Talk:The future of office work: Difference between revisions

[https://kylascanlon.com/ Kyla Scanlon] is a whip-smart “content creator” whose short-form videos, podcasts and blogs “analysing the economy with a human-focused lens” have earned her hundreds of thousands of subscribers.<ref>Her videos are either next-level, uber-hip, tenth-Dan free-form improvisational genius, or something that just looks like it. [https://x.com/kylascan/status/1704626243402895435? Judge for yourself].</ref> Recently she came to the defence of TikTok Girl who, she says, is ''right''.<ref>https://kyla.substack.com/p/the-tiktok-girl-is-right-modernity</ref>

So, Scanlon tells us, was born the nine-to-five. The industrial world has, arbitrarily, stuck with it ever since. But the nature of how we now ''are'' — networked, digital, [[onworld|online]] rather than “in-person” — and what we now ''do'' — delivering services like “B2B SaaS” instead of traditional industries — means [[this time it’s different|it’s different this time]].  

Let’s take this history as read and park questions — such as how TikTok Girl would have liked the average day out in the agrarian fields, or ''who'' stuck with the eight-hour work day, since it definitely wasn’t the financial services industry or their professional advisors<ref>The EU got so worked up about the long hours that it legislated the “Working Time Directive” in 1998, limiting weekly work hours to ''forty-eight''. Professionals have habitually opted out of it ever since.</ref> — but as we do, a bit of tough love: an eight-hour day downtown with a commute each side of it is ''no great imposition''. It might be ''dull'', sure, but that is not the question. You can’t cure boredom by working from home.

So are there other reasons to think things have changed? Scanlon argues that, since we now deliver services rather than making things in a factory, jobs ''can'' be delivered remotely.  

every time you talk about a change in the workforce, it’s a typical response of “I can’t envision a world different than the one I inhabit personally, therefore, nothing is possible” or some variation of that.... The pea-brained nature of those that can’t envision a future different than the present are the problem.}}

But Scanlon’s conception of what her generation, in general, can reasonably expect from working life seems just as informed by the world ''she'' inhabits personally, which to put not too fine a point on it, ''rocks''. Few twenty-five year olds can expect a podcast, a Bloomberg column, guest essays in the New York Times and the best part of half a million followers across five platforms. If they could, they would. So, frankly, would the rest of us.

But fair enough, we should not accept our fate. The questions remains: ''Can'' we change? ''What''? And ''how''?