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OK, this one is probably the funniest in terms of just HOW WRONG his big predictions are (though his smaller predictions are better).
Dear Emma,
Fewer people in your lifetime, Emma, will structure their lives around work. It may be hard for you to understand an era in which a human being was classified as a "doctor" or a "plumber," as it was in your father's lifetime. I think it will be a change for the better when you are judged by what you do during your personal or leisure time, not by the occupations you choose to pursue to make a living.
Although a few compulsive "workaholics" will no doubt remain, people will be more impressed by someone who is a fine skier or painter, rather than a competent engineer.
And jobs will be restructured to accommodate the new values. Will you, with your three- and four-day work weeks, be able to imagine the "horrors" of a five- or six-day work week? Could you imagine not having a great deal of time to exercise, or to play, or to do any of the things you like best? How severe and backward the 20th century will seem to you!
Whatever work you choose for yourself, Emma, it seems clear that more and more women, even in the 1990s, will be encouraged to pursue technical education. And you will need it -- most jobs will depend upon the aid of computers.
And the supply of scientific information -- which, as of this writing, is growing at a rate of 13 percent a year -- could increase at a much faster rate in 2010, perhaps to as much as 30 percent a year.
Jobs will be less identified with gender. The sexual revolution of the 20th century will bring more men into clerical work, more women into management. Perhaps, when you become an adult, we will not have token women or token minorities in any job classifications!
Your work may include a few days a week from home -- telecommuting. Your work could flow effortlessly to clients anywhere on earth where your services are required. Tomorrow's infrastructure of electronic highways will be taken for granted, much like the telephone network of your father's day, with invisible computers carrying your electronic transmissions along with voice, pictures, data, and other information "traffic."
Or alternately, you might work a few days a week from a regional satellite office. These will be rather commonplace: companies will set up meeting rooms, office equipment and other facilities for workers in remote locations, and time-share the space with other companies who have far-flung workers.
I doubt you will have finished college in your 21st year, and very few people will: education and career will be evenly interspersed in early adult life, and education will be a continuing part of life.
Other jobs that I believe will be abundant are health care, information services, travel and leisure, training, consulting, and above all, teaching. There will be fewer children to educate, but more education will be needed throughout an individual's lifetime.
I am optimistic that, at least for the early year of schooling, teachers will be well paid and more respected than in the current century. I hope, too, that teachers will number as many male as female.
"Knowledge workers" will have to be compensated on the basis of their intellectual and creative contributions -- not on the basis of number of hours worked.
Corporations will have to work hard to retain their creative "capital" -- their human resources. New ways of managing people will be needed. It is nothing less than the flowering of a new civilization that I hope for in my daughter's lifetime.
>>>
So, yeah, on that whole "three day work week" thing I'm not sure he could've been more wrong if he'd tried.
Telecommuting is pretty common but from the beginning it's served more to extend the work day than to allow people to work from home.
He's totally right that work can flow to wherever it's needed but he missed the fact that this meant it could flow here from Mumbai....
Dear Emma,
Fewer people in your lifetime, Emma, will structure their lives around work. It may be hard for you to understand an era in which a human being was classified as a "doctor" or a "plumber," as it was in your father's lifetime. I think it will be a change for the better when you are judged by what you do during your personal or leisure time, not by the occupations you choose to pursue to make a living.
Although a few compulsive "workaholics" will no doubt remain, people will be more impressed by someone who is a fine skier or painter, rather than a competent engineer.
And jobs will be restructured to accommodate the new values. Will you, with your three- and four-day work weeks, be able to imagine the "horrors" of a five- or six-day work week? Could you imagine not having a great deal of time to exercise, or to play, or to do any of the things you like best? How severe and backward the 20th century will seem to you!
Whatever work you choose for yourself, Emma, it seems clear that more and more women, even in the 1990s, will be encouraged to pursue technical education. And you will need it -- most jobs will depend upon the aid of computers.
And the supply of scientific information -- which, as of this writing, is growing at a rate of 13 percent a year -- could increase at a much faster rate in 2010, perhaps to as much as 30 percent a year.
Jobs will be less identified with gender. The sexual revolution of the 20th century will bring more men into clerical work, more women into management. Perhaps, when you become an adult, we will not have token women or token minorities in any job classifications!
Your work may include a few days a week from home -- telecommuting. Your work could flow effortlessly to clients anywhere on earth where your services are required. Tomorrow's infrastructure of electronic highways will be taken for granted, much like the telephone network of your father's day, with invisible computers carrying your electronic transmissions along with voice, pictures, data, and other information "traffic."
Or alternately, you might work a few days a week from a regional satellite office. These will be rather commonplace: companies will set up meeting rooms, office equipment and other facilities for workers in remote locations, and time-share the space with other companies who have far-flung workers.
I doubt you will have finished college in your 21st year, and very few people will: education and career will be evenly interspersed in early adult life, and education will be a continuing part of life.
Other jobs that I believe will be abundant are health care, information services, travel and leisure, training, consulting, and above all, teaching. There will be fewer children to educate, but more education will be needed throughout an individual's lifetime.
I am optimistic that, at least for the early year of schooling, teachers will be well paid and more respected than in the current century. I hope, too, that teachers will number as many male as female.
"Knowledge workers" will have to be compensated on the basis of their intellectual and creative contributions -- not on the basis of number of hours worked.
Corporations will have to work hard to retain their creative "capital" -- their human resources. New ways of managing people will be needed. It is nothing less than the flowering of a new civilization that I hope for in my daughter's lifetime.
>>>
So, yeah, on that whole "three day work week" thing I'm not sure he could've been more wrong if he'd tried.
Telecommuting is pretty common but from the beginning it's served more to extend the work day than to allow people to work from home.
He's totally right that work can flow to wherever it's needed but he missed the fact that this meant it could flow here from Mumbai....
