Back in 1963 Bob Dylan wrote
Come gather ’round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You’ll be drenched to the bone.
If your time to you
Is worth savin’
Then you better start swimmin’
Or you’ll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin’.
Those lyrics seem eerily appropriate almost fifty years later.
In that time many things have changed, change seemed rapid and incessant. Over the years the way we work has also changed. Back in the 1960’s the U.S. was primarily made up of Blue collar workers. Now we are increasingly white collar telecommuters.
A recent special report in Time magazine entitled “The Way We’ll Work” explained the work situation in this way:
Ten years ago, Facebook didn’t exist. Ten years before that, we didn’t have the Web. So who knows what jobs will be born a decade from now? Though unemployment is at a 25-year high, work will eventually return. But it won’t look the same. No one is going to pay you just to show up. We will see a more flexible, more freelance, more collaborative and far less secure work world. It will be run by a generation with new values — and women will increasingly be at the controls.