From/To: Everything You Wanted to Know About the Future of ...

the future of your work everything you wanted to know but were afraid to ask

Futures are always a reaction to the present; tomorrow is always a judgment on today. By training a microscope on how we work now, we can try to figure out how we're going to work when this day is done.

Chronicling the Ever-Morphing Nature of Work

Though the future of work will always be in the future, the future of your work has never been closer. The rise of robots, machine intelligence, distributed ledgers, quantum physics, "gig" labor, the unexaggerated death of privacy, a world eaten alive by software -- all these trends point to a new world that's shaping up quite differently from anything we've ever seen, or worked in, before.

For almost the last 10 years, the Center for the Future of Work has been cataloging and commenting on these developments, as well as a whole host of other extraordinary workplace dynamics. We coined the term "the SMAC Stack,"1 signaling the combinatorial power of social, mobile, analytics and cloud technologies, which have fundamentally changed every business around the world. We identified the power of "Code Halos,"2 which have been at the heart of the FAANG success story (Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, Google) but have now become the seeds of an era of surveillance capitalism. We called out the importance of customer experiences and the potential of augmented reality. And we laid out a game plan for humans (and the organizations they work in) for the coming times when machines do everything3 -- including proposing 42 Jobs of the Future.4

But in these 10 years, we've never attempted to pull together all of our analysis and insights into one report. This report is that: a collation and synthesis of the most powerful technological, business and societal trends that we see impacting us now and in the immediate future, presented in an easily digestible format, which can act as a central source of a new emerging ground truth.

In short, From/To is a state of the union for the future of work.

The name of our report implies its format and structure: "from" describes where we are, and "to" describes where we're going. As the French writer Simone de Beauvoir put

it, "To make something good of the future, you have to look the present in the face." Futures are always a reaction to the present; tomorrow is always a judgment on today. By training a microscope on how we work now, we can try to figure out how we're going to work when this day is done.

The report covers 42 ideas organized around five main themes:

The Way We Work: How we do what we do.

The Tools of Work: The apps, systems, networks, tools and processes that we use to work.

The Aesthetics of Work: What work looks like; how it feels.

The Issues with Work: When and why work is work.

The Meaning of Work: What gets us out of bed and makes us proud.

Ranging across technologies (qubits and containers), business models (gigging and decentralization) and demographics (hoodies and privacy), we outline what we consider the most important trends that will change what you do and how you do it -- be you a chief executive, a student, a politician or a salary (wo)man.

Whether you're excited by the future or fearful, this is no time to not be paying attention. The future of your work is changing -- this report is your field guide.

From/To: The future of your work -- everything you wanted to know but were afraid to ask / 2

Index

The Way We Work How we do what we do

6 From Hierarchy to Wirearchy 7 From Jobs to Tasks 8 From 8x5 to 10x4 9 From PAs to RPAs 10 From Buying to Leasing 11 From Bad Robots to Good

Human Beings

The Tools of Work

The apps, systems, networks, tools and processes that we use to work

13 From the Thumb to the Voice 14 From Microscopes to Datascopes 15 From Code to (Nearly) No Code 16 From Insecurity to Security 17 From Petascale to Exascale 18 From 4G to 5G 19 From Artificial Intelligence to

Machine Learning 20 From Centralized to Decentralized 21 From Software Development to

Software Engineering 22 From the Bit to the Qubit 23 From the Cloud to the Edge 24 From the Internet to the Splinternet 25 From Active to Ambient 26 From Server to Container

The Aesthetics of Work What work looks like; how it feels

28 From the Suit to the Hoodie 29 From the Cubicle to the Couch 30 From the Suburb to the City 31 From Glass and Steel to Bricks and Wood 32 From Originals to Digit-alls

The Issues with Work

When and why work is work

34 From WYSIWYG to WYSIWYG Beware! 35 From E Pluribus Unum to

E Pluribus Pluribus 36 From Free WiFi to WiFi Free 37 From Privacy Is Dead to Long

Live Privacy 38 From Human to Cyborg

The Meaning of Work

What gets us out of bed and makes us proud

40 From Mind Your Language to Speak Your Mind

41 From TGIF to TGIM 42 From Services to Experiences 43 From Career to Careers 44 From Green Is Red to Green Is Green 45 From Mass-Produced to Me-Produced 46 From Recycling to the Circular Economy 47 From Information Wants to Be Free to

Information Wants to Charge 48 From Retired to `Re-Tired' 49 From CEO to She-EO 50 From the West to the East 51 From Diversity to Belonging

52 Endnotes 53 About the Authors

From/To: The future of your work -- everything you wanted to know but were afraid to ask / 3

Why 42 ideas?

Because as author Douglas Adams pointed out,

it's the answer to life, the universe and everything --

and everything surely must include work.

From/To: The future of your work -- everything you wanted to know but were afraid to ask / 4

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