Comments on: The changing nature of work

By: Andrew

Andrew — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 16:57:01 +0000

Thanks DJ. I think that another similarity in the problems facing education and work is the question of agility. Both systems need to become more agile because the large-scale, cookie-cutter approaches clearly have a hard time adapting to technological and social change.

By: DJ Strouse

DJ Strouse — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 03:23:06 +0000

“Work must become tied to a life-long process of education and cognitive development.”

This is a very interesting insight. We have all discussed changing models of both work and education, but separately. Why?

The problems in both are similar – overly restricted cookie-cutter approaches that ignore individual goals and new technologies. The opportunities in both are the same – to provide a diverse set of lifetime experiences that will appeal to different people at different stages in life.

I’ve been rethinking the nature of work and the nature of education separately all this time, but now I wonder – as long we’re doing some rethinking, why not look at both of these as two sides of the same personal development coin?

By: Andrew

Andrew — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 03:22:44 +0000

I agree with the conclusion you and DJ came to about the economy. It does seem to me like that is also changing significantly but with any broad economic change I think there is an inherent change in work as well (aka, in the way individuals relate and position themselves within that economy). While the economic change is definitely the long term factor I think that individual relationships to work will change before we see the larger economic changes.

The data question is a good one. One thing that pops into my mind is tracking the positions help by people who are laid off versus those that a company is hiring for. This could, potentially, show a relationship between outmoded jobs and newly in demand ones. Another statistic that could be tracked is the number of jobs and type of positions held by people over the course of their lives. Speaking from personal experience I’ve already held 3 full time positions in three different industries (and that’s not even counting CoPress).

The data is an important part of the equation and other than the above I have a hard time conceptualizing other aspects to track (probably because my mind works in hypotheticals and isn’t as scientific as it should be).

Ultimately the idea that technology makes *all* jobs obsolete is not the case. But, like you said, I think it does provide an interesting model from which we can analyze some of the short term shifts.

By: Daniel Bachhuber

Daniel Bachhuber — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 17:55:15 +0000

Another question: What data would you track in order to prove or disprove any of the hypotheses present in your post?

By: Daniel Bachhuber

Daniel Bachhuber — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 05:22:39 +0000

Some thoughts. First, I came across an article earlier this evening that stated "automation has helped manufacturing cut 5.6 million jobs since 2000." Granted, I'd be very interested to hear how they calculated this statistic, but I think it's visibly obvious that the efficiencies caused by technological progress are obsoleting jobs. What I'd be really curious about is how the rate of this occurrence is changing over time. Part two is that my friend DJ Strouse had part of this conversation on Wednesday morning. My previous thoughts were that, if the former statement were true, then that would eventually mean that all jobs were obsolete (aka the borg controls the world). This clearly is somewhat absurd, but I think it's an interesting thought experiment that might help guide thoughts about the intermediate stages of the nature of work. We came to a loose conclusion, however, that it's not that work is necessarily going to be obsolete; instead, it's the nature of economy that's changing. I'll leave it at that because I'd like to explore that thought in depth.