The End Of Our Work As We Know It

You might be excited or worried by what this article says, but it probably should be read by anyone wanting to keep abreast of trends that project in all likelihood into the future. It explores the effects of increasingly ubiquitous and easy virtualisation technologies. Here's a snippet.

"Researchers at Stanford University noticed that people in online role-playing games such as Star Wars Galaxies spend countless hours carefully doing what looks like a job—not only battling Empire troops but also building pharmaceutical manufacturing operations and serving as medics. Researchers tested the possibility of having players view real medical scans inside the game to find signs of cancer. They think groups of gamers could do as well as an actual pathologist.... Amazon.com (AMZN ) is experimenting with a marketplace it created called Mechanical Turk. Companies parcel out small pieces of jobs online, such as transcribing podcasts and labeling photos, to people around the world. The workers, who often do it in lieu of watching TV or fooling around on MySpace, process the tasks for a few pennies per minute or photo. The work of all these 'Turkers' is reassembled into finished products, often within hours. In short, Amazon is creating an on-demand workforce for companies that can't afford to hire staff for such quick or ephemeral jobs."

I suspect that one of the key things is found in this quote: "this is a more virtual, self-managed ecosystem." In other words, I think that we are seeing the rise of the mass day-labourer. But it's global and so we have westerners potentially competing with those from the two-thirds world who have somehow gained access to this kind of technology. Now I know there are a host of issues playing out even in that scenario, but I just wanted to alert us to the fact that they will be (and in some cases now are) here. The article is right to flag up some of the implications;

the traditional role of an employer is dissolving. "A job is a bundle of privileges and obligations," notes longtime technology futurist Paul Saffo. "Digital technology has allowed us to break up that bundle" and reassemble it into "mass-customized jobs," he adds, as they fit our skills, the work to be done, and the goals of the companies we're working for.
All that raises a fundamental question about technology's ultimate impact on workers. Will this be a new world of empowered individuals encased in a bubble of time-saving technologies? Or will it be a brave new world of virtual sweatshops, where all but a tech-savvy few are relegated to an always-on world in which keystrokes, contacts, and purchases are tracked and fed into the faceless corporate maw?

Are we back to the day labourers of Jesus' day? What is the gospel and Christian ministry for these sorts of times?
The End Of Work As You Know It: