How the technology revolution is changing not only the way we work, but even how we define it

Emerging technologies - the purported "smart helpmates" of the future - are rapidly transforming the way we live and work. They come in all shapes and sizes, from pocket-size PDAs with laptop-like capabilities to micro cell phones with audio- and video-streaming and recording to the latest refrigerator housing a computer-like monitor that allows you to play music, watch TV, surf the net or snap digital photos. Before you know it, we'll be able to work wherever, and whenever, we want. Or so that's how we imagine the future of work.

As a work culture, we have made colossal leaps since the advent of the microprocessor as well as other technical innovations that have doubled the rate of progress every ten years. And if these exponential growth models - such as the axiomatic Moore's Law of microprocessors - not only hold true but also grow exponentially, what's in store for homo sapiens?

"In general, the computer has already wrought quite a revolution in the world of work. As time unfolds, the idea of work will perhaps change all together," explains Richard Volkman, assistant professor of computer science at Southern Connecticut State University, "in ways that are not yet exactly clear."

Efficiencies in the labor force brought about by computers and high-speed circuits have already altered the work environment from a quarter-century ago. Over the last decade, the use of outsourcing, telecommuters, temporary workers and freelancers has increased substantially and is expected to intensify - which will have profound implications for policymakers.Rapidly evolving computer technology and wireless applications, too, make it particularly attractive today to work for yourself and make it enormously sensible for employers to use independent contractors and temporary workers to reduce costs. Because of this, our language referring to work will change semantically at both the macro and micro levels.

"There'll be no more: 'I'm going to work,' or, 'I changed jobs,'" says Volkman. "If work becomes where you are, there won't be a physical place to go. If work no longer exists as a physical location, our perception of it changes, too. And that changes the very heart of what it means to work as we know it."

Eventually, it seems probable that new technologies will revolutionize humanity in much the same way the Industrial Revolution transformed Western civilization from an agricultural-based society to a manufacturing one. The last quarter-century has wrought a technical modernization that has given rise to the new knowledge class. In the field of science, philosophy and law, a whole new can of worms has been opened in the face of current business and economic woes such as protectionism for ailing industries.

The biggest trends though will be in artificial intelligence, robotics and cognitive sciences - proactive processes like human-computer communication, says Drew McDermott, a professor of computer science at Yale University, who believes advances in these key areas will change social institutions and their responsiveness to the new world of ubiquitous computing. Instantaneous collaboration across real and superficial boundaries will also become the norm. The lines between work and play continue to blur, but for those who want to avoid work, people will always find ways to avoid it, adds McDermott. In addition, the boundaries between computers will become more porous, introducing ownership concerns.

"As voice recognition improves, we'll be talking to our computers instead of typing but I'm not sure how that will change our way of working besides making it easier and faster," says McDermott. "A computer will not be able to respond outside of rudimentary speech or carry on a meaningful conversation. Getting computers to understand images and communicate with humans will allow computers to simulate speech and facial movements, but that's beyond the predictable horizon and I wouldn't want to say when that would be," he adds.

By contrast, Volkman believes that artificial intelligence will approach human intelligence - and maybe even surpass it - in our lifetime. Whether it's more hype than reality, movies like Spielberg's AI and Ridley Scott's Blade Runner will initiate new debates on some fascinating philosophical and ethical questions. "As a culture, we're used to being the smartest creatures on the planet," Volkman says. "Now, if we create a computer that is as smart or smarter than us, it will upset our view of the universe as man being at the top and in the center of the natural world. The order of the universe which is essential to Western culture since before the Middle Ages, known as the "Great Chain of Being" in the mind of Mideastern philosophers, this whole order will get disconcerted if we create an object that is more intelligent than us."

Intelligence, the feature that differentiates humans from all other animals and the rest of creation, has altered the very fabric of work life. "By creating this intelligence, we've actually transformed ourselves, let alone to think about the tiny transformations happening in the way individuals work today," Volkman says. "With artificial intelligence, we're talking about something that will completely change the culture. It gets very hard to think much beyond that point."

There's a notion kicked around by technologists in futurist writings called "the singularity." It references a point in the near future when artificial intelligence becomes as intelligent or more intelligent than humans, and evolution leaps into hyper-drive. The fact that we can accomplish this at all, says Volkman, illustrates that "One of the things that this new intelligence could put its mind towards is the creation of an artificial intelligence more intelligent than it, which then in turn can create intelligence more intelligent than it." And so on.

"You can see how this very quickly will explode," says Volkman, "into creating a 'thing' that stands to us in terms of knowledge and intelligence, the way we now stand to dogs or other animals, that can understand things that we can't comprehend. If that happens, they call this the moment of 'singularity on the event horizon' - sort of like the black hole - all of our futurist thinking ends there because you can't imagine what the new intelligence is going to do, what it would want or what we should do in respect to it. Even if it's smarter than us, if it says, 'Do something,' should we do it?"

These are just a few of the larger issues we'll have to confront as a society that are much bigger than just the world of work. Twenty years down the road both Volkman and McDermott see miniaturization and nanotechnology as some of the most hopeful and beneficial technologies that are currently in the preliminary stages. The nuts and bolts are being attacked right now by researchers and there are some composite materials that are enabled by nanotechnology already. The ultimate dream, says Volkman, is to not only be able to design super-strong plastics, for instance, but actually to build things at the molecular level - the merging of technology and biology. As technology blurs into biology, we'll see people integrating advanced intelligence in their bodies to halt deteriorating organs or limbs. Proponents believe we can extend life expectancy by 25 years.

"On the other side of the spectrum, what does it do to us as a culture?" asks Volkman, "beings that are used to having a very short or finite amount of time in this life. What does it mean when all of a sudden you don't see that prospect anymore?"

In the shorter term, as technology increases productivity, computers will become incredibly more powerful and more portable. "Virtual monitors and keyboards will make a huge difference in the way we work, as will higher performance," says Yale's McDermott. "Probable reasoning techniques, automatic deduction, automation of Web services that take routine transactions and have them done by automated agents will be a fairly invisible change. The kind of programs in robotics that can help businesses, especially social robotics, will also play a major role in seamlessly restructuring our work and social lives," he adds. "Once joint technology and battery technology improves, robots will be running around - but they've been saying that for decades. The last barrier to fall will be the ability carry on a conversation. Wireless technologies have already made a difference and will continue to make a difference in the way we work. These advances will have profound impacts across the local and global economies."

The computer plays a tremendously important role in globalization and work collaboration, too. The efficiencies alone have uniformly increased multinational collaboration and, for instance, brought prices down across the board. On the whole, the benefits of emerging technologies and globalization - often seen by technologists as intertwined - will probably outweigh the costs. "The net effect will be to humanity's benefit - though it will not be obvious in the short term," says Volkman. "The great challenge for technology and globalization in the short term will be able to articulate to the voters in a tangible way the future benefits. That will not be easy, as long as it's not your job on the chopping block.
But in the long term, it will be those who will lose the most," he adds. "The people who will benefit the most from globalization will be Second and Third World countries, the so-called bottom-feeders."

The potential ramification of even the simplest business/social contract will now become scrutinized. "There are a lot of privacy and security issues with employers using computers as a two-way mirror to monitor employees and what they're working on," notes McDermott. "Once wireless access becomes ubiquitous, the idea of 'private' ownership of a computer will also be called into question. Wherever there is a computer, and it's available, you'll use it. Ownership of the data will become suspect. Is it yours or the employer's? When you save a file online or on your employer's hard drive, you don't really know where the files are located. When you work from home or in a cafe on your own laptop, whose file is it? Although it's not happening today, I think it will become a big issue in the future."

Durga Prasad, a professor of law and business ethics in the School of Business at Southern Connecticut State and an expert in business and society believes there are a myriad of privacy and security issues surrounding technology that can be used to transfer information from one entity or organization to another. "While the cell phone or computers are being used for good purposes, our concern should be about the misuse of these technologies in the future," says Prasad.

"And that's where the darkness lies. People have to be ethical and socially responsible, though it seems as if that's getting harder with the Internet and the ease of fast money. It's much easier to use the computer today for private gains, by stealing, copying and using some of these technologies for your own interests - it can harm entire households and businesses. It's immoral for the employees and damaging to the employers."

Companies will be implementing biometric security and customer-service initiatives to improve day-to-day operations. The world of biometrics includes fingerprint, iris, hand, face, signature, ear, voice and gait-recognition technologies. The role within the context of user recognition for transaction authorization is also a technology on the verge of disrupting - or at least altering - our lives. "The distinction between the recognition of an individual via an automated biometric system and the fundamental notion of their identity is a subtle one," says Prasad. "We need to feel secure and trust that the technologies will protect us. The danger is that when someone breaches security, the whole system collapses."

New technological advantages will unleash a multitude of issues as well as a host of productive new tools that will impact not only the way we'll live and work, but how the world itself functions. Like it or not, the world of work and our roles within it are changing at a furious rate. The best advice from technologists is keep pace or become outpaced. Then again, we're creatures of habit. There's only so much we can "multi-task." It's future generations who will wonder how we ever lived without the newest, latest, greatest techno gadget.