Week ONE #schwag

Reading: Klaus Schwag – The Fourth Industrial Revolution

“We are at the point where the desire for purposeful engagement is becoming a major issue. This is particularly the case for the younger generation who often feel that corporate jobs constrain their ability to find meaning and purpose in life” 

What resonated with me most throughout this weeks reading was the nature of work and income, that our generation, the youth of The Fourth Industrial Revolution, are encountering and constantly inventing. As the reading implies from the quote above, life is no longer about finishing school and sticking at the career path you choose. There is an abundance of opportunity for us, particularly with our media-savvy brains to use a magnitude of assets in almost any career we wish.

New York Times columnist Farad Manjoo draws upon the idea that “we may end up with a future in which a fraction of the workforce will do a portfolio of things to generate an income – you could be an Uber driver, an Instacart shopper, an airbnb host and a Taskrabbit“. These are all careers that stem the futuristic idea that someone or something else can complete this task for us. It’s the cliche vision of the future in many futuristic films – robots, machines and so forth cooking, cleaning and running our lives. I wouldn’t say we have the technology capable of that yet, however the idea we can have someone else drive us somewhere, or someone else assemble our Ikea furniture for us all at the click of a button on our iPhones, leads me to believe we’re heading towards some kind of “service at your fingertips” future. That being said I don’t think it’s a bad thing if it is a form of income for someone.

For me, the idea that I might be working in a career next year for something media related that hasn’t even been invented yet is so exciting. Technology is constantly changing and evolving and our ability to adapt and obsess over new things like a popular app or new iPhone never cease to amaze me.

Above: A still from the film “Wall-E” set 800+ years in the future. A dystopian vision of what life might be like for humans in the future BUT also a subtle swipe at how machines are making us lazy thus obese. A bit extreme in comparison to what this reading was implying however, you never really know what the future holds beyond our lifetime.