The future of…

Click here for contact details, other articles and personal details

The future of … work

For Business & Technology, October 97 Issue

Ian Pearson

People sometimes feel threatened by technological change. Employment patterns and the nature of work itself will certainly be changed enormously over the coming years because of developing technology. Although information technology is the fastest moving area, there is rapid progress in the fields of materials, biotechnology and medicine, and also in the supporting technologies such as microtechnology and robotics. It is obvious that a great many jobs will be affected.

New technologies such as these will open new opportunities to improve our lives, but of course, people will be needed to do some of the work. Many new jobs will be created, but at the same time, improvements in efficiency resulting from the new technologies will reduce the number of people needed to do a particular job. So far, more jobs are being created than eradicated and if the current rate of technology development continues, we will see this happy state remain for a while yet. Even with smart computers taking a lot of mental jobs and robots taking lot of manual jobs, we should not be too concerned. Even if we were to replace every industrial, agricultural and service industry job by a computer or robot, GDP would more likely increase than decrease. We would be able to spend our time as we wish, with work changed to voluntary or craft status. We should focus instead on managing the change for the benefit of society. In any case, social change will be gradual so we will have time to adjust.

Advances in materials, biotechnology and medicine will increase our expectations of higher quality of life. We will demand ever more care and ever better products. Advances in robotics and microtechnology will enable much of the physical side of care and 'body maintenance' to be automated. However, we will need many people to provide the human side - the compassion. Few of us would welcome a robot offering us simulated sympathy, well not for a long time. Similarly, much of the service industry could be automated but much depends on the human side for its existence. We will prefer human hairdressers, stewardesses and waiters over robots for many years. This caring side of jobs is unlikely to disappear and is very likely to increase as a key differentiator when automation has removed or devalued the others.

In information technology, we can automate away much of the boring drudgery of everyday activity. People in data entry or paper pushing are already redundant, simply waiting for the appropriate computer systems and programs to be implemented. If a procedure can be explained as a set of logical steps, obeying explicable rules, or can even be taught by example to another person, then generally it could be taught to a computer. Current work on artificial intelligence will make a huge impact over the coming years. We should expect many tasks to be delegated to computers and robots. People will become more productive, so fewer people will be needed for the same workload. Many jobs will be changed beyond recognition or simply vanish.

We are well on the way to an information dominated economy. Information jobs lend themselves particularly to teleworking. This is nothing new but we may eventually see up to 20% of the workforce working this way - the same proportion we see in London today. A top consultant can share expertise across the network instead of having to ship a patient to a distant hospital. Information companies are particularly suited to the virtual company model, where instead of employing a large static workforce, companies retain a core of key people and bring in others as contractors, project by project. Alternatively, people in more traditional companies may work on a single project with appropriate employees from other companies. Either way, many people will change their jobs more frequently. They will not want to uproot and move each time they change jobs, so will welcome teleworking, often working in local telework centres with their neighbours, allowing a feeling of stability of workplace as they move between contracts.

This flexible virtual company way of working is two sided. Companies can operate more responsively to the market, being leaner and meaner, but workers will also have more choice and be more effectively mobile, so will be able to negotiate better deals. Both sides benefit. As artificial intelligence improves, we will see companies being established by computer, automatically identifying market opportunities and setting up virtual companies to exploit them by linking together the necessary people (and computers) to do the job from the available pool. Such intelligence may be employed by the contractors themselves or by agent companies. To finish in the further future, one day, we may see companies staffed entirely by software entities. If these are more capable or efficient than human competitors, then we will see change indeed.

805 words