The Future of Work (An Abstract)

Everybody works.

There are different kinds of jobs, different kinds of people, and different marketplaces for employment. The point of working is to have access to resources. Generally, there are two kinds of work in the marketplace: full-time and part-time.

One-for-one work fulfilment.

For the most part in highly-efficient industries, people are often viewed as one-dimensional, singular cogs to fit into big wheels. One specific purpose per person. And this is true for most long-term employment. It's a practice for stability and cost-effectiveness. Afterall, this kind of work is usually a long string of processes, and is best handled consistently by one person.

Multiple-for-multiple work fulfilment.

On the other hand, we have the part-time / freelancing paradigm, in which the marketplace has plenty of piecemeal jobs and they all require fulfilment by an aggregate of participants. So for example, at any point in time, a marketplace requires tasks X, Y, and Z to be fulfilled - so the market action is to acquire relevant contributors to complete the tasks.

A smarter, hyper-connected future.

In any case, imagine a future where every single person is multi-dimensionally defined by community ratings via a matrix of blockchains, and the work fulfilment marketplace becomes technologically adept enough to break down all kinds of jobs into smaller chunks, effectively increasing the surface area for market connectivity.

This will create an abundance of opportunities as work, education, leisure, and autonomy becomes one and the same. With advanced AIs and social consensus mechanisms, the expansive arrays of the gig economy would be on-demand and networked intelligently.

Taking it to the extremes, the future of work is one that will be so convenient and efficient that every stream of emergent human activity will be able to create or fulfil market demands anywhere in the world, any time.

A person will no longer be assumed by the market as a one-dimensional actor, but a multivariate entity that represents the many smaller cogs that make up the machine called civilization.

Note: This is a precursor to a larger article and this payout will supply the necessary calories and nutrients to survive through both the illustrating and writing period!


Image from Wikimedia.


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