The Future of Work from the Perspective of Foresight

Heraclitus was the first to introduce the concept of perpetual change, which is condensed into his phrase ‘everything flows’. However, for many centuries the changes experienced by people, including in the workplace, were extremely slow or gradual, and usually were not perceptible within a human lifetime. The industrial revolution brought about the acceleration of change, but today the world is transforming at a pace and in directions that we have never seen before. At this point, we should distinguish between deterministic predictions and non-deterministic dynamic estimates. One could claim that the deterministic view is represented by futurists like the American inventor Ray Kurzweil, who ‘predicts’ that the now exponential evolution of technology (Artificial Intelligence) will surpass human intelligence, and that by the early 2030s the magnitude of non-biological computational power will surpass the capacity of total human intelligence, while ultimately the exponential increase in computer capacity will lead to the so-called Singularity. Kurzweil very clearly identifies the date: ‘I set the date for the Singularity – which represents a profound and radical transformation in human capability – as 2045.’ Contrary to the deterministic predictions of Kurzweil, those of us who are systematically involved in interdisciplinary Futures Studies, and specifically Foresight, as a participatory process of understanding the trends in environmental transformation and alternative strategic foresight, formulate dynamic estimates but give predictions a wide berth. Every attempt to ‘predict’ the future, not just of work, results in a series of almost insurmountable obstacles that, to a great extent, are due to the very nature of the subject of our research: how is it possible to find something that by definition…does not exist? The future never exists in the present, but as a mental conception, it gestates in the present and impacts it in a non-linear manner.