

The future of employment? - bootload
http://loungesessions.wordpress.com/2010/02/22/the-future-of-employment/

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mbrubeck
For a while I've had a vague sci-fi-like idea that the first true "group
minds" are going to evolve from the intersection of Mechanical Turk, augmented
reality, personal virtual assistants, and Twitter/Aardvark/Facebook/Ask
MetaFilter.

Starting over a decade ago, it was possible to instantly "know" anything that
was online just by searching for it. With the addition of Google, Wikipedia,
search-inside-the-book, and massive amounts of content of all sorts - plus
always-on mobile networks - this now means that we now have just about any
fact ever published at our fingertips.

The number of people connected to the net has grown too, and so have tools for
finding and talking to them. Most of us can contact dozens of friends at any
given moment, plus friends-of-friends, co-workers, fellow members of
communites like Hacker News or MetaFilter, and of course complete strangers.
So in addition to raw data, we now have access to vast amounts of human
judgement, experience, and research skill.

Once only high-powered executives had personal assistants. Now the Tim Ferriss
crowd is getting into the game with "virtual assistants" who can work
remotely, leverage all the above-mentioned internet superpowers, spread costs
by serving many masters, and work off-shore wherever the cost-benefit ratio is
right for a given job. Their services are still targeted at busy freelancers
and business owners, but I'm sure someone will soon start selling virtual
assistants to all sorts of information workers, teachers, programmers, and
even stay-at-home parents.

So how long before I can simply touch a button to allow a remote assistant to
see what I'm seeing in real-time and help with planning transportation,
translating foreign text, taking notes, searching for relevant emails, and
even advising me on what to say? Some jobs will just go to legions of cheap
generic workers, some to my circle of friends or colleagues, and others to a
personal assistant who is paid well to know my needs and background. And that
assistant will then sub-contract out portions of each job as needed to
computer programs, unskilled Turkers, or to his or her own network of friends
and assistants. At that point, it's like I'm carrying around a whole network
of brains ready to engage with any situation I face.

~~~
donaq
_For a while I've had a vague sci-fi-like idea that the first true "group
minds" are going to evolve from the intersection of Mechanical Turk, augmented
reality, personal virtual assistants, and Twitter/Aardvark/Facebook/Ask
MetaFilter._

How do you know it hasn't already happened? Are the individual cells in your
brain aware of your existence? To a group mind such as you mentioned, would
each of its component minds not seem as insignificant as one brain cell to us?
Maybe that's why we have internet addictions. The Overmind does not want parts
of itself shutting off. :)

A more alarming possibility is that just as it took us countless generations
to arrive at a point in our evolution where we are aware of ourselves and even
more generations before we know our minds are made up of cells (with the
capability of each cell remaining more or less unchanged), the group mind
might be an emotionally immature infant. I suspect though, that if it already
exists, it is a reflection of ourselves, with 4chan and the like being the
child within and wikipedia and such being the intellect. Do you think we might
hasten the group mind's journey towards self-awareness by spreading this idea
so that it takes root in more and more of its component minds? :p

------
jcnnghm
If you have to turn to social networking to figure out how to do your job,
you're probably not very good at your job.

~~~
andrewljohnson
I would say just the opposite - if you don't turn to your network of friends
for help with your job, you're probably not very valuable.

I know how to do many things, but when I encounter a difficult problem, I will
often turn to IM to query my expert friends, if not for answers, then to give
me a sanity check on the approach I come up with.

This is especially true for start-ups. It's great if you work at Google, where
you can get help from thousands of expert engineers. But if you are a two-man
start-up team, you need to look outside for help a lot more.

~~~
jister
I would say it depends on what you're asking help for.

If you turn to your network of friends asking them how to do your job then
that that's a different story.

To IM your friends is one thing and to open Twitter and Facebook is another.
Some companies do allow their staffs to access those sites but others don't.

In this situation, as an employee, you just have to be responsible.

~~~
andrewljohnson
Some companies are dinosaurs, and I would never work somewhere with Draconian
internet policies.

It's perfectly reasonable to Tweet or post a Facebook message, or send a
private message via either of those sites to ask someone for help, assuming
you're not giving away confidential information.

