Bees at work (XIV). The forthcoming of work – Our future.
Have a beautiful week. This will be a long episode for you. So let´s begin.
I would love to tell you as a fortune-teller, that our future will be as promising and fair for all in this century. But it won´t happen automatically.
I would love to guide you as a technocrat prescient, only compared to the World Economic Forum, loaded with all analytical prediction tools and all the AI programs that exist right now, with the bold retort that our future with disruptive technologies will convert work as radiant for everyone if we bet for a digital world. As we did it during the COVID19 isolation pandemic times. But trust me, it won´t come about as such.
I would adore expressing to you as a mystic telepathic magician, that our working purposes, schedules, and current troubles will be overcome, surpassed, and we will be lucky enough to increase the global middle-class by 1% every year. This means that from this year 2022 our global middle-class (the 12% of the total global population who belongs to families with income between $28,800 to $175,200 per year), will grow year over year by 1%. But that is not going to take place either.
I would love to confirm to you, as a clairvoyant, that by the year 2050 our global middle class will be 40% and that we will flourish and be happy forever and ever, amen. But that is not going to come to pass.
I would love to affirm to you as an intuitive psychic that all digital disruptions and cryptos, including NFTs, etc will fix our historic issues of 6,000 years of past slavery legacy, but that also is not going to occur either.
Finally, I would love to validate to you, as a spiritualist medium, that the UBI (Universal Basic Income) is the solution to all our economic inequality, but that is not the way out either.
Why of our latter affirmations? As much as we don´t have the solution to fix the troubles of the bees, we are not fortune-tellers. We are not technocrat prescients. We are not mystic telepathic magicians. We are not clairvoyants. We are not intuitive psychics. We are not spiritualist mediums. And we are not God either.
We define “We” as all the experts the advisors, the PhDs, the technologists, the researchers, the historians, the environmentalists, the sociologists, the humanists, the philosophers, the archaeologists, the think-tank professionals, the authors, the scientists, the professors, the futurists, the artists, the government bureaucrats, the biologists, the cinema producers, etc. We are all of us, all of us who are clear about our situation, and we are consciously trying or doing something about it. But we are just starting.
We are simply humans who are neophyte beginners in our quest to try to solve the issues that we have inherited. We are simple mortals that are trying to find answers, and we have not started yet to work all together with an integrated and integral multidisciplinary spirit. Up to this day, all of us who believe that comprehend something, have been fulfilling agendas in separate ways; meanwhile, those who have the power and the money to finance us, have been ignoring the truth in which our planet lives. Those who are able with plenty of resources and can assume the subsidy financing roles to fix our earth issues are more interested to pay for space exploration or funding the NAIQIs (Nanotechnology, Artificial Intelligence, Quantum Supremacy, and the Internet). Those who can pay for fixing our problems are more interested to switch from a brick-and-mortar economy to a digital mobile one. Those who can disburse for repairing our problems not just to make more profits with the Internet modus vivendi are not focused to mend fully but to continue to amass billionaire fortunes, by trading, by selling, by accruing in interests, by mounting up more and more and more. I wonder for what?
How could it be? In the meantime, the university scientists and PhDs, the think tanks researchers, the artists who have kept our traditions alive, the people who work in places where excellent research happens are dry, without funds, without money. Those of us who have something to think and do to help in fixing our global issues, we all together who can begin to work to make this world a better place, we have our hands tied. We have no sponsorships. We have no financing. We have no money to do our research, and we have no money to keep ourselves and our families floating. We are now beggars asking for alms. How could it be?
Those who have the money can fund the research and pilot projects for a balanced future of work. Humbly, regardless that we like it or not, our future depends on those who have piled up the money of the world and who belong not to the high class, but to the richest families on earth, families with or without past monarchies pedigrees. Families who are looking for more money opportunities in each and all the hoards of technologies that are coming around.
Meanwhile, these wealthy prosperous families do not open their eyes to what Eleonora Escalante Strategy is trying to communicate since it was established in 2016, more than 7 billion people are hanging there waiting to take off poverty.
In the meantime, if these powerful grand families (those who already know everything I have written here) do not accept it as the truth for their next generations survival, or as the bottom crucial line reality in which all their wealth has been built up; then this planet will continue going down the drain. Regardless of the new technologies that will accompany us.
Disperse efforts from the neophyte beginners experts. After the Human Rights declaration by the United Nations in 1948, we have been working with whatever comes out from the practitioners and universities, but in a separate scattered tone. We have not conducted integral research considering all the edges and the 360 degrees view that is much required to conduct Design-Based Research processes to find solutions. For example, my background as a former advisor and consultant couldn´t help me when I was writing the saga “Corporate Strategy as an Art” in May 2019. At that moment, I experienced on my own skin, that there were certain topics in which I couldn´t continue alone, even with the zillion information on the Internet. At that time, I digested the fact that I required help from others. Not just because I demanded assistance and input from other experts from other disciplines (archeologists, strategists, historians, economists, historians of the art, sociologists, museum curators, gallery historiographers, archivists, librarians, specialized curators, etc.); but also, because the industriousness of that saga strategy storyline was overwhelming. By writing it I discovered that what I had initially in my mind, shifted after 20 episodes of the script. Still, this saga is on hold, because I am waiting for sponsorship from an affluent university or a brood philanthropist that could offer me the funds to finance my exploration creative endeavor. As an emerging researcher living in El Salvador is extremely sad to recognize that no cooperation entity (usually these organizations are backed up with donations from these high net-worth individuals) has opened sources of funds for us yet!. What is worst is to see how others swipe our ideas to make their own money; in the interim, we don´t have income or some financing to pay our WordPress or Microsoft licenses or our dentist at the end of the month. Pathetic, isn´t it?
We are amateurs when it comes to the future. Even for those cleverly established whizzes, who hold Nobel prizes, or who are professors with an endowed lifetime chair (“seat of high responsibility or authority”), or those researchers with carats of experience in the field and in the office, or those scientists with a prolonged and excellent reputation, or those cooperators with passion for helping the impoverished, or those business-economist schools of sophisticated and complex caliber connoisseurs; please trust me, trust Eleonora Escalante Strategy; that not even the highest list of “plusquamperfet” gurus in the world has the solution for our imbalanced troubles. Why? Because no person on this planet can do it alone, but only together. To leave the quest for solutions in one type of professional is blind, is arbitrary. In addition, those who live in the wealthy zones of the world can´t connect or bond with those who live in the poorest conflictive areas. So, the teams that we need for the future require both sides of the coin too. “It is challenging for someone who has never been poor to set up excellent answers for the needy”.
Moreover, since the private sector investors are leading the edge with their new corporate strategies following the framework of blue-ocean tech initiatives; the government regulators are always slow and behind their agenda. Usually, the governments are the last ones to know, and at the back of the next big moves of the private sector wits in any industry, economic sector, or new diligence. So, it is quite impossible to help the private corporations to stop or at least to help them to pause until researchers and academics can check if what they produce is good or not for humanity.
If the wealthy of the high places are still naive. Our future of work (with artificial intelligence, robots, intelligent machines, holograms, spatial rockets, and so on) will auto destroy our humanity and our civilization in no time. If the wealthy are unconscious about their financing role, then our experts´ teams (multidisciplinary, international, and of several generations) who can at least propose studies and further investigations with DBR loops about the future of work, won´t have the funds to make it happen. If the wealthy lack the awareness of the urgency of our wake-up calls, they won´t provide the financing that discoverers need. These wealthy families will continue playing with social media and other AI tools to gather more profits instead.
The societal implications of the disruptive technologies during the last 20 years have pushed the well-off owners of this planet to believe that the solution to our earth´s issues is to continue creating wealth with Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, Alphabet, Netflix, and so on… So by investing there, they will have enough cash to run away to space or to get lost on Mars. In the pursuit to explore space and the universe, some of the most prosperous families have forgotten to take care of and protect our planet’s privileged treasure. And soon, if they don´t intervene with substantial financing to help those who are able to do research about the future of work; in no time, there the dilemma won´t be outdated left vs right, individualism vs collectivist societies, or communist vs capitalist justifications.
If the people of the high places do not understand how important is that they continue supporting ESTEAM education in every country on earth(E=Ethical, S=Science, T=Tech, E=Engineering, A=Arts, M=Math) and its researchers/professors (from every discipline); our next frontier won´t be the metaverse, or replacing human professors by robots, or living outside the atmosphere in a satellite, or funding spaceships to escape from the planet when a new nuclear war or pandemic arrive…
Our next political-economic limbo will be a cataclysm if we continue with “business as usual”. If we don´t take it easy with the technologies, the political-economic jargon will switch, but for the worst. It will be real vs virtual, spatial vs terrestrial, land-dwelling, or earthbound vs hyper-tech. It will be the path to the annihilation of our planet as we know it. Once people accept to live, work, have sex, reproduce, educate, and trade in a chamber’s enclosure of 3D projected holograms (the VR headsets are nothing compared to what comes next), be sure that our philosophy of reality will be destroyed. Once the wealthy assume that their way out of a future crisis is flying away to space; once that occurs, we inevitably will lose our role in the Planet. And as a civilization, we will renounce our mission on Earth.
The low-class citizens and the poor of the world need to acknowledge that there are some out there trying to help them. 84% of the global population has to be aware that there are and will be capable people; elders, middle-aged, and youngsters that are conscious enough to help. That there are many people studying, doing research, writing, inventing, and debating potential ideas that are trying to aid them. That there are reasonable people out there that are worried about them, not as a charity subject, not to give them the leftover crumbs, but to provide solutions for deprived humans that deserve a sufficiently quality of life. That there are so many theories in economics and business that will change as a result of our efforts. That we will overcome the problem of the supply global chains coming from Asia. That new theory will emerge. These new theories and frameworks will need to be tested first, either to improve, complement, or replace what we have. That there is not going to be easy, and it will take time because we are not looking to put a superficial band-aid, but to really expose the crude reality in order to solve the political-social-economic structural problems from the roots. That wars and conflicts in between us don´t help anyone. That there is and will be a long way to go. That there is hope and there is faith, regardless of the difficulties.
We will stop here today. We will continue the topic of forthcoming work during the next subjects or episodes. Additionally, we have been thinking in a futuristic model of working (if all the technologies around continue to go forward without limits or any regulation) in our effort to show you what is our approximation of working disaster (and consequences) in a future scenario immersed in the automated, virtual and spatial technologies. And you will see why Eleonora Escalante Strategy is so worried as much as the beekeepers have been concerned about the bees since the 1980s decade.
Strategic reflection music section:
Why did we pick Gloria Estefan? The Estefan family, of Cuban origin, chose Miami as their home a long way path ago. Gloria Estefan was catapulted as one of the pioneers of Latin fusion Rhythms that were accepted and purchased by the American consumers of fine taste. Gloria Estefan, her husband, and their compositions opened the entrance tickets to many Latin American composers and performers that were never even considered worthy to take heed of by the American audiences. From Miami to the world, the success of Gloria Estefan unlocked doors, not just for herself and her family (her kids have continued her heritage), but she (directly or without knowing) initiated prospects, chances, opportunities for so many Latin professionals in her field, that would have never been respected otherwise.
Songs of today belong to a junction of artists with Gente de Zona. “Gente de Zona” is the conductor thread that connects Enrique Iglesias (the son of Julio Iglesias), Marc Anthony, Descemer Bueno, and other Latin young emerging artists. The first interpretation is “Bailando”, the second one is “La Gozadera” and the third one is “Patria o Vida”, a song that won a Latin Grammy 2021. For non-Spanish speakers, we encourage you to translate this third song from Spanish to English. Then listen to the message of this song, with detail, please. This last song illustrates what I am trying to inform you about the bitter social effects of our current inequality in poor and rich countries, an expression of the weak middle-class status on earth. The beautiful joyful rhythms beats can switch to fury if not counted on. And this may happen not only in the poor countries but everywhere. Enjoy!
Thank you for reading to me. See you next Friday. Blessings!
Sources of reference used for this publication: None.
Disclaimer: Illustrations in Watercolor are painted by Eleonora Escalante. Other types of illustrations or videos (which are not mine) are used for educational purposes ONLY. Nevertheless, most of the pictures, images, or videos shown on this blog are not mine. I do not own any of the lovely photos or images posted unless otherwise stated.
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