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Various items on the Future of Work

There's been a lot of talk about the future of work. But what exactly is it? Although the future is tough to predict, especially at the speed with which we are all moving, there are some common elements that have started to emerge.

he White House likes to talk about manufacturing, and it's easy to fetishize the honor in "making things," but when you get right down to it, it's a services world, and we're all just living in it. The manufacturing sector makes up about a tenth of GDP. It's a crucial, productive, and fiery tenth. But it's just a tenth. The vast majority of us are working for the government, administering health care, serving food, manning an aisle, or doing something else while sitting in front of a computer for eight hours a day. The Services Economy isn't a new development, but it's deepening with each passing decade. Between 1990 and 2008, we created 27.3 million net new jobs. Health care and government alone accounted for 40 percent of that growth, according to economist Michael Spence. Adding in retail, food services, hospitality, and construction*, these sectors accounted for two-thirds of job growth over those two decades.

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

he enhancements discussed ranged from technologies that are starting to have impact in the near term (such as pharmaceutical cognitive enhancement and nutrition) to those further downstream such as artificial exoskeletons and sensory enhancements. For me, the highlight of the day was the animated discussion that ensued as attendees reflected on the potential implications of enhancement technologies. How should they be regulated in the context of work? Who would pay for them, or decide what becomes available? And is 'enhancement' even an appropriate term to use?

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!

Section B work life and technology pgs 7 -13

See also the video

Until There Is Nobody Left To Buy Anything. You Know, for Profit! How to Work for Free for the Richest Companies in the World: The pattern of fostering a community of people to essentially do your work for you -- to assume the risk of trying new ideas, without any guarantee of safety -- [is...]

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

A growing number of workers are becoming increasingly concerned about the future viability of their jobs (if they have them) and, in many cases, that of their professions.

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.

Ten years ago, Facebook didn't exist. Ten years before that, we didn't have the Web. So who knows what jobs will be born a decade from now? Though unemployment is at a 25‑year high, work will eventually return. But it won't look the same. No one is going to pay you just to show up.

A nonprofit research center that specializes in long-term forecasting recently released a report detailing the 10 key skills that will be relevant to the workforce of the future. What are they, and are our schools doing enough to instill them? What are the jobs of the future?

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.

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.

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.