Small Green Bucket – planting trees in India

• Fire• Loos• Films & photos

XXX ROTS THE BRAINS OF MILLIONS OF BIRDS

Schumacher identifies three purposes of human work:

• to produce necessary and useful goods and services;

• to enable us to use and perfect our gifts and skills;

• to serve, and collaborate with, other people, so as to "liberate ourselves from our inborn egocentricity."

WORK ROTS THE BRAINS OF MILLIONS OF WORKERS

We collect worldwide opinions, forecasts,projections and predictions about complexglobal issues and we relate these to the‘here and now’ – what are the threats andwhat are the opportunities?

Previous workshops

Planned workshops

Prepare for Change - Wiki

Conference – November 20th @ University of Bristol

The future of work

The Future of Work

10.15 – 10.45 Waiting for the alarm to go off Ian Roderick

10.45 – 11.15 Why are we going to work? What do we want? Vicky Grinnell-Wright

HumanSmart

11.15 – 11.30 Getting there – the daily commute (with coffee

top up)

Miriam Ricci (UWE)

interviewed by Emmelie

Brownlee

11.45 – 12.15 Arriving and settling into the work place Barry Harvey

Colston Office Centre

12.15 – 12.45 Emails and meetings – people matter Tom Ball

NearDesk

12.45 – 13.00 Discussion

13.00 – 14.00 Lunch

14.00 – 14.30 Making things – transforming resources Chris McMahon University

of Bristol

14.30 – 15.00 Ordering and delivering Miriam Ricci

15.00 – 16.00 End-of the day – reflecting on where it is all going

16.00 Safe journeys home

What will we do?Where will we do it?How will we get there?When will we do it?What will we need to do it?How will we interact with others?What will we be transforming?How will we move stuff?How will we be organised?Who needs what we do?Who will control us?What will we get for it?Who will get left out?What won’t get done?Why will we do it?

Cloud of aspirations

Organisation-centric economics

Cloud of sufficiency

Ecocentric economics

The nexus for the future of work

• Place – buildings, homes, cars• Information technologies• Travel – people• Transport – goods, logistics• Manufacturing – transforming things• Services – providing value

• What are the trends? • How do they interact?• What discontinuities

might happen?

What might impact the world of work?

The World System Model

Mega trends

• Geopolitical shifts

• Technology

• Population – demographic change

• Financial systems

• Globalisation

A global system that is under stress

1. Global ‘super-tanker’ trends - population, economic and geopolitical shifts, technology and automation, political ideologies …

2. Systemic failures - financial crises, divergence of wealth, inequalities, collapse from over-complexity ….

3. Hitting the limits - resource constraints: energy, food, water, and the capacity to cope with pollution …

4. Consequences of human activity - climate change, pollution, inequality, conflict, international terrorism …

Nothing is simple … a multitude of complex global issues

New UN study overturns 20 years of consensus on peak projection of 9bnand gradual decline.

World population to hit 11bn in 2100 – with 70% chance of continuous rise

Population dynamics

Japan is getting old.

Same pattern for many industrialised countries.

The same issue will affect countries whose populations are very young today.

The renaissance of the ‘commons’

• The Internet of Communications

• The Internet of Energy

• The Internet of Logistics

The world of ‘abundance’ and near-zero marginal cost poses a challenge tomarket capitalism.

It heralds a new phase of the ‘Commons’ – collaboration and care.

• Youth are particularly hard hit by the crisis.

• Falling labour force participation masks even worse global unemployment.

• Working poverty remains widespread – an increase in vulnerable workers.

Global Employment Trends 2012 from the ILO

The world faces a challenge of creating 600 million jobs over the next decade.

The global economy has substantially reduced its capacity to add new jobs.

UK economy has added twice as many part-time jobs as full-time jobssince 2007

Changing patterns of employment are placing many workers in anincreasingly less secure position.

Office for National Statistics (ONS) – picture of employment

The latest labour market data shows thatunemployment has fallen; and even the youthunemployment rate has fallen back below the so-called"million milestone.“

There is an on-going change in employment patternsin the UK, with part-time work in particular showingvery strong growth.

Rather than using ink on paper, these machines canactually "print" 3D objects. This is achieved bymelting nylon powder and then shaping it based oncomputer instructions.

3D printing is a mainstream consumer product in the 2020s

Armies of Expensive Lawyers Replaced by Cheaper Software

Thanks to advances in artificial intelligence, “e-discovery” software can analyse documents in a fractionof the time for a fraction of the cost.

Robot hand by 2030

By the second half of the 2020s some of the firstrobot hands equalling the capabilities of humanhands will appear.

ROBOTS TO STEAL 10 MILLION LOW PAID UK JOBS

BY 2034

Britons earning less than £30,000 a year are likely to

have their jobs taken by robots over the next two

decades as 10 million UK positions are said to beeliminated in favour of automation.

According to a joint report by Deloitte and the University of Oxford,the lower paid are five times more likely to have their jobs taken over byrobots, compared with those earning around £100,000.

One industry seems like a safe bet: robotics - until the robot-making,robot-fixing, robot-designing robots arrive.

As both job automation and offshoring become cheaper and more accessible,both practices are likely to be employed increasingly by SMEs that havehistorically been responsible for the bulk of job creation.

While technology eliminates jobs, it also creates new industries andemployment sectors. But new technology-based industries tend to be capitalintensive: they do not employ large numbers of people.

Can new technologies create service / caring / people centred jobs?

Moore’s Law set to continue

There is every reason to expect that dramatic increase in computing power will drive down costs by automating jobs.

Perspective Good Not Good

Green Reduce materials Lowers costs – stimulates demand increases consumption

Economics Increases profits Long term lowers circulation of money

Global development Spreads production andindustrialisation

Low cost labour exploitation, pressure on land and habitats

Local development Shifts to ‘higher’ value occupations and services

Increased unemployment, lower tax base

Social Pressure for higher education.

Rising unemployment –unrest. Fragmentation and isolation.

Psychological Removes repetitive jobs Removes people from production -meaninglessness

Automation – good or not?

The Luddite Fallacy

This is the idea – generally accepted byeconomists – that technological progress willnever lead to significant rates of long-termunemployment.

The reasoning is roughly as follows: as labour saving technologies improve,some workers lose their jobs in the short run, but production becomes moreefficient. That leads to lower prices for the goods and services produced, whichin turn leaves consumers with more money to spend on other things, boostingdemand – and employment – across nearly all industries.

Pressures on production to move towards:

Machines (automation)Services rather than productsOutsource to cheaper locations – factory relocationThe customer (self assembly)

Pressures on services to move towards:

Intelligent systems – the Internet and advanced softwareThe ‘crowd’.Outsource – anywhere cheaper with a skilled workforce and communicationsThe customer – ‘disintermediation’: selecting, booking, maintaining, etc.

Summary – the pressures on work

• Population – declining, growing, aging, moving.

• Resource scarcities – recycling, substitution, scraping the barrel

• Energy crises – electrification, higher prices for transport

• Emerging countries – demand for labour, shifting skills

• Technology - automation, hollowing out

• Communications – virtualisation of the workplace

• Redistributed manufacturing– new processes and skills

• New forms of organisation – social enterprise, common, open source

So what is the solution? In the long run there will be no alternative except toimplement direct redistribution of income.

Responding to the impact that accelerating technology has on the job marketcould turn out to be one of the defining challenges for our generation.

Paul Krugman comments:

“Smart machines may make higher GDP possible, but also reduce the demand for people — including smart people. So we could be looking at a society that grows ever richer, but in which all the gains in wealth accrue to whoever owns the robots.”

Will new ways of working enabled by technologies like super broadband mean the end of this?

Will flying reduce because of 3D holographic conferencing?

Local manufacture combined with recycling may affect distribution of materials – less lorries.

Or will it be like the ‘paper-less’ office?

The future of work and the effect on travel

How will the offshore outsourcing trend evolve in the coming years?

Which jobs and industries are likely to be most vulnerable to automation andoffshoring?

Will advancing technology always make society as a whole more wealthy? Orcould it someday cause a severe economic depression?

What are the implications of advancing automation technology for developingnations such as China and India?

Here are just a few of the questions being asked:

How fast can we expect technological change to occur in thecoming years and decades?

What government policies might make sense as technologycontinues to accelerate?

Discussion points

• Is the future of work green and fair?

End

Wellbeing Population health, sense of security, addictive behaviour, degree of happiness, self responsibility, creative expression.

Food Agriculture and horticulture, food quality, nutritional balance, equitable distribution.

Trade Transportation of goods, mobility of people, free/fair trade, markets and agreements, regional economies, trade support systems.

Energy Fossil sources, renewables resources, nuclear, energy intensity and efficiency distribution and application, energy security.

Climate Weather patterns, greenhouse gas emissions, temperature rise, ice melt and sea level mitigation activity.

Biosphere The state of life, species extinction, wilderness forms of pollution, exploitation and degradation, conservation and restoration.

Water Rainfall and ice melt patterns, the state of aquifers, rivers and lakes, irrigation and industrial demands, purity and distribution, scarcity and contamination.

Habitat Settlements on all scales, infrastructure and utilities, design quality, degradation and restoration, urban ecological footprint, work life relationships.

Wealth Finance and economy, values and life-style, work and reward, equity and distribution, monetary systems, freedom and regulation.

Governance Political systems, civic participation, local, national and international policies, regulation and subsidies, exploitation, public order, propaganda.

Community Living arrangements, life span, education, civic capacity, social capital, competition and mutuality, resilience.

Worldviews Dominant belief systems, tolerance and fundamentalism, values and outlooks, ideologies and utopias, fixed or dynamic attitudes, the place of consciousness.