FringeHog Friday Five: The Future of Work in a Flat World?

Work is being redefined by shifts in demographics, economic globalization (flat world), and technological advances. How these drivers are reshaping work is uncertain, complex, ambiguous and volatile. However, there are sign posts indicating how the future of work is evolving in the world of work today. Let’s take a look at a few examples.?

HYPER-LOCAL

Today we’re seeing an increasing number of independent free lancers working from home, at their local Starbucks, or gathering in the homes of friends to get a dose of the office social scene. Economics and technology will continue driving this trend and more workers will go hyper-local as Bruce Sterling calls it, when their office is their PDA and their place of work is where ever they happen to be at a given point in time.?

PLACE-BASED

Not all will go this route, obviously large corporations will still exist in 2030 and millions of people will go to the office to work. However, the everyday objects in the office and the buildings themselves will be networked and imbued with informatic capabilities. In short, things in the workplace and the buildings themselves will think.

VIRTUAL WORLDS

By 2030 going to work in a virtual world will be as common as going to work in the real world is today, probably sooner. Dr. Hunter, a law professor from Wharton specializing in virtual worlds; asserts that the globalization of services will happen in virtual worlds. He sees this as one of the most important employment trends in the 21st century. He confidently predicts that his kids (currently grade school age) will work within one or more of these virtual worlds.

SOCIAL TECHNOLOGY SAVANTS

Thriving in a flat future will require workers to be savants of social technologies like wikis, reputation technologies, yelp, gnutella, and facebook. Whether they are free lancers or working inside a corporation their ability to catalyze a team and mobilize resources to get the job done will in large part determine their value to their client or boss. Workers that demonstrate resilience, adaptability, cooperative work ethics and strong social networking skills will be highly sought after.?

EMERGING ISSUE

Cosmetic Neurology or Pimping the brain is the use of drugs, surgery, or genetic intervention by healthy people to manipulate mood, memory, concentration, capacity to learn and general ability to cope. How will this impact the workplace? Will workers augment their performance by pimping their brains? Will they be required to disclose this information? Will employers require underperforming employees to pimp their brains? How could this effect performance evaluation?

FringeHog Friday Five on The Future of Work in a Flat World

Making a Living in a Virtual World

The Weird New Ways We Work Business Week Online(slideshow)

The Wiki Workplace

Future of Work Playlist