We are at the brink of the Information Age and there
are remarkable and dramatic changes ahead for us. Just as in the
Industrial Revolution there were whole new fields such as “management”
that were created and flourished because the complexity and size
of operations within companies grew at an exponential rate, the
same will be true for the Information Age.
I
believe that the concept of formal education being separate from
working will disappear in the 21st Century and brand new jobs like
taxonomists (virtual librarians) will become extremely important
in the Information Age as information flows around the world similar
to how mechanization swept through the world to create “the industrialized
nations”. In order for information to flow it needs to be labeled,
assembled, packaged and delivered online and real-time and Canada
has demonstrated expertise in both electronic data and content.
In addition, whole new concepts like individuals expertise being
shared between companies will become common place as more than 80%
of the labour market becomes freelance based on projects and results
to be achieved rather than organized around companies and employment
as we still are to a great extent today. What this means is that
we will need to learn and re-learn constantly in order to be able
to complete tasks as new and more information becomes available
at the time we need to use it because computers understand us better
from studying user profiles of who we are and what we are working
on. The Information Age will mean more understanding but less privacy
for individuals.
