We’re living in an economy where productivity is no longer the goal, employment is… The question we have to begin to ask ourselves is not how do we employ all the people who are rendered obsolete by technology, but how can we organize a society around something other than employment? Might the spirit of enterprise we currently associate with “career” be shifted to something entirely more collaborative, purposeful, and even meaningful? — Douglas Rushkoff on the obsolescence of “jobs”
I’ve often thought about this idea, that modern technology allows individuals to cooperate on projects like never before, and it’s getting better all the time. Rushkoff makes an interesting point, but one must keep in mind that the corporate paradigm has produced some remarkable things that may not be possible on a peer-to-peer level. The path ahead probably involves some combination of the pre-Industrial free agent model with the global corporate one under which many people struggle today.
