Magazine: Winter 2016 | Volume 23, No. 2
What will our work look like in a future characterized by artificial intelligence and autonomous systems? Perhaps more important than predicting the future is designing a future that we would actually want to live in. We all work to provide for ourselves and our families, and to seek challenges and purpose in life. In this issue of XRDS, which highlights the Future of Work, we discuss the ways technology interacts with our wants and needs by augmenting our abilities and enabling new forms of cooperation between people and machines. We also analyze the cultural, social, and ethical challenges of new forms of organizing work, such as on-demand labor and gig work. Finally, we explore what it means to design the workplace of the future as a place of fairness, trust, innovation, and growth.
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COLUMN: Advice
When should you quit your Ph.D.?
I cannot do this for the rest of my life.
By Andy J. Hunsucker
COLUMN: Careers
Finding your MAP for career choices: what makes a great 'intrapreneur'?
By Tony Blankemeyer
SECTION: Feature: Augmenting people
Don't replace people. Augment them.
If we let machines put us out of work, it will be because of a failure of imagination and the will to make a better future!
By Tim O'Reilly
SECTION: Features: Augmenting people
Hybrid workplaces of the future
Are you ready to meet your new teammates?
By Ece Kamar
The future of microwork
What happens when we algorithmically break complex productivity tasks down into microtasks? At Microsoft Research, the author and her team are accelerating a shift toward microproductivity to make it easy for people to get big things done one small step at a time.
By Jaime Teevan
SECTION: Features: On demand labor
The context of on-demand work
Two years of ethnographic fieldwork, in the U.S. and India, together with rich quantitative data, shine light on the world of on-demand work invisible to many of us, yet core to the functioning of the Internet and the future of automation.
By Niloufar Salehi
The hidden faces of automation
As we dream of automation, we always need people to calibrate and train what we automate. Automation has hidden human faces.
By Lilly Irani
The gig economy
Gig jobs have become a structural aspect of contemporary economic landscape, creating unique social and technological challenges. How can policies and design solutions better protect gig workers and mitigate the risks participants face?
By Paolo Parigi, Xiao Ma
SECTION: Feature: Designing the workplace of the future
Algorithmic bosses, robotic colleagues: toward human-centered algorithmic workplaces
We already know algorithms can make our lives and our work more efficient, but how can we go beyond that to create trustworthy, fair, and enjoyable workplaces in which workers can find meaning and continuously learn?
By Min Kyung Lee
The art and design of autonomous machines
Dr. Raffaello D'Andrea speaks at length about what it takes to build commercially viable robotic systems, the future of autonomous machines, the role humans will play in this future, and how we can best prepare for it.
By Nidhi Rastogi, Adrian Scoică
Building a brighter future for crowd work
Skill ladders may help crowd workers to "skill up" as they work. But what other technical innovations will lead to better opportunities for crowd work?
By Jeff Bigham, Kristin Williams
Where are the flying cars?
Will the digital revolution actually transform the process of innovation? A professor from NYU spent three years with NASA's engineers and scientists to uncover the significant opportunities and challenges involved with new models for R&D work.
By Hila Lifshitz-Assaf
