Crowd-sourcing
In the post-industrial economy, the way jobs are distributed is changing completely. Factory-based and central-office jobs are steadily declining. The old, punch-the-time-clock type of factory work is a relic of a bygone age. And nobody needs a central office to read and compose documents, send e-mail or browse the Internet. In fact, when asked where they felt they were most productive, most people said, 'Not the office!'
Going too are the old ways of looking for a job – sending out résumés which list previous jobs and decades of past experience. Today, hiring involves online research on sites like LinkedIn and Facebook. Articles, presentations and papers by job candidates are found online. Applicants are evaluated based on related, recent work, not on which college they attended a decade ago.
People are now responsible for marketing themselves, negotiating their rates and deciding what kind of work they want to pursue. Everyone who has good, related experience has access to jobs. It is the new digital meritocracy.
Crowd-sourcing is the act of outsourcing tasks, traditionally done by employees or local contractors, to an undefined group of people (a crowd), through an open call. This gathers those who are most fit to perform tasks, and contribute with the most relevant and fresh ideas, not only to do the work, but enhance the result.
As the amount of digital work increases and the amount of physical work decreases, our notions of employment and work change profoundly. Digital work does not require roads and factories; it requires an Internet connection with equipment that people have access to in their homes. The need for industrial-era offices, supervisors and employment arrangements diminishes.
Companies are able to access, in real-time, the perfect person for a given job – the one who will do the best job, enjoy it the most, or do it the fastest. This changes the landscape, and the definition of ‘work’.
This is the path to lower unemployment. Manufacturing and office automation has led to some jobs becoming obsolete. But, new kinds of automation can actually drop unemployment rates. They reduce the amount of time it takes unemployed people to find jobs. Technology has the power to create a much more efficient market, connecting job-seekers to employers instantly. Today, most jobs are found via the Internet.
For the last decade or so, companies have been looking offshore for cheap labour. Today, it does not matter where work originates – as long as the suppliers are connected via the Internet. This is the future of work.
The rise of personal robots
There have been dreams of personal robots for decades, but they have remained toys with not much utility. Now the confluences of several different technologies are evolving personal robots to a new level.
Industrial robots are used for specialised manufacturing; by contrast, personal robots are useful for automation of repetitive or menial jobs in the home.
Just as PCs revolutionised personal productivity, personal robots are changing home productivity. Robots like Honda’s ASIMO show major improvements in motion planning, computer vision, natural language processing, and automated reasoning, making them useful ‘servants’. Mind you, ASIMO costs about $1 million; but the price will drop substantially when mass production begins.
You may remember that I got my own Roomba, the home vacuum-cleaning robot in March 2005. Well, the company iRobots, now has $400M annual sales, and is publicly traded with market-cap of $500M. They offer home robots at prices around $250 for home jobs like cleaning pools to scouring gutters. Plus about 40% of their revenues are military jobs such as defusing bombs in war-zones and dangerous tasks like looking for survivors amidst earthquake rubble.
Robot toys are quickly becoming more sophisticated. Hammacher Schlemmer sells a $199 R2-D2 replica, which chirps and beeps as it follows humans around the house, obeys 40 voice commands and plays games, and even acts as a guard robot.
Pleo, a dinosaur ‘life form’ is a $350 companion robot. Pleo may be the first of many personal robots which offer people a level of empathetic companionship – chatting, snuggling up, rubbing up to get attention, and cooing when stroked.
Conversational robots recognise, understand, and respond to human facial features, becoming ‘aware’. In Japan, this type of robot companion is already being sold as robot-nurses for the elderly.
Robots are an intriguing technology that can straddle both the physical and social world. Inspired by animal and human behaviour, the goal is to build robotic creatures with a ‘living’ presence, to gain a better understanding of how humans will interact with this new kind of technology.
People will physically interact with robots, communicate with them, understand them and teach them, all in familiar human terms. Ultimately, personal robots will have the social savvy, physical adeptness, and everyday common sense to partake in everyone’s daily lives in useful and rewarding ways.
Jim Pinto is an industry analyst and commentator, writer, technology futurist and angel investor. His popular e-mail newsletter, JimPinto.com eNews, is widely read (with direct circulation of about 7000 and web-readership of two to three times that number). His areas of interest are technology futures, marketing and business strategies for a fast-changing environment, and industrial automation with a slant towards technology trends.
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