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| The
Future of Work |
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Listen
Here |
Linda Gratton, Dean of the London Business School
has every reason to be optimistic. She's regarded
as one of the gurus of the study of work, and those
lucky enough to be her students tend to go on to
be high achievers.
In the programme, she highlights the changes we've
already experienced. Nowadays, the job of web designer,
designing pages for the World Wide Web is a fairly
well known one. Five years ago, few would have heard
of it. Call centres, which help people shop or bank,
are also a growing job-provider, unheard of by many
a decade ago. Both are examples of the new service
industry, which for many will provide growing job
opportunities.
New technology and changed social and economic conditions
mean that our old working patterns are breaking
down. The idea of a job for life, once an idea globally
prized, is now no more. A working life at the start
of the new century might expect to comprise six
or seven jobs, some involving self employment.
New fluidity in the world of work will mean people
will have more of a chance to shape their working
lives. Retraining and developing to meet the changing
needs of employers will be a must. People's individual
self knowledge and understanding about what and
how they can contribute will be similarly valuable.
Employers too will adapt by developing the skills
of their workforce. The result will be a competitive
labour market in which the rewards go to those who
are the most employable. The danger will be those
faced by any self-employed person. It's all too
easy to become the victim of one's own success,
working too hard for too long. |
| Listen
to Marjourie
Jouen, a co-ordinator of several studies on the
future of work |
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| Future
Lifestyles |
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Listen
Here |
Flexible working patterns; a dizzying choice of leisure
options, and the opportunity to combine job and home.
The shape of our lives will change beyond recognition
in the new century, and we'll have technology to thank
for it. Or we shall curse it instead!
Some experts, like Sociologist professor France Ferrarotti
fear that technology will become the active ingredient
and humanity the passive. We will be mere operators of
computers, whether we're working or playing. Are we in
danger of becoming slaves to the mighty screen? The new
elite will be the software programmes who programme and
control the events that unfold on them. Will this mean
technology robbing us of control over our lifestyles?
Perhaps we might take comfort in some previous predictions
for technological futures, many entertainingly wide of
the mark. "Everything that can be invented has been invented"
concluded one earlier guru.
Now, invention seems ceaseless, each new gadget promoting
itself as a "must have" item to enhance the 21st century
lifestyle. And mass consumerism is starting to globalise
which explains Shanghai sociologist Li Ling's weakness
for western tastes and styles. On the other hand, Li Ling
is adamant she won't become a victim of technologically
driven mass consumerism. She maintains many aspects of
Chinese traditional lifestyle in her home life, aiming
to pick and choose from the new and old.
A perfect example: On Shanghai streets, doctors still
give free treatment to the many out of towners visiting
the city. The pharmacies still stock traditional Chinese
remedies alongside modern home treatments. You can buy
a computer which measures pulse and heart rate in the
same place that you can buy ginseng root. Li Ling sees
a future where choice enhances lifestyle, rather than
dictating it. |
| Listen
to John Naisbitt,
internationally aclaimed futurist talk about lifestyles
in the 21st Century |
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| The
Future of Leisure |
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Listen
here |
Sociologist and editor Li Ling is right. The annual autumn
Shanghai food festival, with its crowded streets and amazing,
wafting smells would be a daunting challenge to any computer
programmer or TV producer trying to reproduce it for home
entertainment. The only way truly, to appreciate it, is
to be there.
So despite predictions like futurist David Snyder's about
virtual home "data caves", those seeking relaxation and
entertainment will prize real experience more and more.
Like such a lot of life in the 21st century, it will be
a matter of making the right choices from a massive range
of options.
In Castelnuovo, Northern Italy, Daniel and Julian Warde
Jones, aged 5 and 7 are already taking some of these choices
for granted. The family computer printer breaks, so Julian
emails across the 15th century piazza to a neighbour's
house to print some writing. Later that same neighbour
crosses the piazza to borrow some bread. The boys value
computer games as well as books and TV.
It goes without saying that the wired world will dominate
- or try and dominate - our leisure choices. It will also
mean more and more 24 hour instant and disposable mass
culture. Just as the new flexibility in the world of work
will mean some will work too long, so the new wealth of
technologically delivered leisure activities will tempt
us to play too long.
This, says philosopher and historian Theodore Zeldin endangers
"unstructured" time. Time in which true relaxation and
renewal can be achieved. Time when creative thought is
at its most productive. Will the march of technology spell
the end of this renewing kind of leisure? |
| Listen
to Chris
Winter, Industrial Professor of Cybernetics describe entertainment
in the 21st Century |
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| Travel
and Tourism |
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Listen
here |
There are few safe predictions to be made about the 21st
century, but one of the surest is that more of us will
visit more places than ever before. Travel and tourism
is set to grow into the largest industry in the world
- but who will be travelling, where will they go, and
what they will do?
Simon Calder has circled the world to find the answers,
and to tackle the crucial question of the effect of tourism
on sensitive environments and cultures. There are precious
few places which do not bear the tourist's footprints.
Even Antarctica is firmly on the vacation map. Sightseeing
trips into outer space or to the ocean depths, are, perhaps,
only a few years away.
Technology is certainly fuelling the travel revolution,
helping to cut costs and extend horizons. But it also
provides opportunities for virtual tourism, where an internet
user can explore some of the world's most celebrated sights
with a few clicks of the mouse. Indeed, could the Louvre
and the Grand Canyon ease the tourist crush with the help
of virtual reality?
From the Indian webmaster at an internet cafe on the beach
in Kerala, to the advertising guru brought in to sell
the Seychelles like a soft drink, Calder takes soundings
about the pleasures and perils of tourism in the 21st
century. |
| Listen
to Foong Wai
Fong, economist and specialist in global and Asian business
trends |
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| The
Future of Faith |
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Listen here |
For the best part of two centuries, scientists and philosophers
have predicted the decline of religion in the modern world.
Indeed church attendance figures in most of Europe seem
to bear that prediction out. One new independent survey
predicts that, by the year 2020, a mere two percent of
the British population will go to Sunday services.
The Future of Faith programme examines whether it's true
that religion will become more and more irrelevant on
a global scale as science unravels the final secrets of
the cosmos and the human spirit. Furthermore modern media,
such as satellite TV and the Internet, will carry an abundance
of information into more and more homes. However, how
does the secularisation theory tally with the rise of
fundamentalism in some Islamic countries and the United
States?
Is it really true that religion is waning in Europe, or
are people expressing their spirituality in new, less
institutionalised ways? The last century saw a number
of atrocities which were committed in the name of religion.
Does this mean that any belief in a loving God has become
impossible. Or is it time, as some experts argue, for
a new and less facile theology to serve and satisfy a
basic human impulse - the craving for something beyond
our human limits? |
| Listen
to David Chidester,
Professor of Comparative religions talk about the future
of belief |
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