What TV doesn't, print can't; we deliver.
What TV doesn't, print can't; we deliver.
The impact of digital transformation, automation, and artificial intelligence on the workforce and the economy.
Few words in the modern lexicon evoke such potent imagery of purpose, meaning, and focused determination as ‘work.’ It occupies the realm between the source of fulfilment and the relentless necessity of earning a livelihood and building a reputation. Work serves as the canvas for self-identification, straddling the line between mundane drudgery and the celebration of everyday life.
Ever since Adam Smith’s famous proclamation about enlightened self-interest guiding supply chains and the dynamic equilibrium of markets, emphasizing that it’s not the benevolence of ‘the butcher, the baker, and the brewer’, work has been the universal reference point for assessing self-worth and societal identity in modern civilization.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with utilitarian and transactional value attribution to work. However, what we often overlook is the critical distinction between work as monotonous, repetitive toil and work as a source of creativity, self-improvement, and an enduring path of personal growth.
Hours vs. Output
Narayana Murthy, India’s IT visionary and Infosys founder, recently suggested that young individuals should commit to working 70 hours per week for the sake of ‘national development,’ eschewing conspicuous Western influences. This call has ignited a discourse on the essence of work, fulfilment, and generational differences.
Mr. Murthy’s sentiment is not necessarily incorrect, but it seems somewhat out of touch with the times, given that the current narrative leans toward the ‘Future of Work’ and ‘Maximizing Flexibility.’
His stance harks back to an older model of economic thinking in an era when downtown offices are empty in advanced post-capitalist economies, and a four-day workweek could soon become a reality.
The upheavals caused by the pandemic have shattered many of our cherished assumptions about work, life, relationships, and belonging.
The Quaker-Bolshevik call to work diligently toward a tangible collective goal, enduring present hardships for a brighter future, is less likely to resonate in an era of atomization, liquid modernity, eroded values, fragile connections, and the fluidity of “play it as it lays.”
Most of these transformations were part of the post-90s ‘Great Transformation’ that fuelled the rise of the Indian Middle Class and India Inc.
The ‘Invisible Hand’ of the market is not an either/or proposition; economic changes often catalyse significant social transformations, disrupting established norms. Along with alienation, this is a lesson from Karl Marx that tech titans need to grasp.
The 20th Century World of Work was built upon stability, social cohesion, and a sense of certainty about one’s place and certain enduring values.
What accelerated its demise were the same forces that brought radical transformations: the drive for efficiency, profitability, and new markets.
The advent of Artificial Intelligence and the Fourth Industrial Revolution, along with the promise of a world with universal basic income, ‘fully automated luxury communism,’ and meeting basic needs, could further relegate traditional work to the annals of history.
The spirit of an era marked by pervasive uncertainty, extreme pathologisation, the cult of the unanchored, the ambiguous, and the thrill-seeking, is incongruous with rigid certainties and goals. The sooner we understand this, the better.
A New Consensus?
Another flaw in Mr. Murthy’s statement, which echoes Jack Ma’s rigid ‘996 rule,’ is that it places undue importance on Taylorism, an early 20th-century concept of scientific workplace management that is quickly losing relevance.
Ironically, leaders in the vanguard of digital transformation and data-driven algorithms for efficiency and timesaving have not devised alternative models in line with the era of stakeholder-driven shifts in the modern workplace.
The simplistic belief that hours worked equate to output is inherently flawed. While this may hold true for linear processes, it rarely does for complex systems.
This perspective also fails to differentiate between a vocation and a job, earning a living and building a career. With an increasing emphasis on domain specialization, near-ubiquitous digitalization, and ongoing ethical debates surrounding AI, many traditional jobs will become obsolete.
The jobs that remain in demand will not require unwavering automatons but individuals with empathy, creativity, adaptability, and a capacity for reinvention.
Just like the working class in the deindustrialized Rust Belts of the USA and the UK, a significant segment of the workforce will not have the luxury to work hard, even if they desire to do so.
The Road Not Taken
In the mid-90s, Nobel Laureate economist Paul Romer’s endogenous growth theory gained prominence in Silicon Valley and the IT world. It posited that new ideas and people are the foundation for an organization’s organic growth. Romer was once considered a pioneer of technology innovation until he criticized Big Tech for stifling new ideas.
Despite India’s IT sector receiving numerous accolades and boasting a vast talent pool, it is primarily seen as a cost-cutting offshore destination. Most significant innovation and core R&D activities continue to occur elsewhere, while we remain service providers and optimizers. The model has remained largely unchanged despite fluctuations in global market trends.
Perhaps, in our relentless focus on processes, rituals, and the dominance of the new Soviet-Harvard ‘Managerial Bureaucracy,’ we missed the essential cultivation of out-of-the-box ideas, fresh thinking, and a penchant for experimentation, failure, and reinvention.
Breaking free from the magnetic push-and-pull between a half-hearted embrace of the West and instinctual rejection of it, there’s a need to move beyond clichés, tropes, stereotypes, and imitation.
Almost every vocation is chosen and entered upon as means to an end, but is continued as the ultimate end.
~ Friedrich Nietzsche
