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you are here: > Self > 21.
Ekasys
| 21.1 | Intelligent work systems |
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| Most of us spend around one third to one half of each day and three quarters of our entire lives engaged in some kind of work. Except for sleep, no other activity so consumes our limited time on this Earth. | ||
| Not only does work consume over a third of our existence, but for many of us it represents a core element of our identity as well as our general position in the community. | ||
| “What do you do?” is one of the most common questions asked between strangers, while people who work as qualified professionals such as (but not restricted to) doctors, judges, engineers and university professors are usually assumed to as “pillars of society”. | ||
| The types of work in the modern world | ||
| Today, literally thousands of different types of jobs exist across different industries- as diverse as nuclear scientists to farmers, from teachers to bankers. The majority of people work in corporations or groups of ten or less, with around one in twenty jobs belonging to a corporation or organisation of greater than 100 people. | ||
| Correspondingly, job titles have gone from fairly generic titles to a myriad of unique titles that sound unique and important, yet generally mean the same thing. | ||
| The importance of meaningful work | ||
| Not just having a job, but performing meaningful work is an essential element to long term and sustained happiness. In spite of this, the vast majority of individuals when interviewed in polls across the western world describe their work as less-than-ideal. | ||
| In other words, most of us work at a job, not because we want to, but because we feel we have to in order to earn money to live. | ||
| Whether we realize it or not, this state affairs does not represent a decline in the quality of work, but an underlying consistency in the majority of job types in the world. Two hundred years ago, the vast majority of people employed in industry did not like the work they performed, but they had to do it in order to survive. | ||
| While the very wealthy have traditionally never had to worry about “work”, the levels of job satisfaction across the world today is as probably as high as it has ever been, even though it remains a minority. | ||
| The lack of work and self esteem | ||
| While many economists see money as a driving factor in people’s lives, in truth the absence of meaningful work contributes a greater effect to lowering personal self esteem than the possession of money. | ||
| Evidence has shown that where social security payments have been changed to be a temporary condition of further education, securing and holding meaningful work, long term government subsidy dependence can be reduced. | ||
| The future of work | ||
| In spite of work representing such a fundamental component of human life, little time is often devoted to reflecting on the astounding periods of transformation in the nature of work. | ||
| Work involves more than the use of tools and techniques. The form and nature of the work process help determine the character of a civilization, but, in turn, a society's economic, political, and cultural characteristics shape the form and nature of the work process as well as the role and status of the worker within the society. | ||
| One of the purposes of this chapter is to provide a backdrop to the key periods of change and identify the latest period of fundamental transformation and what impact these changes are likely to represent to corporations and individuals in coming years. | ||
| These advances in technology, which are still taking place, extend the reach of the hand, expand muscle power, enlarge the senses, and multiply the capacities of the mind. This story of work is still unfolding, with great changes taking place throughout the world and in a more accelerated fashion than ever before. | ||
| Let us now investigate the nature of work further. | ||
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