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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 07 2017, @03:23PM (5 children)
I think that you have good ideas.
How long do you think it'll take humans to evolve out of the idea that violence is a legitimate way of negotiating a contract?
My money's on about 100,000 years give or take. Do you think it could happen sooner or am I being wildly optimistic?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by NotSanguine on Friday April 07 2017, @04:49PM (4 children)
I think that you have good ideas.
How long do you think it'll take humans to evolve out of the idea that violence is a legitimate way of negotiating a contract?
My money's on about 100,000 years give or take. Do you think it could happen sooner or am I being wildly optimistic?
Violence has been declining for millenia. I'm currently reading Steven Pinker's The Better Angels of Our Nature [wikipedia.org]. He discusses five "historical forces" for this decline in violence:
I recommend this book. It's cogent, well organized and bases its conclusions on actual data, not pseudo-libertarian fantasy [soylentnews.org].
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 1, Funny) by Ethanol-fueled on Friday April 07 2017, @07:40PM (1 child)
While that may be technically true, that men can no longer put mouthy women in their place reduces violence at the cost of weakening society. The family unit has been destroyed, and women would rather work than raise kids. This leads to them being miserable, insufferable cunts and provides an excuse for fifth-columnists to import third-world savages to further destabilize society and prop up the Ponzi scheme that is the global economy by turning all except the richest into debt slaves.
We need to bring back the days of "Pow! Right in the kisser!"
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bob_super on Friday April 07 2017, @07:54PM
You're so hard to mod, sometimes...
(Score: 2) by marcello_dl on Saturday April 08 2017, @07:21AM (1 child)
This is a rationalization of the status quo, which completely forgets other forms or violence. Let this leviathan rule and you will need therapy just to stay alive, and forget about procreating naturally. Not that you will be able to complain about it without repercussions.
Look at it from a coder perspective. Current system is intentional spaghetti code, and getting worse. Sane systems employ localism, modularity (independent cells can solve problems without needing the rest) protocols et al, and do not pollute their environment forcing units to acquire therapy just to stay on, which is gonna happen here. We are byzantine and we will probably end up in the same way, people will care less and less until the system dissolves. The difference is that the new system could employ robots who do not have de-motivation. Which means that the system will be dead but its zombie could be eternal.
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Saturday April 08 2017, @04:40PM
This is a rationalization of the status quo, which completely forgets other forms or violence.
To which other forms of violence are you referring?
Let this leviathan rule and you will need therapy just to stay alive, and forget about procreating naturally. Not that you will be able to complain about it without repercussions.
Therapy to stay alive? Are you referring to talk therapy [merriam-webster.com], medical therapy [merriam-webster.com], or something else?
Natural procreation? Is that being restricted? What exactly do you mean by that?
Given that PIV is always rape [wordpress.com], perhaps you're correct. (this is snark, for those of you who are vulnerable to Poe's Law)
It's unclear (at least to me) what you're going on about. Perhaps you (or someone else who can decipher your incoherent blathering) could explain it to me?
Look at it from a coder perspective.
I'd prefer a car analogy.
Current system is intentional spaghetti code, and getting worse. Sane systems employ localism, modularity (independent cells can solve problems without needing the rest) protocols et al, and do not pollute their environment forcing units to acquire therapy just to stay on, which is gonna happen here.
I'm not really sure what point you're trying to make. Are you saying that government is bad? Or that bad governance is bad? Or that we shouldn't have government at all?
We are byzantine and we will probably end up in the same way, people will care less and less until the system dissolves. The difference is that the new system could employ robots who do not have de-motivation. Which means that the system will be dead but its zombie could be eternal.
I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you have valid points to make, but are unable to elucidate them in English. Sadly, I am unable to identify those points. Perhaps that's a reading comprehension issue on my part?
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr