show number 79. Sixty years ago, there were about 350 000 switchboard operators working for AT&T. Today, there are fewer than 20 000. Nowadays, automation is moving up the skills ladder in just about every profession.

See also the video

News analysis, features, special reports about emerging technologies and their impact for innovators and business leaders. Published by MIT since 1899.

This is a presentation by Marshall Brain, founder of How Stuff Works. He's written more extensively on the subject in an essay called Robotic Nation, which I haven't read yet. I think Brain might be overestimating the ability of machine-vision and natural language processing to supplant human intelligence, but the general trend towards fewer and fewer jobs is real one that I've written about a lot lately.

The Management Innovation eXchange (MIX) is an open innovation project aimed at reinventing management for the 21st century. The premise: while "modern" management is one of humankind's most important inventions, it is now a mature technology that must be reinvented for a new age. It's time to hack management.

In the 2011 inaugural MBO Partners Independent Workforce Index, a study of independent professionals in America, it is clear that the cataclysmic workforce shifts of the past decades have fueled a new kind of productivity, wealth and personal growth opportunity for American workers and companies.

In a wide-ranging discussion moderated by Peter Jackson, Chief Scientist for Thomson Reuters, MIT's Andrew McAfee and John Seely Brown [JSB] from the Deloitte Center for the Edge explored the impact of technology on the workspace and global workforce.

In this paper will be discussed different types of scenarios and the aims for using scenarios. Normaly they are being used by organisations due to the need to anticipate processes, to support policy-making and to understand the complexities of relations. Such organisations can be private companies, R&D organisations and networks of organisations, or even by some public administration institutions.

Employers need to radically change old working models, writes Alison Maitland, senior visiting fellow at Cass Business School. Rapid advances in communications technology, including social media, are shifting the balance of power in societies at many levels and enabling a revolution in when, where and how we work.

In our last blog (which you can see here), I hosted a guest blogger, Chris Ritchie, who wrote about how the job market is a major problem for people in their twenties and early thirties (whom I'll call "Echoes"), and got a spirited response from a number of readers.

The claim that robots are taking our jobs has become so commonplace of late that it's a bit of a cliché. Nonetheless, it has a strong element of truth to it.