Sergiusz Prokurat's Blog

Work 2.0 – technology is upgrading our jobs

Technological progress tends to eliminate human error. Everything can be automated – argues Christopher Steiner in the book titled: „Automate This: How Algorithms Came to Rule Our World”. People desperately want to know whether technology and machines are going to take work away from them – but this question should be reversed. Who will work in the Digital Age, the world of Work 2.0?

In 1811, when Ned Ludd destroyed knitting frames, workers were convinced that machines would take their work away from them. However, it turned out that there was more than enough work, both for machines and for people. Economists reassured that workplaces would be created over and over – and so has it been for the next 200 years. The great Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter understood changes as creative destruction. According to his beliefs innovation does not mean that the economy should return to the same initial level.

Many people seem to think that automation is something from the distant future, meanwhile this process is gaining incredible momentum right before our eyes. Supermarkets are a good example, where staff are being traded in wholesale for the so-called self-service checkouts. Obviously this is done to reduce costs. Machines are still far from perfect, but we can forecast them to be increasingly reliable and supermarkets are in for large savings thanks to them.

If some unexpected changes don’t take place, then all points to the further robotisation and informationalisation of our entire space in which we operate. Experts from the International Federation of Robotics reckon that 2014 will be equally fruitful for robotics as its predecessor. Computers are everywhere right now. Simple business processes are increasingly automated, with IT specialists and programmers working in nearly all large companies. In the information and communication technology (ICT) sector changes are occurring fast enough to surprise analysts of these sectors. Automation and robotics are becoming the as-of-yet undiscovered factor transforming our society – but is this transformation for the better? Robots and algorithms are becoming better at building cars, writing articles, translating. There was a time when these tasks were done by humans. So how will we, humans, make money for a living? The answer to this question lies in the list of work which computers can do. Because if a machine can do something, it is just a matter of time before it will be doing it cheaper than a human. „Dancing with Robots”, a report published by the American think tank Third Way, sheds light on the problem of “disappearing” jobs. The authors of the report find that two conditions have to be met for a task to be done by a computer. First, the information condition: the information necessary to conduct the task has to be gathered in a form understandable to a machine. Second, the processing condition: the process of information processing necessary for executing the task in question has to be possible to write down in a set of rules. The first condition is a question of advanced interface (sight, hearing), the second is a question of information processing – a process similar to human thinking. But can and will machines think like us?

My article – „The Hill” (Washington DC newspaper) – Robots and the future of work

The real structural problem of the American labour market can’t be seen close up, so let’s take a few steps back and look at the productivity trap the USA is currently in and the price that Americans are paying right now for technological progress.

Article is available HERE

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Published on December 29, 2013 02:41

My column – „The Journal” – Technology is a double-edged sword

A specific feature of the current global crisis is high youth unemployment. What’s more, this problem affects mainly and nearly exclusively developed countries. Sergiusz Prokurat asks: how can that be?

Article is available HERE

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Published on December 29, 2013 02:36

‘Robots will steal our jobs… and managers are doomed’, says new book on future of work

“We are at the start of a new era” says Sergiusz Prokurat, a top economist. „It’s dangerous – but there are opportunities… for some”. Article is available HERE

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Published on December 17, 2013 07:36

Winner Takes All and How Not to be a Loser in Work 2.0

In the book Sergiusz Prokurat talks a lot about the strategies individuals need to employ to adapt to the world of Work 2.0. Here we would like to enumerate some reasons for why this is so important and provide a brief summary of the book’s recommendations.

There are many reasons you should adapt to new trends on the labour market, but probably the most distressing trend and one which should be your main motivator is increasing job polarisation. As early as 2011 the McKinsey Global Institute identified three types of work:

transformational (construction, physical activity, etc.)
transactional (routine white collar jobs)
interactional (jobs relying on knowledge, collaboration and expertise)

One of the main trends identified in the book is that increasingly transactional jobs are being streamlined and automated, which inevitably leads to growing unemployment among the middle class. Previously stable lifelong careers and jobs in call centres, in banks’ operations departments and many more are being lost (forever) to machines. The same goes for transformational jobs, where production processes have, in fact, been automating for some time now.

This has inevitable consequences for income inequalities worldwide:

source: http://www.economist.com/node/21528434

Of course the rising inequalities shown in the graph taken from The Economist have been caused by much more than capital-biased technological change, yet there is no denying that these changes owe much to the substitution of workers by capital, i.e. automation.

What can we do?

There are a number of recommendations in the book and please do read it if you are interested in the whole picture (especially chapter 5 which deals specifically with individual strategies of navigating Work 2.0). For now, we can summarise the main findings in four main points:

Identify market niches for specific skills
Match these niches with your strengths
Acquire the skills you lack to offer top quality work
Create your own interactional job

In order to survive in the new world of work you have to know that the old system of stable careers with gradual promotions is dead. If you want to be a winner of this winner-takes-all market, you need to analyse your situation as if you were a company – what products (work) are in demand and which out of these are you good at (your core business). If you lack some complementary skills to those which are your forte, acquire them.

Also, don’t idly wait for work to find you. Be proactive, sites such as freelancer.com are there for a reason – there’s demand for people who’ve created their job just like you. You’ll increasingly be in the majority, 58% of American employers said they will create more part-time, temporary or contract employees and 22% will outsource more jobs.

If you want to keep your head above water, jump on the bandwagon of Work 2.0 today, be:

Ready to learn and unlearn for the entirety of your professional career
Flexible with your work and the way you do business
Interactional

This is especially true for young people entering the labour market, who are most at risk of being irrelevant and not finding a job. But, in truth, each one of us should ask ourselves what value do we generate in the world of Work 2.0 and whether it’s time to reinvent ourselves?

Much more right here…

Sergiusz Prokurat, Jan Fabisiak

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Published on December 04, 2013 00:33