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This section will present some ideas and thoughts on the future of work as we enter into what some have labeled the "Knowledge Based Economy". Our approach will be more of a hands on approach rather than some theoretical debate. We will be guided by a commitment to bring light to how these socioeconomic transformations effect the current and future of work. As with most historical transformations, this move towards a knowledge based economy is asymmetrical and moving at an erratic pace. So our guidance will be strongly influenced by examining the future that is currently living amongst us within the growing work space deemed knowledge work.
We will attempt to develop an accessible tool kit which can be used to develop and explore the future of work within a knowledge based economy. We offer a variety of glimpses and perspectives and therefore some of the tools we offer will be more relevant to particular audiences.
See a recent article published in WIRED NEWS written by myself entitled the Next Revolution in Supercomputing.
What is a Knowledge Based Economy and What is a Knowledge Worker?
For a start in defining what the notion of a knowledge based economy is and what a knowledge worker is let us first focus on where on the historical technology development curve we are at. Technology within the last 50 years has advanced at an unprecedented pace. Some argue that it is currently developing at an exponential pace when viewed from a holistic historical perspective. However for most of us, we define it when we switch on our computer and attempt to use it as a tool in our personal workspace as carved out of the production process for the workplace we are employed by. Somewhere within the value chain of a productive entity, many workers now deemed as knowledge workers, daily form a partnership with their computer and together complete workplace tasks that even a short 20 years ago would never have been envisioned. For most, the knowledge based economy and its productive tools lay within the software used on these computers and devices. Contained in this software is the dead labour and expertise of untold thousands of living and in some cases dead people. This knowledge and expertise is congealed, codified and interfaced with our living labour and pointed towards completing our tasks that form the base within our daily rituals of the work process. The partnership we have formed with technology has produced some of the most astounding advances in worker productivity ever experienced in the history of human kind.
Although software and its development is an important ingredient for determining the future of a knowledge based economy, it is but only one of the necessary. Underlying software development is an advancing convergence of many technologies that will at some point in the future come together. Through this coming together of sorts a new paradigm in which I will for now label the "smarter machine" will be brought forward. (with the appropriate credit given to Shoshana Zuboff)This paradigm will be the bringing together of the following key fields.
- software development, and the creation of modular agent based, process aware information systems
- hardware and the accelerating low cost computation power offered by the latest advances
- human- computer interaction advances steering abruptly away from the black box paradigm of system development through the use of many new HCI techniques.
- communication and connectivity and the expanding internet applications and standards
- work flow modeling and the business world's successful attempts at informating the production process
- database storage and accessibility
- advances in machine learning, data mining, statistics, decision theory, information theory, and a whole host of new algorithms such as support vector machines and neural networks.
Have a watch of Bill's presentation and warm up to some of the thoughts above. Mr. Gates, a spokesperson for one of the most influential companies within the knowledge based economy outlines the future of software development and R&D activities of Microsoft.
http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/209/
More to come soon!
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