The workplace....

Newminimalists are future beings living in the present.

The definitive workplace: a kitchen.

The modern workplace has been in transition for more than one hundred years. For instance, Frank Lloyd Wright [the iconic architect who designed the Guggenheim Museum in New York] called the kitchen in his 1889 house "the workplace". That workplace has changed over the generations because of social reforms not due to technology. Feminism drove women out of the kitchen and into the factory, office, shop, restaurant, legal robes, Congress, etc. In fact in 2020 many houses do not have a kitchen because the work of cooking has been outsourced to food preparation by service providers.

Indeed the workplace today is largely the result of social reforms over the past one hundred years. One obvious exception is the Tesla car factory: it is an evolving technological event. In fact it is getting better every year whereas most factories deteriorate a little each year. Coincidentally, the product of that workplace [the Tesla car] gets better each year through the software updates to it that are delivered via the Internet. So linking that back to the Frank Lloyd Wright houses where the workplace existed in a physical space the 2020 kitchen now exists via a connection through the Internet to a preferred set of catering services. In summary this is a current day preview of the future workplace.

In simple terms we can confidently predict that the current workplace is slowly being dis-intermediated by services that are available via the Internet. Social norms will change to allow the virtual workplace to connect new models of the physical spaces where people meet to get things done in local communities that are spread all around the globe. In a sense the workplace will become the social network that links teams or groups of people who cooperate with purpose to produce a new set of goods and services.

Richard

There is so much to discuss when we think about the future workplace and if you would like to engage me with your thoughts about it contact me on minimal-you.com by direct messaging or email.