Coupland is talking backstage at Konica Minolta's Spotlight Live event on the future of work in Berlin this week where he was a star speaker. He says the collapse of the idea of a job for life means his generation, Generation X, and later ones think very differently about work than those born earlier. "They don't perceive [a job] as being a guarantee of long-term security – that's the profound difference, he says. "There was a point when the idea of the job for life disintegrated. Now no one has any expectation of lifetime employment."
Work as we know it is coming to an end, he told the audience in Berlin, as cloud-based technologies and ever-faster download speeds are making the office obsolete. Our working days are becoming interspersed with leisure and home activities. We will need to learn to adapt to a freeform schedule, which will present a psychological challenge to those who crave structure. But Coupland believes we should not mourn the loss of the traditional office routine.
"The nine to five is barbaric. I really believe that. I think one day we will look back at nine-to-five employment in a similar way to how we see child labour in the 19th century," he says. "The future will not have the nine till five. Instead, the whole day will be interspersed with other parts of your life. Scheduling will become freeform."
Nine-to-five sounds great to people whose employers expect them to work 80-hour weeks...
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Fnord666 on Friday April 07 2017, @01:27PM (1 child)
What the hell is this guy smoking, and where can I get some?
If it makes you think like Coupland, I don't want anything to do with it.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Friday April 07 2017, @01:28PM
Yeah, on second thought, you're absolutely right... :)