The rapid automation of the world of work has caused many voices to raise concerns and call for deceleration. However, digital systems could still offer an opportunity for the modern working society. An observational opinion report.
More than two centuries ago, people were already using machines to efficiency of their work to increase. From today's perspective, many of these automation processes have progressed at a snail's pace. These have been significantly increased by digitalisation, particularly with the spread of the World Wide Web in the 2000s. The widespread use of software that can be increasingly networked has rendered many manual operations obsolete. And will continue to do so. The speed at which the possibilities for automating work processes are being developed seems threatening in many places.
Possibilities and reality
What many Media Reports What many people fail to realise in their (gloomy) view of the future is that it is still people who establish automation in their companies. It is true that efforts to keep pace with the potential speed of today's automation can be observed in many places. The technology giants GAFA (Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon) are leading the way. However, it is questionable whether these attempts reflect the reality of our working society.
One Study by the specialist publication IDG surveyed employees from around 1,500 companies in 2017 on the topic of the workplace of the future. 95 per cent of respondents communicate via email, 88 per cent also via telephone. However, the intelligent systems of tomorrow are now working with data that is not recorded in any software. Big data (as the name suggests) cannot fulfil its purpose. Of course, the example of communication only provides an excerpt of today's working reality, but it is nevertheless exemplary, as working habits must also grow with technology.
No speed is not a solution either
At the same time, many of the respondents in the study have already expressed a desire for more freedom and self-determination through technological possibilities such as cloud systems. New working time models are also popular in the study and at least two out of three of the entrepreneurs surveyed understood that workplaces need to be further developed in this respect. Task management, collaboration and therefore work hierarchies would change significantly as a result, and that takes time - regardless of the opportunities.
Furthermore, the desire for more freedom strongly suggests what many exhausted employees and employers report and often have to pay for in terms of health. Collective burnout, so let's slow down. Automated processes could, in theory, provide support here. Tasks such as reporting or invoicing, which often take up the last few minutes and even your last nerve, are taken over by systems.
The difficulty now lies in not immediately filling the time left over as a result. After all, as a society, we are subject to an insatiable urge to increase, especially under capitalism, which cannot be eradicated even by all "slow work" philosophies. At least that's what Dr Hartmut Rosa thinks. Instead of a slower pace, the sociologist believes that the way we come into contact with our environment makes for happy and healthy work. What he describes as "resonance", when applied to the world of work, means that we have more time for genuine engagement with things and people and therefore relate to them differently.
Control is good, people can be better
Most working people can understand this - a technological system cannot. What software can do in times of big data The best way to do this is to correlate and relativise data. These results are important for companies as they form the basis for decisions that (supposedly) ensure their growth and continued existence. According to Rosa, the fact that we are constantly trying to make everything controllable is also responsible for the signs of exhaustion in today's working society.
What sounds very dystopian overall can, however, also be an opportunity for the future of work. If we leave it to systems to make our data controllable and use our human intuition and creative drive for everything "non-controllable", we will fill our (working) time to the same extent, but possibly with a different feeling. We may not know what the future holds, but at least we are shaping the present.
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