Millennials 2035: The Virtualization of Work

This is the first in a series on how people will likely be "working" in twenty years, based upon current trends in areas as diverse as automation, demographics, scientific innovation and culture. While it is part of a broader look on the Millennials' world, this is also intended to look at how these changes will affect everyone.

Why 2035? By that time, most Millennials will be hitting their peak earning years, and will also, in general, be at their most influential. Meanwhile, the Digitals (the generation after the Millennials), will be firmly ensconced as the up and coming kids entering into the workforce.

[editorial note: I've made minor editorial changes and changed the title.]

From Cubicle to Coffeeshop

No surprise - the Future of Work can be found at Starbucks. I'm a habitue of coffee-shops, and have over the years watched people writing code, drafting reports, designing graphics or games, meeting with potential recruits, clients or business partners, listening to webinars or giving them, and all the other myriad things that are typically done in the corporate space.

Older generations may still gather around the watercooler, but for younger ones, the watercooler has been virtualized a long time ago - we call it Facebook or Twitter today, but it will no doubt be called something else in twenty years. For those who grew up with social media, going to an office makes very little sense when they have a perfectly good office in their own house or a pretty decent one (likely with better coffee) a few blocks away, and more capabilities in their phone than many corporations had at their multi-million dollar facilities thirty years ago.

A key reason for the increasing popularity of this virtual office is the fact that it allows the worker the ability to control their time more effectively. Despite what managers today may believe, numerous studies have validated the fact that employers are both more productive and actually work longer hours on projects when they are working remotely.

This accords both with the fact that such remote workers have more capabilities to control the interruptions in their environment and more ability to work at times that are most conducive to their own temperament - if you are a coder or a designer, the likelihood is good that your peak work-time may be 10pm, not 10am. In a physical environment, expecting an office to be functional at that hour is unreasonable, but at home or the local coffee-shop, this is increasingly the norm.

A big consequence of this is that the notion of a 40-hour week (or even a 35-hour week) is disappearing, and with it the idea that work is billable by the hour. What's replacing it is a move towards fixed bid contracts making their way into the employment sector, with work determined by clearly definable contractual obligations, and payments made according to a completion schedule. Salaries likewise are disappearing in favor of retainers - you make your expertise available to retaining clients preferentially, but those clients can't limit you from engaging in other activities in the interim.

This means that by 2035, work will more typically be done in the contemporary studio model, possibly with crowd-funding creating a working "pot". The central "studio" acts as a general contractor for pulling in mini- and micro-corporations (many essentially freelance consultants) to achieve this objective. IP ownership then becomes a contractual issue, with points in the production in lieu of up-front payment an increasingly important currency.

By the way, many workspace designers today are pushing what's often called an Open Space concept, but what they're really doing is trying to emulate the coffee-shop environment. often while failing to grasp that the reason the coffee-shop is so successful is because it isn't the office.

By 2035, the typical company will be highly distributed, with potentially a facade office that represents a public interface for clients, but with much if not most work done by people distributed globally. They will be (much) smaller in terms of "on-the-books" employees, typically with those employers also being shareholders.

The Gamification of Work

While this process is going on, another, related one will also be taking place, which is how we do our work. We're already playing with forms of augmented perception - the use of computer displays, immersive viewers and similar wearable sensors to do jobs - Google Glass, Oculus Rift, Microsoft's Holo-lens and related virtual reality displays. This trend will play out heavily within the next ten years, especially once Apple enters the game (and I have no doubt they will within the next eighteen months).

What all of these have in common is that they provide a way of mixing the "real world" with some form of augmentation. That augmentation may be simple - popping up notification messages that provide additional information about something being looked at or heard - or it may be completely immersive, such as putting a person directly into a virtual reality world. Most people already have a pretty clear idea about what this means. Indeed, it has been a stock "special effect" in movies for several years now, despite the fact that it's one of the thornier technical problems to be solved in computing (how do you determine exactly where you are and what's around you - and the significance of those things?)

It's very likely that within the next five years, such units will start seeing use first in gaming, then social networks and in the five years after that (2020-2025) you'll see companies establishing BYOVRD (bring your own Virtual Reality Device) to work policies, even though increasingly that work may be a thousand miles away.

What it means in practice is simple - binocular VR devices make it possible to emulate 3D environments. The Graphics Processing Unit (GPUs) is now becoming so powerful that it is often the most heavily utilized computer chip in the system, far more than the CPU. For designers and artists, this becomes a radically more useful palette for doing everything from game design to creating packaging artwork to building models for 3d printers.

For the engineer or scientist it makes it possible to create models and run test scenarios, to visualize data and to better study physical phenomena in more than two dimensions. A photographer working with VR can remove backgrounds from images, can capture multiple angles of both static and dynamic action and can composite images on the fly.

Doctors and nurses can superimpose models upon individuals - take a cat-scan of an individual to create an internal working model, then use that to highlight both skeletal and soft tissue interactions, along with annotations about various features both in general and with a particular patient - even when that person is on the operating table.

In other words, what VR does is make it possible to both model and visualize information about the world and then superimpose that to integrate back into the real world. It goes a long way towards replacing the need to physically interact with people, which in turn goes a long way towards reducing the need for people to come to an office to work. VR makes possible the ability for a "personal consultant" (see below) to effectively ride on the shoulder of someone, to provide advice or assistance - whether that advice be how to paint a picture, do some home repair, select an outfit, make a stock investment or just about any other kind of activity, providing not only direct advice but also bringing up relevant annotations and visualizations to make things more apparent. It also gives rise to the vicarious adventurer, something that you're already seeing with GoPro cameras and similar lightweight attachable visual sensors.

Of course, VR's primary use will continue to be gaming. Already, the software gaming industry has grown larger than the movie industry, and will likely overtake (and subsume) the television industry within the next few years. The infatuation that Millennials have with gaming is something of a cliche, but its worth putting this into perspective - the distinctions between gaming and other forms of media is rapidly disappearing, to the extent that games are increasingly driving the creation of other media rather than vice versa.

What's more, games are climbing dramatically as a percentage of software production in general, particularly because games, unlike almost any other category of software, have a high novelty factor compared to office suites or similar "traditional" software packages. The overwhelming majority of all mobile apps (and the ones that generally sell the best) are games.

This means that by 2035, the game industry will be the dominant entertainment sector field, that game metaphors will color or shape almost all other forms of non-entertainment software, and that many of those games will be tied heavily into immersive reality. Business software in 2035 may look a lot more like Halo (or Sim City) than Microsoft Office.

The New Victorians

No, corsets are not coming back into style - although, curiously, they are. Neal Stephenson, author of what many consider one of the more prescient science fiction novels of the late twentieth century, Snow Crash, followed this work up with another (rather underappreciated) book called The Diamond Age, in which he examined the world from the perspective of what he considered the next computer era. It's well worth the read, in part because he managed to call the rise in interest of Victorian era style and fashion a logical consequence of computer technology's impacts upon society.

In such a world, one where computers and robots are pervasive, the value of hand-made technology rises significantly. The difference is that such products are artisanal in nature, although they may end up using computer and robotic technology at some point as an assist, either from the design and production side or the marketing and promotional direction. Not surprisingly, these also tend to be micro-markets, where the number of people buying or selling into those markets number in the few dozens to few thousands.

This is called the New Victorianism because it was during the latter part of that era (1880 to 1910) that mass production became firmly established in England, and with it, a corresponding counter-reaction by people who rebelled against the uniformity of the clothing, food, vehicles and even houses that such an era brought with it.

Ironically it was technology itself that made this feasible: the rise of high temperature furnaces made by better tooling led to the ability to created molded steel that could be readily configured into a large number of shapes at relatively low cost (sounds a great deal like 3D printing, in that respect). This made for the rise in decorative ironwork, which in turn led to a shift from largely rectangular to far more organic forms of architecture, and this in turn expressed itself in art, design and fashion elsewhere. This trend would ultimately play itself out after the first world war, but while it lasted, it created some incredibly good (and incredibly bad) art and design.

The same thing is underway now, as evident in things like Cosplay. Recreation societies have been around for a while (take a look at the SCA or Civil War re-enactments), but what's happening today is something new, and something very much unique to the Millennials. Cosplayers (a contraction of Costume Player, from the Japanese term where it originated) create costumes for the sheer joy of creating the costumes and emulating characters from films, books, comics or their own stories. Many have learned to sew, knit, and smith, often on their own (the ability to sew fell by the wayside with the Boomers and GenXers, in part because those generations saw the rise of the mass production clothing outfitters and fast food restaurants, and this dramatically cut down on those who never learned once-basic skills such as sewing or cooking). These cosplayers often get together at conventions and meetups, showing off their skills and making friends, and when these are over they jump right into planning their next "cosplay".

What's different today is that for many of these people, this "hobby" is becoming their businesses, and accounts for a surprisingly high number of micro-businesses formed today. These cosplayers learn their skills and become costumers, often going from showing their clothes to accepting commissions for others, and from there to selling the clothes and accessories they create through sites like Etsy and promote on Facebook or Pinterest or other social media.

This extends well beyond simple dresses - there's a thriving community built around a few artisans that have pushed latex and silicon development and a rise in the interest of decorative prosthetics (cf., the hit television show Face-Off) to creating wholescale prosthetic outfits - fairies, mermaids, Klingons, each creating micro-markets where the consumers of these goods may themselves be producers back into the same market.

The impact of this is beginning to be felt in the retail clothing sector - ironically driving sales at used goods stores like GoodWill or Value Village not because of the poverty of the participants (though that is a factor) but rather because these provide inexpensive raw materials for the creation of specialized cosplays.

Meanwhile, many retail clothing outlets in malls are sitting idle, with fewer younger customers in particular, as this generation learns to appreciate good quality that they can tailor to their own bodies. Thus, it's not just the rise of the Internet but also a shift in the relationship that this generation in particular has with "consumer goods". This "prosumer" stance is having a major, and typically detrimental, impact upon even contemporary businesses, and this will only increase as the Millennials gets older.

Artisanal cooking is also reviving the art of the gourmand after it being trashed by fifty years of fast food restaurants. The future of a number of iconic fast food restaurants is being eroded by a wholesale rise in specialized restaurants serving generally healthier foods at comparable costs, its once overwhelming lure of consistency is now seen as a liability. Micro-breweries are making major inroads into the beer market. Technology provides ways to operate efficiently at low scale, and this means that even in the physical world the micro-businesses are eating away at the retail margins even as the cost of building vast supply chains rises in response to both energy prices and the growth of insourcing of businesses located in traditionally outsourcing countries such as China or India.

The re-emergence of In-Sourcing is actually a major factor in the future. Many companies are discovering that outsourcing has hollowed out their competitive edge, has reduced the number of trained personnel who have any loyalty to their companies, and has meant that even core competencies have become degraded to the point where companies are no longer able to function if their supply chain breaks. Additionally, the knowledge that a company in a place like India or China is in fact being used to train up core staff and build up expertise to be more competitive globally than the country doing the outsourcing is dawning on policy makers and business leaders alike.

Finally, a lot of these makers are learning to work together in ad-hoc studios that move beyond entertainment, though entertainment is a good place to study to understand where things are going. Recently, there was a great deal of buzz about RWBY, an episodic cartoon ("of sorts") that was produced by a small team of people using consumer level modeling software (SmithMicro's Poser) to generate an anime-like feature with intelligent writing, smartly done graphics, superb music and in general very high production values. It was funded by community donations through Kickstarter until it reached a stage where it was able to draw in other sponsors, and even there, the Kickstarter contribution remains significant.

Such products don't have studio distribution, they don't control TV channels. What they do have is the Internet, and what's happening there is that they are displacing eyeballs away from the big money productions as an entire generation moves away from these other channels. Already, Internet-only production companies (and distributors) are making waves as both Netflix and Amazon move into media production and distribution with original, and surprisingly high quality, content.

One final point on these makers. Many of the things that they create will be virtual - movies and games, music, software, 3d models (especially as 3d printing moves beyond the hobbyist tage), books and so forth. In most cases, what will be sold won't be the software itself but the royalties from licensing of that software. Already tracking usage of these licensed products has become pretty much automated. In some cases, these translate into receiving royalties from owning percentages or points from a common pool. These are forms of investment, yes, but they are a form of investment that more directly translates sweat equity into a return on investment than what happens now.

Similarly, it's likely that in many cases you will see a shift from full salaries to retainers; rather than having a single employer, the typical Millennial in 2035 will end up with retainers from several employers that specify that they be available for a certain period of time with sufficient notice, but otherwise their time (and their intellectual property) is their own. (I also expect that agents will be on the rise, as those people who perform well will likely find it more advantageous to let someone else doing the negotiations for them, regardless of the field).

In 2035, those cosplayers, makers and producers will be be in their forties. Their income streams will be varied, but will likely come from a combination of commissioned sales, points or royalties from productions, retainers, and consigned sales. What will end up going away for many is the salary.

If you take a look even today at compensation, one thing that's become evident is that employers typically are advertising for short term contracts - 2-3 months or 6 months. A salary is, for the typical worker, much like a revolving line of credit is for a company - a way of spreading out the overall compensation into regular, even payments. It's safe and stable, but it commits both employers and employees to a long term relationship that's becoming increasingly untenable in business, and as credit becomes harder for businesses to come by, that investment in people that may not come to fruition for years (if ever) becomes harder to justify.

Salaries won't go away entirely, but already there are signs of its demise - the six month probationary period (which is about the length of time it takes to complete an assignment of any complexity), the disappearance of tenure at universities, the growing preference of employers towards hiring on contract (business to business) over W2 (long term salaried). The Affordable Care Act may end up accelerating this de-salarification process, because company sponsored health care has long been a benefit to being salaried; since they can now get this on the open market, many (especially younger) workers will actually either see more benefit in creating their own companies or will "float" from project to project as their inclinations take them.

Kurt Cagle is an information architect, data scientist, industry analyst and, yes, consultant, who works for Avalon Consulting, LLC., specializing in document and data publishing, semantics, data analytics, visualization, and taming the Big Data beast. His clients have included Fortune 500 companies and US and European government agencies. He lives in Issaquah, Washington, where he's working on his latest novel,Storm Crow.

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