the future of work

All rights reserved, May 2, 2016

THE FUTURE OF WORK

SWEDEN’S SIX HOUR WORKDAY

This year Sweden started on a little experiment that could have a dramatic impact on our world. The way we work, play, live, love, everything. In a bid to increase productivity and increase happiness, the country is experimenting with a 6 hour work day.

Responses to this move range from dismissive “Not for us” to skeptical “Will it work?” to militant “What are they doing to the moral fabric of society?”

ICE, All rights reserved, May 2, 2016

This report explores the before and after of such an idea, the context and implications. It will look at why this is an idea whose time has come and what kind of steps others who seek to emulate it (and even Sweden itself) will need to keep in mind in such an effort.

To understand the move will require us to go back a few hundred years to the industrial revolution, grapple with notions of work and its role in society. How this history is in conflict with the new realities of today’s technology and the information economy. And arrive at a sense of how we would like to shape the future..

THE FUTURE OF WORK


WHAT IS WORK?

The Fordist paradigm

Alternativeparadigms

UBERFICATIONOF PROCESSES

ChangingWork processes

Company side(Uber)

People side(FOSS, Wikipedia)

RECASTINGOF WORK

Implications?

from Need to Choice

New Systems

21 Hours

Universal Basic Income

THE FUTURE OF WORK

TOMORROW’S TECHNOLOGY

ICT, Computing,AI, Robotics

Automation of Blue Collar andWhite Collar Jobs


Our story begins about a hundred years ago.

While the industrial revolution of the 18th and

19th centuries made drastic changes to the way

work was carried out, it is in the early part of the

20th century that we see ideas of FW Taylor’s

Scientific Management get entrenched at the

workplace. And more so in the factories of Henry

Ford than anywhere else.


FORD’S 8 HOUR WORKDAY

In 1925, Henry Ford, in a bid to improve

productivity and also reduce employee turnover,

absenteeism and the accident rate, cut the

working day to 8 hours, and the work week to 5

days. And doubled the wages, while at it.

Other manufacturers were forced to follow suit—

leading to the institutionalization of the 40-hour

work week.

It led to improvement in workers’ health and

productivity. Their rising affluence allowed them to

actually buy the cars (and other goods) they were

making.

Thus was created the consumption-driven American economic system, which has now found resonance and adoption

throughout the world. ICE, All rights reserved, May 2, 2016

The Fordist paradigm of work is first and foremost productive

Work creates or increases value.

It shapes raw material,

cultivates crops, dams rivers to

produce electricity. It moves

things to where they are useful.


Work as a means to an End

Work is a means to earn money

or status or other benefits. Work

may be mindless, boring, painful,

dangerous, but can be and is

done since it pays for a living or

allows for other benefits.


Work, in this paradigm, is also a means of keeping people consuming and the economy running

Work. Earn. Consume.

Economy grows, Earnings rise. Consume more. People's worth is

measured by the market value of their labor.

Any threat to this order of things is quickly dispensed with. Policy

is modified and tweaked and bent over backwards to ensure this

system is strengthened and unthreatened. People are kept in this

state of work in order to keep the economy running.


But work can be more than a means to an end.Work can be a pleasure in itself. It may be seen as a duty, or simply a part of being part of a society.

In his book The Craftsman, Richard Sennet describes people who are driven more often by the

pleasure of their craft than the reward at the end. Another popular example is the Slow Food

movement which highlights the pleasure in making food and talking rather than food quickly

prepared for consumption.


CURIOSITY / SELF EXPRESSION

Work might be the pursuit of a curiosity or a mode of self expression. And decoupled from monetary reward, a means of building character.

“Character is formed primarily by a man's work.

And work, properly conducted in conditions of

human dignity and freedom, blesses those who

do it.”

EF Schumacher


WORK AS PLAY *

Similar to the idea of Sennet’s Craftsman, but as opposed to the seriousness of the craftsman’s exploration, play is activity for it’s own sake.The best examples are of course children who are

very serious about their play. But some adults, the

most creative ones are also often ‘playing’ a great

deal.

* Not to be confused with the modern sports

professional where in fact Play as Work.


WORK AS SOCIABILITY

Work may also function out of a simple sense of society. eg When an accident victim is taken to hospital by people nearby. When a parent bathes a child. When we help out.

That we look out for each other as humans, that

we feed each other, clean each other may not be

classified as work, but is far more important and

valuable and significant.


WHAT IS WORK?





Company side(Uber)


RECASTINGOF WORK

Implications?

from Need to Choice

New Systems

21 Hours


THE FUTURE OF WORK





Two important developments of the last 30 years are recasting our notions of work.

One, the advancement of IT enables truly automatic tasks and processes.

Two, the Internet of Things. As more and more of these machines, robots and people get connected to and communicate with each other, it enables coordination and targeted delivery at a planetary scale.

The combination of these two allow for hitherto unimagined possibilities.


Computer programs can write newspaper articles and even stories of

a passable quality.

Self Driving Cars: Activity which was considered extremely complex and

therefore human now being automated.

Robotic melon pickers, that can judge ripeness of fruit by smell. Similarly robots

to spray pesticide and fertilizers; Robot shearers tested in Australia.

Complex Supply Chains integrated and managed by software


Earlier, manual labour was being replaced by machines,

Today’s computers and robots can supplant white-collar work

and complex activities like diagnosis, trading and writing.

Where they don’t completely do the work, they can perform

large chunks of tasks, drastically reducing the number of

people required overall.

Deloitte expects cognitive technologies embedded in products

to provide “intelligent” behavior, natural interfaces (such

speech and visual), and automation. The impact of product

applications on workers ranges from none (robotic toys or

intelligent thermostats), to marginal (robotic vacuum cleaners

may reduce hours demanded of house cleaners), to

significant.


“People are racing against the machine in media and music, finance and manufacturing, retailing and trade, in short, in every industry. And losing.”Erik Brynjolfsson

The advent of an increasingly

machine run world is one which

humans will finding increasingly

difficult to cope with.


The use of technology and automation is only speeding up at a rapid

pace. Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael Osborne, in ‘The Future of

Employment: How Susceptible Are Jobs to Computerization’ expect about

half of present jobs to be automated in the next two decades (by 2035).

Gartner forecasts that “one in three jobs will be taken by software or

robots by 2025.”

ABB’s CEO expects European unemployment expected to rise from the

present 10 to 20 or 25 percent in the next decade. The Wall Street

Journal expects corporate re-engineering to eliminate between 1 million

and 2.5 million jobs a year across the entire U.S. economy, for the

foreseeable future.

90% 2.5milOf Jobs replaced by smart

machines by 2030Jobs eliminated in the US every year

by corporate re-engineering


WHAT IS WORK?





Company side(Uber)


RECASTINGOF WORK

Implications?

from Need to Choice

New Systems

21 Hours


THE FUTURE OF WORK





The Internet enables Innovative means of work organization:It is possible now to break up work into tiny tasks that can be performed by people in different parts of the world.


The Free and Open Source Software movement, which gave us Linux and Wikipedia, is one of the most significant examples of a distributed model of work enabled by the internet.

People across the world connected by the Internet, are able to collaborate and contribute to the creation of something that is useful for millions.The work is done free or occasionally paid a honorarium, it is done at programmers own time, as much as they wish to or can contribute.


This gives people a lot more flexibility, allowing

different work-life-play balances and dynamics.

People (both companies and individuals) looking to

more ethical ways of being and functioning (green,

sharing, voluntarism/open source models, sourcing

of materials and labor etc) are enabled by this

network.

These then also allow us to imagine alternatives to

the big business model of work.. For instance, the

Exchange economies that were popular during the

aftermath of the 2008 crisis.


Companies too are outsourcing more and more work to contractors. Like Uber’s ‘independent contractors’ who are summoned and used as and when required, and are kept on standby forever


While Uber itself will likely shift to completely

automated vehicles and not need drivers, more

and more organizations will adopt an Uber-like

reliance on contract and on-demand workers.

This will result in and be facilitated by an

increasingly large self-employed workforce. Self-

employed will thus likely be the largest section in

the workforce of the future.

This leads to the emergence of micro-task

economies. So "workers" cease to exist in the

same big masses. Even turn invisible.


WHAT IS WORK?





Company side(Uber)


RECASTINGOF WORK

Implications?

from Need to Choice

New Systems

21 Hours


THE FUTURE OF WORK





Imagine an economy in which 1 percent own the machines, 10 per cent manage their operation, and 90 per cent either do the remaining scraps of ‘unautomatable’ work, or are unemployed.

This may seem like a proposition that the 1 percent find appealing, but the very economics that got us to this point where this can happen tells you otherwise. “The reality is that the free market economy, as we understand it today, simply cannot work without a viable labor market. Jobs are the primary mechanism through which income—and, therefore, purchasing power—is distributed to the people who consume everything the economy produces. If at some point, machines are likely to permanently take over a great deal of the work now performed by human beings, then that will be a threat to the very foundation of our economic system.

This is not something that will just work itself out. This is something that we need to begin thinking about.”

Martin Ford


Simply put, machines don’t buy things.And people who don’t have jobs or income will not be able to buy. So what happens to the economy? Will it lead to a global crash, depression, swabs of wealth destroyed across the globe? More important, what happens to people?The impoverishment to large sections of the globe, entire countries going bankrupt; The possibility of civil wars or simple old fashioned genocide that can be ordered by those in charge of the machines make people especially vulnerable.


FROM needing to work TO choosing to work

It is also possible to envision a happier world. Where people don’t

abandon their vocation for soul sapping means of livelihood. But

rather one where they indulge in what they most truly wish to do,

their calling.

Like John Lanchester suggests, “The robots liberate most of humanity

from work: we don’t have to work in factories or go down mines or

clean toilets or drive long-distance lorries, but we can choreograph

and weave and garden and tell stories and invent things.”


Once we do away with the need to work, it is possible that we

choose work. Work of the character-building kind. The kind that is

fulfilling and truly human. The play kind. The social kind.

‘Worklessness’, then, is reframed from a problem to solve to an

opportunity to discover what is most truly human about us.

Or in the words of Ernst Fischer:

“As machines become more and more efficient and perfect, so it

will become clear that imperfection is the greatness of man.”

It is in this context that Sweden’s move begins to make sense.


This will require a paradigm shift in the way we think about the world, the economy, our notions of work and play, our education system, our infrastructure, everything.


A NEW EDUCATION SYSTEMTo begin with, something as elementary as our

education system. The bulk of the present

system creates workers for factories, and

managers for them.

The future will require more liberal arts, more

pure science, more explorers. It will have space

for people without a formal education , trained

in the world, on farms, in communities,

through travel, through exploring curiosity like

people, used to in the past.

Large scale reform of the education system will

be the first ask of this new world.


NEW MODELS OF WORK ORGANIZATIONWe will also need to update our policies around

employee relations and organizational structures. We

would do well to consider seriously proposals like the 21

hour work week.

Paul Mason adds that the transition is not just about

economics. It will have to be a human transition. Our

roles as consumers, lovers, communicators are as

important to this as our role at work.


NEW ECONOMIC PARADIGMSWe will need to move out of the present neo-liberal

paradigm and tend towards more socialist principles like

Universal Basic Income.

What it will allow is the creation of a security that

allows people to pursue things they would rather, than

be forced to do things they do not like. Allowing a much

freer flowering of creativity, exploration and if one were

to be a little optimistic, a little more happiness.

Let us look at two interesting suggestions mooted in the

recent past.


21 HOUR WORK WEEKThis proposal comes from the New Economic Foundation, a think tank

based in the UK.

NEF suggests that shifting from the current default of the 40 hour work

week to a 21 hour week could help to address a range of urgent,

interlinked problems: overwork, unemployment, over-consumption, high

carbon emissions, low well-being, entrenched inequalities, and the lack

of time to live sustainably, to care for each other, and simply to enjoy life.

The logic of industrial time is out of step with today’s conditions, where

instant communications and mobile technologies bring new risks and

pressures, as well as opportunities. The challenge is to break the power

of the old industrial clock without adding new pressures, and to free up

time to live sustainable lives.


21 HOUR WORK WEEKThis move would offer several benefits:

Increased social justice and well-being. A 21-hour ‘normal’ working

week could help distribute paid work more evenly across the

population, reducing ill-being associated with unemployment, long

working hours and too little control over time.

More sustainable habits: Work pressures of today make it necessary to

use a number of ‘time saving’ devices, technologies, and habits.

Similarly, the pressure of the work-week ends up making us consume

on weekends, creating an unsustainable ecological situation.

Improving gender relations: It becomes possible to share childcare

equally between two partners

Break the habit of living to work, working to earn, and earning to

consume.

The Swedish experiment is a step in this direction.ICE, All rights reserved, May 2, 2016

UNIVERSAL BASIC INCOMEBut to make any of these earlier proposals feasible or even thinkable,

requires a guarantee of the basics: housing, food, healthcare. We’ll have

to begin by guaranteeing the trio to the entire population. People can

(and will) work for more, but they also will not be compelled any longer

to do things (like David Graeber calls them, bullshit jobs) in order to live.

A basic income will free up people to pursue what they really love.

A two year pilot is to happen in Finland starting next year. 100,000 Finns

could get up to 1,000 euros a month. For this, they will not need to work

or prove they're in poverty. They will simply get a fixed amount to do

with what they will.

Cities in the Netherlands and Canada are also planning pilots with

Universal Basic Income.


UNIVERSAL BASIC INCOMEThere are several challenges to introducing Universal Basic Income.

Many governments have such lean budgets that they can’t even try doing

this. Besides the cultural resistance against giving away free money to

people for doing nothing would be huge.

It is important to consider the idea not in the context of our current

economy, but in a context British economist Paul Mason calls

Postcapitalist. Mason explains how capitalism isn't as socially productive

as it's traditionally been. In fact, the 2008 crisis would point to the

opposite. One can also see that the nature of the Information Economy

(based on zero marginal cost) is radically different from the economics of

the industrial age that Capitalism is based on.


Sources:Paul Mason PostCapitalismJeremy Rikin, The End of WorkJuliet B Schor, The Overworked AmericanBertrand Russel, In Praise of IdlenessEF Schumacher, Small is BeautifulMartin Ford, The Lights in the TunnelSebastian de Grazia, Of Time Work and LeisureDeloitte, Redesigning Work in an Era of Cognitive TechnologiesNew Economic Foundation, 21 Hours http://dupress.com/articles/work-redesign-and-cognitive-technology/ fastcoexist http://www.fastcoexist.com/section/the-new-rules-of-work Anti-Work | 21 Hour Work-Week | Post-Work Economy | Universal Basic Income https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/bob-black-the-abolition-of-work http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jun/11/neoliberalism-hijacked-vocabulary

Images from: commons.wikimedia.orgflickr.com freeimages.compexels.compixabay.comunsplash.com


http://dupress.com/articles/work-redesign-and-cognitive-technology/

http://www.fastcoexist.com/section/the-new-rules-of-work

http://www.fastcoexist.com/section/the-new-rules-of-work

http://www.fastcoexist.com/3041719/change-generation/work-is-bullshit-the-argument-for-antiwork

http://www.fastcoexist.com/1679111/the-case-for-a-21-hour-work-week

http://www.fastcoexist.com/3056483/welcome-to-the-post-work-economy

http://www.fastcoexist.com/3052595/how-finlands-exciting-basic-income-experiment-will-work-and-what-we-can-learn-from-it

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/bob-black-the-abolition-of-work



http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jun/11/neoliberalism-hijacked-vocabulary

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jun/11/neoliberalism-hijacked-vocabulary

Pagewise Photo Credits:

12 http://www.loc.gov/pictures, pingnews3 http://www.loc.gov/pictures, pingnews 45 ClkerFreeVectorImages6 ClkerFreeVectorImages7 US Dept of Agriculture8 US Dept of Agriculture9 Tim Gouw 1011 Eddy Klaus12 StockSnap13 Wikimedia 1415 BMW 16 kropekk_pl, Google17 BMW18 Amazon19 kaboompics.com20

21 Tim Gouw22 ubuntu23 StockSnap24 Jim Jackson25 Jim Jackson2627 Jim Jackson28 Jim Jackson29 Paul Proshin30 Paul Proshin31 Paul Proshin32 cherylt2333 Rainbow_Loom_und_Nadel34 Tung Wong35 Shanice Garcia36 Shanice Garcia37 Jesse Vermeulen 38 Jesse Vermeulen3940


Interested in future trends and [email protected] facebook.com/uxtrendspotting@UXTrendspotting

Author: ANAND VIJAYANSupervised by: DEEPA S REDDY

the future of work

Lifestyle