The Unheard Talk About "Off-Peopling"

Away from media spotlight, a strange conversation is going on. It's about the end of work as we know it. That's right, no more jobs at all (in their present recognizable form) ... Not just offshoring, outsourcing, and the big-company layoffs that keep coming though we hope the latest will be the last ... but no more jobs, period. (Okay, that may be extreme; maybe 10% of us will have traditional employment once the off-peopling trend runs its course about mid-century ... according to the talk.)

The conversation has been going on for more than a decade. In 1995, Jeremy Rifkin, president of the Foundation on Economic Trends, published "THE END OF WORK: The Decline of the Global Labor Force and the Dawn of the Post-Market Era." It's full of facts on how jobs are being squeezed in all areas including knowledge work, yet hardly anyone has heard of it. A revised version was published in 2004. I just checked it on Amazon.com. It is now #95,326 in their sales ranking.

"THE JOBLESS FUTURE: Sci-Tech and the Dogma of Work" appeared in 1994, written by Stanley Aronowitz and William Difazio. It gaind little popularity and is now #851,552 on Amazon.com.

There have been a few articles on the issue, in low-circulation publications mostly. For example, "Embrace the End of Work," by James Hughes, appeared in the February 24, 2004 issue of Better Humans, an online newsletter. "Offshoring is Only the First Wave of a Major Change in Business as Usual," by Kathleen Goolsby, appeared in the March, 2004, issue of Outsourcing Journal.

As a result of my recent efforts, the Minneapolis Star Tribune ran a piece on January 27, 2005, "It'll be a new world, brave -- and scary," by H.J. Cummins. And my book "MIND OVER TECHNOLOGY: Coming Out On Top as a Wired World Starts to Run On Automatic" came out in 2004. In addition, a scattering of other publications, including The Futurist, have reported on the off-peopling trend and positive adjustments that might be made. Tempest in a teapot so far, but the major press keeps collecting the information I send, and the issue could come to wider attention soon.

Perhaps the most noted alarm was sounded by Bill Joy, co-founder of Sun Microsystems, in the April, 2000, issue of Wired Magazine, "Why the Future Doesn't Need Us." Joy registered his concern about proposals for extreme automation based on micro and nano science. Though controversial and thought-provioking, it didn't get much attention beyond Internet gurus.

But the sub-rosa conversation continues.... Those who listen in will avoid huge mistakes and ride the trend to opportunities others will miss. Stay tuned.