Futureofwork

Section B work life and technology pgs 7 -13

Some 40 million workers across advanced economies are unemployed. With many nations still facing weak demand-and the risk of renewed recession-hiring has been restrained. Yet there are also long-range forces at play that will make it more difficult for advanced economies to return to pre-recession levels of employment in the years to come. As a result, we see that the current disequilibrium in many national labor markets will not be solved solely with measures that worked well in decades past. To help develop appropriate new responses, MGI examines five trends that are influencing employment levels and shaping how work is done and jobs are created:

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 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.

On Sunday, I learned that a "wantologist" -- what, you don't have one? -- is somebody paid to figure out what you want. Arlie Russell Hochschild, writing in the New York Times, quotes Katherine Ziegler, wantologist, helping a client to figure out what it is that she wants. The conversation went something like this:

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

For the ChosunBiz Insight Forum on 'Smart World, Smart Work' Seoul, Korea, December 14, 2010

The Wall Street crash was still a year away when in 1928 John Maynard Keynes spoke to an audience of Cambridge undergraduates. The great economist told the students that by the time they were old men the big economic problems of the day would be solved.

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.

"A resilient livelihood is achieved by diversifying your income.  To be resilient, you need to get your compensation from many small, and very different, sources.   It's also a livelihood where you aren't dependent on any one source (customer, product, service, or category)."

The goal of the project is to map out the key disruptions re-shaping the future of work, to create a comprehensive and actionable set of tools to help organizations best navigate in the rapidly changing world of work, and to engage both new partners and new disruptors interested in working together to investigate the opportunities and challenges that these present for both individuals and organizations.

Introduction The meaning of work The "Future of Work" has been the subject of an enormous amount of research, both byacademics and other commentators. Large numbers of books, reports and journal articleshave been devoted entirely or in substantial part to this topic. Globalization and technologyin combination are resulting in dramatic changes in how work is done and where it isundertaken. Work can now easily be broken into smaller tasks and redistributed around theworld. Dramatic improvements in real time communications, including the development of "virtual worlds" , are transforming the concept of what it means to be "at work", althoughthere is sometimes a tendency to exaggerate and sensationalise in order to sell books andnewspapers. 1

Various items on the Future of Work

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 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.

The Future of Work examines the challenges to conventional notions of work and organization brought on by new digital technologies and trends. As the velocity of change increases, institutions and individuals must adapt. Yet many structures, including those in education, government, business and the economy, often remain rooted in the past. The report captures the insights of the Nineteenth Annual Aspen Institute Roundtable on Information Technology, where business leaders, technologists, international politicians, academics and innovators explored how global structures and institutions are being confronted by the 21st century realities of distributed knowledge, crowdsourcing, open platforms and networked environments. The report shares the solutions these leaders proposed for preserving individual well-being and defining a future world of work that benefits everyone involved.

A dozen surprises about the future of work, Andy Hines

Business models will change dramatically Technology, globalisation, demographics and other factors will influence organisational structures and cultures. Our scenarios outline three future business models: Large corporates become mini-states and take on a more powerful role across society. Specialisation triggers the rise of collaborative networks. The environmental agenda forces fundamental changes to business strategy.

Monash (see slide deck)

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.