I was talking to my kids this morning about the fact that we don’t know what the world they’ll grow up to will look like, but we know it won’t look like ours.
I grew up with weekly trips to the big branch library and using card catalogs to do research; library funding has been slashed all over, hours reduced, fewer books. The internet has somewhat replaced that, except for the freely circulating books. Project Gutenberg is a great resource, but not the same as a large well-stocked library. I don’t know what the library equivalent of the future will be, but I don’t see a return to the past coming.
I grew up with constant news of recessions and budget cuts, but there was never any question that schools could afford to operate buses. Now distract after distract is doing away with student transportation; they can’t afford it. And that’s on top of other drastic cuts. What will the future of school look like? I think adding more virtual public schools is the obvious answer; no need for transportation, fewer teachers, janitors administrators required, fewer buildings to maintain. In the meantime, I predict a huge upsurge in home schooling and private distance learning.
Will more people telecommute? Oddly, telecommuting seems to be losing favor right when it makes more economic sense than ever. But it offers the same savings to businesses that virtual schooling offers school districts.
Basically I see a shift to local and individual efforts. More individual accountability, more local involvement. The job force is already following the trend back to small businesses, self-employment, contract workers instead of employees.
None of this is bad, necessarily, just different. If we have to be more conservative in our habits, if we have to do more ourselves, we become more capable. Capability builds confidence. I think the world of tomorrow may be a very interesting, vital, connected and inventive place as individuals find ways to replace systems that have become unsustainable with new solutions.
What will the future look like? Imagine. And then start building it.
I suspect part of the reason why people are leery of telecommuting is that they think it’s easier to think that somebody who’s not in the office mot if not all of the time is dispensable.
It may be that telecommuters are just being replaced with contract workers who work remotely; same thing, different label, and no requirement to provide benefits.
Oh that’s certainly true as well.
The latest is outsourcing law work to India.
I tell my kids that THEIR kids will be astonished: “You went to a building called a ‘school’? You had to carry separate books for each subject? Someone brought pieces of paper mail, and a paper newspaper, to your house every day? You had a machine just for phone calls?”
That makes me recall the Isaac Asimov story, “The Fun They Had,” which follows those same lines. According to the site I’ve linked to, it was written in 1951. He got it all except the punch code: http://users.aber.ac.uk/dgc/funtheyhad.html
International outsourcing has been going on for a good ten years, and I’m sure it will continue to grow.
Speculative fiction is the perfect medium for taking possible answers to today’s questions to their logical conclusions. It’s a very interesting time to be a writer!