Are we are about to witness the return of being a Nation of Shopkeepers?

Well, maybe not shopkeepers but possibly the majority of us could become self-employed in the not too distant future with all the pluses and minuses that might entail.

Think for a moment about these constituent ingredients that could cause that perfect storm in the next few years.

• Most organisations that we use to refer to as ‘blue chip’ have either disappeared or are propped up by Government.
• The bar just keeps getting higher to go to a good university and yet we still fail to educate and prepare our kids properly for commerce and industry.
• There has never been a higher percentage of kids out of work (am ignoring Government stats because they include kids flipping burgers with a master’s degree, as having a job).
• Over 50% of the UK population is employed by the government and one impact of that is the fatal amount of red tape being produced.
• The US Unemployment figure stands at 10% and nobody is telling us its going to get better.
• We have to do more than we are doing about Global Warming.
• Most people need access to Data in order to conduct their work.
• Most people are doing this through the Internet.
• We can now connect to the things we need to, anywhere on anything and our kids and their kids will demand this.
• Will it make sense to power and pay for buildings just to store paper and data?
• Will the current employment conditions continue to work or are we going to see a massive change?
• What if we were all able to work, when we want to and play when we want to?
• What if we were able to do this work for a multitude of different employers, or even for the common good?
• Will we see the end of recruitment and headhunting as we know it, to be replaced by Online Work Auctions where we bid for work? An hour, a day, a week , a year?
• Or just bidding for contracts/pieces of R&D etc
• How about not waiting 4 or 7 years to make your voice heard politically but electronically voting for what you believe and want in real-time? (no more shall we or shall we not have a referendum?!)
• What about Pension Schemes? How about your own pension scheme where you govern the charges you pay, or heck, just playing on the stock market yourself! The data is there!

These are going to be very interesting times and I’m glad that Technology is finally playing its part in a positive fashion with the advent of the Cloud and the accompanying fair practices it is generating. If you have a minute please take a look at this poll and let me know what you think.

http://polls.linkedin.com/p/100070/mfrkc

Steve Kaye

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Tags: Employment trends, New Media

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