Is the connected age eliminating the reality of the information age?
Anne and I debated information workers vs. web workers some time back (you can review Anne’s side of the argument here and here and see my arguments here and here). Now, Anne seriously ups the ante over at GigaOM, making a strong case for what’s truly different about web work. While I’m still not ready to concede the point that Drucker didn’t presage this perceived shift (although that’s not really the important part of the debate), Anne’s argument has merit on its own. Without a doubt, ubiquitous connectivity changes behaviors. It seems to follow that workers’ behaviors would exhibit similar shift. Additionally, the traditional concept of a corporation no longer occupies the central place in business that it once did for many workers. Anne’s notion supports Jason Calacanis, who claims who you know who knows is more important than what you know or even knowing where to find it (though I’m not getting into the Web 3.0 versioning debate anytime soon). I completely support this notion (as does Stowe Boyd in an excellent corollary). The intelligence of the network matters; “we” is smarter than “me.”
A particularly relevant theme emerging in the comments to Anne’s post is the importance of trust in this connection economy and how intermediaries offer trust by proxy. You don’t need to trust the folks on Craigslist, Rent-a-Coder, eLance, eBay, and the like so long as you trust the site itself to insulate you from risk.
What do you think? Does web work change the game for everyone? And how do you establish trust with folks you might never see face-to-face?
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Due to a configuration issue (that’s a euphemism for me saying I screwed up the configuration), some folks were unable to leave comments. Anne Zelenka and I continued the dialogue on this post via email. With Anne’s consent, I am recreating the thread below. I have edited out some parts of each email not relevant to the discussion. Any error in transcription is mine. Feel free to chime in with your thoughts below…
I don’t really know whether Peter Drucker foresaw this shift or not [snip] … My purpose with the idea of the connected age is to tell a story that helps people (including myself) see the shifts taking place as the web makes us so much more connected.
Anne,
Generally, I agree with your point of view on this. Things *have* changed. The part I’m working my head around us how much is evolutionary vs. how much is revolutionary. I find your metaphor is very useful, though.
Evolutionary vs. revolutionary? I don’t know… but in my own life the switch from knowledge work (work in the hierarchy of Oracle building business applications) to web work (cobbling together a livelihood with various projects bottom up, with fluid and ad hoc relationships) is revolutionary.
You know, Anne, that’s a really great point. What’s evolutionary and what’s revolutionary depend – at least in part – on context. For instance, the level of web work that I experience daily (largely the Web, email and IM) haven’t changed much in the last six or seven years. Twitter? Sure, but it’s really just like IM to me in many ways. Rent-a-coder? Definitely different, but feels like sourcing contract employees via Monster did back during Web Boom 1.0 (yikes! web versioning alert!). I still work for a corporation and go to an office most days, though, whereas the lives of folks who work remotely might be more revolutionary. But even the items with more revolutionary impact to me – the social aspect via Facebook, LinkedIn and especially blogs – feels like a (deeper, more robust) form of Usenet, IRC or message boards. Still, I have to credit your metaphor for providing a nice, tidy package around the ongoing changes, regardless of whether they’re revolutionary or not.
[…] from knowledge worker to web worker and what that means for business and their employees. Anne and I have debated this point from time to time, though she makes a compelling case in the book. Check back in a couple of weeks and I’ll let […]