Читать книгу Work Disrupted - Jeff Schwartz - Страница 25

We can learn a lot from past technological transitions. In the absence of dynamic and responsive policies, as well as resources to manage the transitions, displaced workers often faced more uncertainty and pain than was necessary. We can all play a role in shaping the future of work. If AI, robotics, and new employment models do indeed transform most jobs, requiring new skill sets for workers, our challenge is to create paths forward and opportunities that everyone can access. At stake is not only economic survival but psychological well-being as well.

Joblessness brings with it social and psychological challenges, including individual crises of identity, according to Amy Wrzesniewski, professor of organizational behavior at the Yale School of Management. “Our identities have been closely linked to our jobs,” she noted in our interview. “Our institutional relationships are central to mental health because of the role that organizational work has played sociologically over the past 100 years.”⁵⁰

Writing about the future of work in 1930, economist John Maynard Keynes, in “Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren,” envisioned that within a century, the average person would be working 15 hours a week, and we would face an excessive leisure problem.⁵¹ Keynes's view of the future was “frozen” in the sense that he did not consider the possibility of entirely new fields emerging in economies that have been infused with new technologies. What Keynes did not envision were all the new fields and human endeavors that were yet to be invented, from modern health care and education to the amazing creativity of the technology, media, and service industries. Those are largely what have driven employment and progress, and those are also the reasons that make many of us who are investigating the future of work feel optimistic. The future can offer much more than mechanized work, optimizing workflows, and grinding out efficiency; it can be about creation, and new levels of growth and innovation.