A Shifting Paradigm

Just for my personal filtering I want to go over a few things we touched on in Tuesday's session. I believe we started with a short chronology of the changing status of the workplace. The jobs of our parents and grandparents were usually full-time, often labor intensive work. Employees had many work benefits resulting from the efforts of labor unions. There is an image of the factory associated to working, as illustrated in Metropolis and Modern Times.

Moving to the trends of today, there has been a shift toward more part-time positions in the service industry. Several factors such as automation and outsourcing have decreased the labor base in the US. It does seem though, that these changes have only proved to make the elite class more so, as many jobs are eliminated or moved overseas. The paradigm of gratification has also shifted, as consumers use future performance and funds to decide what can be purchased now. Loans and credit cards encourage a buy now, pay later mindset that has repercussions.
The most recent financial downturn illustrates the impending danger of living beyond our means. Technology has also played a role, as the internet has allowed for information and transactions to occur without delay. As far as the market, it's not difficult to see why companies have such huge swings in price, as tons of individual investors floor the web and buy and trade on a whim. While the market has been used for decades as a forward looking indicator of our economy, much of that seems diluted now as it seems to become more of a popularity counter.

Where will things go from here? I've heard some interesting notions of future trends:

The Project-Oriented Workplace
Some experts believe that trends will shift toward jobs being offered on a project by project basis. There's a pretty interesting podcast on this subject and I'll try to find it again, but essentially this would be very similar to how film production has been operating for a while. There's very little job security aside from the personal network of contacts you draw from. There's also a higher importance given to personal marketing, as a workplace of freelancers compete for positions.

The Speed of Information and Globalization
As computer technologies improve and more people use and continually make content for the web, the amount of data available will grow exponentially. We'll also see increased globalization as technologies "flatten" the barriers that once stopped individuals from becoming multi-national participators. For good measure, here's an opposing argument against the world being flat.

A wonderful illustration of many of the changes now and coming in the context of our lives now is a slideshow entitled Shift Happens: