The Future of Work: On Creation, Curation, and Consumption
Fundamental human activities as a universal driver for the economy
You must be thinking - what am I smoking? Creation and consumption makes sense being part of an economy. But curation is nothing more than glorified mouse-clicking. I know this well enough, being a part-time DJ. Why am I getting paid to play my favourite music to strangers in clubs? Just a music curator. A glorified tracklist manager.
Now if you look at manufacturing plants like Foxconn with its thousands of production operators lined up, you'll quickly see that it could all be automated in the future. Go up one-floor above the assembly-line and you'll see a CEO seated on his cushy chair, flicking his wrist all day signing-papers. Basically a glorified curator too.
There must be a reason that the market demands curation work. It's the point of execution. It's goal-oriented decision-making process based on information and perspective.
Other than outsourcing our memories and decision making, make no mistake that everything that can be automated, will be automated. However, processes that cannot be automated will become extremely valuable - like our attention, our consciousness.
Personally, I foresee that this shift in economic value will become more evident as the days go by, with automation building itself up Maslow's hierarchy from the bottom. During this ascension, we will progressively find more time and connectivity to attend to matters that are intrinsically valuable to us.
It's just a force of nature.
![](https://steemitimages.com/640x0/https://s24.postimg.org/jady3nyz9/Bo_G_Gerd_Leonhard_future_of_jobs_work_human_only.png)
![](https://steemitimages.com/640x0/https://s23.postimg.org/9rkp71dgr/fow.png)
The times, they are a-changing
Bob Dylan's classic is perhaps one of the most relevant works of art ever made when it comes to understanding the high-impact events that are about to come. Just check out his lyrics. The only certainty is uncertainty. With that knowledge and admission, the best that we can do is to start steering the conversation. Take part in emerging social platforms that are made to ride out the wave.
Start experiencing and operating in these new game-changing networks. Early beta-testers will to be highly rewarded for spending time in unexplored frontiers. But don't quite your job yet as we're still in the early stages. Use these new social technologies as an augmentation, not a full replacement.
The spirit of the times also comes with the dissipation of old world concepts such as nations, criminalisation, and intellectual property. The ending of such states should spell the end of cost-intensive, redundant operations as we inch closer to a more humane future. While I'm still not done with the piece about the end of nations, you may check out the following:-
- The End of Criminalization: On Free Will, Accountability, and Compassion
- The End of Intellectual Property: On Imagination, Artificial Intelligence, and Procedural Generation
- Surfing the Singularity with Steemit
![](https://steemitimages.com/640x0/https://s32.postimg.org/qbsz7jced/tickbox1.png)
![](https://steemitimages.com/640x0/https://s32.postimg.org/5z125a09x/tickbox1.png)
![](https://steemitimages.com/640x0/https://s23.postimg.org/ksl6cgtnf/fow2.png)
What if your only real job is to be human?
Humanity is slowly merging with its own virtual concepts, conceived since the beginning of mankind. Steemit is the first real sign of such progress. The technology itself is a bit of everything in one: currency, experience, creation, curation, and consumption (optimistically, consumption is how we learn and self-develop).
In the future, we will be less shackled by routines, contracts, and specialisations. In fact, part of the future is already here. Contribute whatever you want on Steemit. You're experiencing humanity's very first training wheels geared to embracing the future of work. It's creation and curation - entirely digitised, materialised, democratised, and it will be up to anybody's will to shape in their own ways, learning along the way.
That said, it should also be recognised that articifical intelligence (AI) has its own counter-culture. It is something called intelligence amplification (IA). Again, Steemit seems to be a counterbalance to the existence of Big Data algorithms that are driving a huge portion of the Internet.
The future of work is humanity itself. It is one of autonomy, mastery, and purpose.
![](https://steemitimages.com/640x0/https://s28.postimg.org/h0mane4nh/tech_humanity_org_future_gerd_leonhard_futuristg.png)
A blueprint for the future of work
Please note that the coming age of automation and the future of work does not mean the end of humanly-activities that revolve around the base of Maslow's hierarchy. People will still have the choice to grow their own food and find their own partners. It's just that we're now enabled by the emergence of useful social technologies. After all, every human activities can essentially boil down to social exchanges.
To take full advantage of this upcoming paradigm, you may check out my actionable shortpost here: A Simple Guide for Personal Development and Blockchain Empowerment.
On the collective level, below are some of the visuals that I've repeatedly used in some of my older posts. I've presented these slides ever since before Steemit came into existence, and to my surprise, I think that they're becoming even more relevant these days. You may notice that the organisational structure below is pretty much like Steemit's / Curie's evolution taking shape in decentralizing / dissolving itself.
![](https://steemitimages.com/640x0/https://s13.postimg.org/uzf32ffs7/steemit.png)
![](https://steemitimages.com/640x0/https://s9.postimg.org/c8p3y6ijz/steemit2.png)
Welcome to the age of abundance
Well it's not completely realised, not yet. The point that I like to point out in this new era is that it's not a cold, calculating Darwinian future, where "underperformers" are left in the dust. Remember that energy is soon to be fully renewable and plentiful, while humanity is still limited by its relatively slow biological growth. There will be plenty of energy / currency to go around in the future.
As a side note, the best kinds of technologies are invisible. All these would be for nothing substantial if we are spending too much time interacting with the technology itself. Going forward, I think something like Steem will be more ubiquitous, silent, and more of a thing that runs in the background - just like Ethereum and all aspiring blockchains should be. (if that makes any sense)
Before ending this post, I would like to point out again that everything that has been presented in this post is not in anyway, an expert opinion. Instead, I'm here to encourage everybody to take the time to understand the materials presented and use it for their own personal development.
As always, thanks for reading!
Disclaimer: This write-up is an extreme projection of our future and should not be taken as financial / lifestyle advice of any sort. Here's my first abstract on the future of work. Source of some of the visual accompaniments: http://www.futuristgerd.com/
![](https://steemitimages.com/640x0/https://s29.postimg.org/tk8iglttz/SOL3.png)
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Thanks. I've just registered on discord with the handle "redeye" , will read the docs posted :)
This is one of the best and most accessible discussions I have seen of this coming change. You are right that most job tasks can be automated and that those that will still be left to humans will be the only ones that require something extra. I do not think this greater automation will be dark, either. It has the potential to unlock a lot of time and value that people could spend doing other things.
But I am not convinced that this will not result in some pretty unfortunate disparities for the human population: haves and have nots to a greater degree than we've seen. It does not have to be that way. And that raises the question of whether we leave that to the market (which could be largely dominated and manipulated by a few large companies, though they might realize there won't be many people to buy their products if everyone is dirt poor and ready to revolt) or intervene with something like a basic income or creating everyone some role in the economy to enable people to participate at a certain level. I don't have a clear answer to that one.
What we need is a real post-scarcity society, where as a starting point, nothing that humans need to sustain themselves is even possible to profit from, because following economic laws, the profit is following a downward curve along with the production costs. We are moving towards zero marginal cost. Of course, if we still have a capitalist system, the floor will just be moved upwards, and there will still be ways to turn capital into political power. But if the majority of the population are able to sustain themselves, they will be much more difficult to influence.
That's a very good point. So far, there may have been a case that welfare makes people lazy. They don't have an incentive to work hard if they can get what they really need for free. But when there aren't any jobs for most people anyway, does it matter whether they're lazy or productive? Presumably, there would still be innovation and a capitalist opportunity, but in your scenario I think that would be above and beyond sustenance level needs, so not everyone would participate.
I have to tell you that I'm living on welfare, and the reason I do is among other things that I have ADHD, and I'm takinbg care of my son, who also has ADHD, and it's a tough job. Living on welfare means living in poverty,and in addition in a poverty trap, because if I work I lose my benefits,and I would have to put in a lot more working hours than I could possibly manage, for little compensation. That being said, I am really motivated to contribute to society. But in most cases, the wage labour that is available is not contributing anything substantial to society. I believe in people,and their compassion for one another,and I believe that we are living in a society that counteracts that. Look at most tribal societies,thwy have a very egalitarian system,the only downpoint being that they tend to be in rivalry with other groups,although that has not changed that much,it's just that the groups that we identify with have become bigger. My hope is that we will extend our empathy to all life, eventually.
Great perspective. Many are in the trap already. Thanks for helping me understand and I hope things go well for you in the future.
Thank you, I appreciate the concern. Things are looking up, I have understood how to make money,with crypto. My goal is to help humanity in whatever way I'm able to, and not just myself. But I have to start by getting myself out of poverty,and steemit has been a great help there,although it's not really a fair system.
Thanks for the comment @donkeypong :)
Yup, although I'd think it's more like a race. Reckless implementations of stuff that grows quickly with no recourse / control is actually quite possible at this point.
As for the rest of your comment, this video here is pretty good consumerism since the early days and how it's been progressing :)
As Victor Hugo once said Utopia, after all," is tomorrow’s truth".
Attention have three components
Emotions & feelings - Affective component (non-observable or measurable)
Thoughts & beliefs - Cognitive component (non-observable or measurable)
Actions & behaviors - The Praxis of an individual that is observable and measurable
Thanks for this :D
Very interesting read. I think many individuals do not grasp just how much things are likely to change in the near future.
My only advice is to spend some free time in cryptospace and get some of that early bird bonus..
Can the only work I have to do be to just remain human? Even that is a lot of work on its own. Knowing about this change in the status quo would help stay ahead of the happenings that might have eitherto taken us unawares.
Thanks for sharing.
The progress of such changes might even be much slower than expected.. but still easy enough to get swept over
Yeah, because you can't perfectly catch a wave you didn't know was coming. If you don't know something is going to happen, no matter how slow it is, you'll either get hit or run over by it.
We should always strive to at least have an idea of happenings around us.
(I should write something along these lines soon) 😊
I saw a video of robot doing Chinese caligraphy with 2 "hands" simultaneously and the characters are written upside down (facing the audience rather than the robot). Thought that even the calligrapher which seen some kind of appreciation recently may not have his work cut out for him. Never know what is disrupted next.
Lol that totally kicked ass..
A bit more than 12 years ago when i started having this thoughts, it's quite awesome already seeing that a few predictions have come to pass.. what I didn't expect though was the emergence of blockchains! That actually changing quite a lot of things, totally unexpected.
Whatever the future holds, I hope in includes people buying original art from living artists and hanging it on their walls.
Singapore through all its year being a low-resource, tiny country has been operating without a focus on the arts as it was previously deemed not worthy of support by the government. Today, the market has been shifting towards the arts.
You are at the cutting edge of the understanding of where we are,and where we are going, and I'm happy to share that same understanding, along with many others on steemit.
And that came out sounding very pretentious, but it's how I see it,honestly.
Oh no that's not pretentious at all. Anyway, I'm not even sure about what I'm writing about sometimes but it's been something that's on my mind for quite some time now!
Very modest of you! It does seem to me that you know what you are writing about.
Thanks for sharing. Very interesting post!
Thanks buddy @team101 :)
Well said. Excellent write-up as always.
Thanks @alcibiades :)