The “human cloud” and the future of work

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I’ve been working almost 40 years (more if you count high school and college jobs) and a lot has changed in how I work; where I work; and –obviously– the work itself. Smarter folk than I are thinking about this, too:

“In the same way that high-speed Internet access disrupted the corporate IT market, creating a “cloud” of web-enabled infrastructure, the human cloud is shorthand for how the web has disrupted the way we work. Companies rely on dispersed teams to get the best talent available regardless of location (or price) and many are using crowdsourcing and other innovative means to achieve their goals.

Meanwhile, many people who work in this new cloud have lives that look nothing like they would have even10 years ago: they may have contracts with a variety of clients, outsource themselves and their skills through a third-party service like Elance or ODesk or collaborate with coworkers in opposing time zones. The companies they work for, and with, may not even know what they look like, or where they live. This is the reality of the human cloud and it is changing us (and the companies we work for) in ways we may not fully realize yet.”

Given the “webby” nature of my work, I have a good bit of contact with the “human cloud” and find myself wondering how I would function there.

Reason to believe

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Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it.
Do not believe in anything because it is spoken and rumored by many.
Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books.
Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders.
Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations.
But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.
This bit of wisdom is attributed to the Buddha. I wonder why this never came up in school (public or Sunday).

Social networking slowly taking over email

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“According to a new report issued by Gartner, 20% of business users will use social networks as their primary means of business communications by 2014. Gartner says it expects e-mail clients from Microsoft and IBM will soon start integrating with social networking sites, giving users access to their e-mails, contacts and calendars from their favorite social networking platform. What’s more, Gartner says that contact lists, calendars and messaging clients on smartphones will all be capable of connecting with social networking platforms by 2012.” [via networkworld.com]

This is just really hard for Grown-Ups to wrap their heads around. Even more difficult for those that pooh-pooh Twitter as a silly waste of time.

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

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I read The Handmaid’s Tale 25 years ago and it scared the crap out of me. It’s the story of “a future America under the violently oppressive rule of a far-right Christian sect. Women are back in the home and divided into domestic and reproductive functions, branded by coloured robes.”

If Tea Partiers read books this one would make them say “Hell yeah!” The rest of us cross our fingers and say, “It can’t happen here.” But it can, of course. We’re closer today than when the book was published.

BBC Interview »

The next thing

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David Cain has soared to the top of my must-read list. His latest post has made my day richer and I hope it does the same for you. Here’s a taste:

“As I very slowly get a little better at managing the “stuff” in life, I am getting markedly better at being okay with everything’s eternally-half-done status. I’m getting better at coexisting peacefully with stuff that needs fixing, problems I don’t know how to handle, opportunities I am mismanaging, and even my anxious moods. Peace with anxiety. Anxiety, with peace. Somehow.

Now and then I can sit right in the middle of all of my uncertain and unfinished business and relax in the knowledge that everything really is in its right place. Strangely, the more I’m okay with everything being not quite okay, the better I am at moving the little things along to a place where they do feel okay. Make sense? Not really? That’s okay.”

I’m reminded of a trip from Des Moines to Jefferson City. Greg Brown (now our CEO) was at the wheel and working hard to pass slower cars on the two-lane highway. It dawned me that he was trying get to the “front of the line.” His face confirmed this when I mentioned it. Greg and I are older and wiser now.

A brief chat with Keith Povall

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This is the first in what I hope will be a series of posts featuring brief interviews with some of the friends I have made online.

Keith Povall and I have never met but I know more about him (and he about me) than most of the people that live on our street. It’s a rare day that we do not exchange a few words.

Keith is a curry chef; raises carnivorous  plants and, of course, a blogger. He is also the curator of a cringe-inducing (for me) archive of photos of people wearing sandals and sox. Yes, he was a dry, biting sense of humor.

You also need to know that I am a shameless anglophile. I love all things British. The way they talk, their food, and their weather. So, my plan to to touch base with Keith every week or so and get his take on things happening in the world.

And when we run out of things to talk about, I’ll introduce you to some other lovely people.

AUDIO: Interview with Keith Povall (13 min)

Clay Shirky: The Shock of Inclusion

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“If you were in the news business in the 20th century, you worked in a kind of pipeline, where reporters and editors would gather facts and observations and turn them into stories, which were then committed to ink on paper or waves in the air, and finally consumed, at the far end of those various modes of transport, by the audience.

What’s going away, from the pipeline model, isn’t the importance of news, or the importance of dedicated professionals. What’s going away is the linearity of the process, and the passivity of the audience. What’s going away is a world where the news was only made by professionals, and consumed by amateurs who couldn’t do much to produce news on their own, or to distribute it, or to act on it en masse.

We are living through a shock of inclusion, where the former audience is becoming increasingly intertwined with all aspects of news, as sources who can go public on their own, as groups that can both create and comb through data in ways the professionals can’t, as disseminators and syndicators and users of the news.”

Looxcie wearable camera

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“The Looxcie is not a high-definition camera. It records at a resolution of 480 x 320 pixels at 15″ frames a second. But it has a special button that makes it ideal for taking video of unexpected moments. When the camera is running in continuous-capture mode, and the wearer suddenly sees a goal scored at a hockey game, for instance, a quick push of the button will tell the camera to automatically save a clip of the preceding 30 seconds. The camera weighs about an ounce and stores up to five hours of video.”