First Principles | Future tense for ‘The Office’

Johansen is an expert futurist — the sort of one who seems to be at what might occur by selecting up alerts from the previous and the current to grasp how the world unfolds. The way forward for work and places of work is the theme of his most up-to-date ebook, Workplace Shock printed final month. “The standard workplace is a social and bodily expertise that not works for many individuals. We can’t return to the workplace the best way it was, and the trail ahead is under no circumstances clear,” is an argument he makes over a video name from the research of his residence in California.

Affiliated to the Institute for the Future (IFTF), there’s a lot else he predicts. We are going to all be cyborgs quickly — half human, half machine. If that sounds out of whack, he argues we take into account, Synthetic Intelligence (AI). However he has a quibble: Those that got here up with the time period ‘Synthetic Intelligence’ within the late Nineteen Fifties did a horrible job of framing the time period. If solely that they had referred to as it ‘Augmented Intelligence’, he laments, most individuals would have embraced the thought by now. By the use of instance, he says, how as an expert author, he had learn the writing on the wall and had included GPT-3 into his work earlier than it went mainstream. It’s solely now that persons are starting to grasp the import of all of it.

Johansen is the sort of one who thinks about how expertise can increase different facets of his life as effectively. That’s the reason he suggests we take into account the sensors within the units all of us carry to see the way it will affect our future. These sensors are there within the smartphones and the smart-watches strapped to our our bodies. It received’t be too lengthy earlier than the sensors in these units get implanted beneath our pores and skin and it is going to be thought of completely routine. Whereas most individuals might consider it as an invasion of privateness, within the longer run, “we are going to surrender part of our privateness for the comfort it affords”, he argues. The outcomes may very well be entry to raised medical care, to start with.

Johansen has been a futurist for 50 years now so the inevitable query comes up: How typically has he received issues fallacious? “Virtually 80% of our predictions have come true.” That’s fairly darned good. However the sceptic in me refuses to relaxation. Is it doable that Johansen is predicting the way forward for places of work from the eyes of a Westerner? For folks in lower-income and middle-income nations the place dwelling house is at a premium, places of work are sometimes seen as a kind of locations you go to for a sure liberation.

Seems, it’s one thing he has given thought to. “The pandemic was deeply inequitable. Some folks had entry to locations resembling residence places of work and areas whereas others didn’t.” The younger individuals who had been a witness to this inequality and skilled it, are watching. It issues as a result of “for the primary time in human historical past, younger folks within the age group of 24 and beneath make up the biggest portion of the worldwide inhabitants.” They’re indignant and have gotten politically energetic, says Johansen.

Whereas this might not be evident on the bottom, Johansen makes the purpose that their voices may be heard on the internet. It’s the place they now work together with one another and search variety. So, very like ‘officeverses’, different universes will emerge the place folks socialise with one another, type relationships, and even resolve the way forward for governments. In the meantime, he warns, there might be gut-wrenching change over the subsequent decade. That’s the reason he has a chunk of recommendation based mostly on his experience: “Be clear about your intent, however be versatile about the way you need to go about it.”