The global, digital and cosmopolitan society in which we live foreshadows far-reaching cultural and civilizational changes during the XNUMXst century.
Let us remember these changes: demographic changes and the specific problems of senior societies, climate change and problems of local supply and food security, changes in labor markets and double-digit structural unemployment in the younger and older age groups, the global geopolitical risks inherent in a multipolar world and the growing resources spent on international cooperation and security to control and mitigate the systemic and moral risk of the actors involved in it.
Finally, in recent years, a major challenge has emerged in the form of a new economy associated with the universe of information and communication technologies, digital platforms and social networks.
I. The emergence of the (i)economy and the collaborative society
It is within this complex global and technological framework that new trends of thought and smarter and immaterial economic geographies emerge associated with the internet and the technology of digital networks and platforms.
These are very recent movements, led by generations that move at ease in the technological ecosystem of web 2.0 and web 3.0 interactive communication systems.
The culmination of this plurality of currents of thought around an economy of networks and immaterial resources is the silent revolution of the collaborative commons economy (Jeremy Rifkin, 2014), a kind of fourth post-capitalist sector that grows and it spreads in the interface zone between the public economy of infrastructure and more conventional public goods and services, the social and solidarity economy of private social assistance institutions and the new economy of collaborative common goods.
In this line of argument, the “Society Co” is the society of knowledge, collaboration, communication, community, communion, that is, the society of the commons, but also of cooperation, trust, contribution, conviviality and congratulation.
The “Co” universe includes a very varied range of common goods and services: the collaborative consumption of idle resources (sharing idle resources), social production by peers (peer to peer production), services shared by user communities (sharing economy), participatory financing (through crowdfunding), the common spaces of creative creation (coworking e makerspaces), collaborative learning and training (open sourcing), the creative and complementary currencies (local currencies e creative money), among other undertakings of the so-called collaborative and contributory economy (collaborative ou contributory economy).
To account for the exponential growth of the collaborative economy in recent years, and especially after the great crisis of 2008, we cite the authors who contributed the most to this emergency. Manuel Castells (the information age, the network society and the power of identity), Yochai Benkler (the wealth of networks or how social production transforms markets and freedom), Lawrence Lessig (free culture and code version 2.0 ), Michel Bauwens (the political economy of peer social production), Pierre Levy (the collective intelligence and cyberculture), Rachel Boltsman (the shared economy and collaborative consumption), Lisa Ganski (the economy mesh or shared), Bernard Stiegler (contributory economy), André Gorz (immaterial labor), Howard Rheingold (virtual community and smart mobs), Clay Shirky (the cognitive surplus or creativity in a connected age), Don Tapscott (the wikinomics or how mass collaboration changes everything), Chris Anderson (the long tail, the makers and the new industrial revolution) and Jeremy Rifkin (the 3rd industrial revolution and the zero marginal cost society), among other authors.
What is the substance or structure common to this polysemic yet convergent movement? Broadband infrastructures or information highways, widespread digital culture, start-ups and technological platforms, social networks and interactive communication systems, programming and opensource software and open business models.
Unlike the great previous civilizational transitions, from orality to writing and from writing to the press, always made in the universe of atoms and molecules, the transition from press to computing and networks, to the world of screenagers, is made from atoms to bits, that is, we are dematerializing the next great civilizational mutation and eliminating to a great extent the previous spatio-temporal references.
This is how the new business models of the digital age and culture increasingly express this fundamental change.
In a mutation where technological platforms play the main role, as they are the hub of all the interests involved, we are witnessing the paradigmatic transition from the society of objects and goods to the society of icons, signs, signs and symbols, that is. that is, a transition to (i)economics.
In the new society of information, intelligence, internet, imagination, innovation, intangible and immaterial goods, we will witness a trade off between the "old economy of industrial and material products" and the "new icon of immaterial services", in a constant exchange between product and service and between ownership and access, in which the (i)economy will add more value to the conventional economy that will be reduced from the same step.
II. The world of work and the man of the seven trades
Faced with this new ecosystem of the digital age, one can legitimately ask: who will be the man of the new time ahead, the man of the networks and screens, of (i)economics and of “Society Co”?
Let's look at the heavy trends, especially in the field of countries in the so-called Western world.
First, for reasons of competitiveness, the public economy will reduce public expenditure in order to be able to reduce taxes. In the meantime, it will reduce public employment, replacing civil servants with service providers in outsourcing.
Second, the social and solidarity economy will undergo strong rationalization and contraction as it depends on public subsidies. In the meantime it will reduce social employment and many of its functions will be outsourced to the local communities of the Society “Co”.
Thirdly, the capitalist private economy, due to automation and fierce competition from global markets, will further reduce conventional employment and outsource many tasks that will be offered by the economy. on-demand where many workers will be transferred to ..
Fourthly, the “Co” economy, in a broad sense, will be a kind of geometric locus of all the externalities, positive and negative, of the various economies.
On this huge turntable, the most important thing is adherence to the “Co” values. If this membership is sincere and enthusiastic, the “Society Co” will most likely be the great common house for most citizens.
In this "Society Co" will most likely circulate, in addition to the official currency, various local and creative currencies.
In the end, it would come as no surprise that this “multifunctional citizen” and supporter of the collaborative commons would accumulate income, monetized and non-monetized, from different sources, namely: a job in Part-time in a public service and/or in a private company, a provision of service under the . in a company on-demand, a few hours in a local time bank in exchange for a voucher and, finally, an "inscription" in a startup collaborative part of its idle resources (idle resources) in exchange for an eventual recipe.
As is easily proven, we will be in the not-too-distant future, due to the structural break in employment, condemned to a society of very different labor regimes, some in Part-time, others under ., others still in a contributory and collaborative regime, under many formats, conditions and reputations, if we like, a society where the individual "produces himself" in a kind of corporate individualism.
We believe that we will return to the “man of the seven trades” that industrial capitalism had deconstructed to build the specialized professional of industrial capitalism of the new era. And why again the “man of the seven trades” in the internet age?
First, because self-training, offered in opensourcing, will be very close to zero marginal cost.
Secondly, because the scarcity of jobs will make it necessary to divide up working hours and offer a more diversified range of opportunities.
Thirdly, because the entire labor market will become much more volatile and adaptive.
Fourthly, why the complementarity of income, monetized or not, will become absolutely essential.
Fifth, because the activities of the collaborative and contributory economy will make it possible to rehearse new experiences, new knowledge and new occupations.
That is, through the collaborative and contributory economy, the different communities of users and suppliers will organize new service delivery formats supported by technological platforms, whose computer applications will be installed on the mobile phones of young people and younger people who wish to enter the "market of Work".
This is where “the man of the seven offices” progressively enters. According to his faculties, abilities and experiences he will apply to different “applications”, most likely managed by a start-up newly constituted technological, in the modalities of hours, working time, payment, quality of service, that its “presumed reputation” allows it to offer.
There may be seven trades, more or less, but it will hardly be seven professions. However, while waiting for a call, you will be able to continue, at home, ongoing formation at a MOOC (massive open online courses) at no cost.
It's the wonderful new world that arrives!!!
Final grade
That said, and henceforth, in labor matters and in the public space, the terms of the discussion will be as follows:
– polarization and bipolarization of the world of work,
– splitting hours and working hours,
– intermittence and discontinuity of labor relations,
– employability and lifelong training,
– versatility and multifunctionality of personal skills,
– a universal right to social protection rather than a simple socio-labour right,
– a horizontal pluriactivity right instead of a simple labor right,
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a tax law that takes due account of multi-income and pluriactivity,
– a commercial law that takes due account of intermittency and self-employment,
– finally, the discussion around the concept of universal and/or unconditional basic income will emerge in the public debate.
Author António Covas is a full professor at the University of Algarve and a PhD in European Affairs from the Free University of Brussels
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