The future of work
Today I was at the Victorian Youth Summit held at Marvel Stadium, Docklands. The summit was titled “the future of work†and it tackled the challenges and opportunities that come with the changing economy and what this means to the youth of today and the society at large.
Although we are in the middle of very uncertain time, I truly believe that the youth of today are uniquely placed to be able to come up with unorthodox solutions to the challenges we face as a society. This is because this generation is the first in the history of mankind where a full technological revolution had taken place within 10-20 years. This has allowed this generation to have a totally different view of the world they live in, or the world they want to be living in as they grow up. The world they will be living in is a dynamic place where rules, regulations, technologies, norms, and even traditions are changing faster that it is possible to observe the effect of their change on our society. Because of this, we can no longer rely on established institutions and governments (which usually hold experience and knowledge in all fields) to be able to predict the direction of change for our societies and create laws/regulations that can safe-guard us against potential challenges.What we need in this environment of change is to give up traditional powers and allow/trust young people with decision making and planning for the future, not just because this future is a future they will be living in, but because they are our only hope of understanding the current change we are undergoing and they are best placed to make predictions about where we are heading to.
I have been working with the youth for years now, through running/being involved with youth organizations or working with the government/ non-government sectors, and I can clearly see that young people have answers to the most challenging questions we are facing in the society. Both today at the Vic Youth Summit and last year at the ECCV’s conference, I saw a dark forecast painted by older professionals about where we are heading, compared to a very positive, optimistic and brave outlook to the future painted by the young people in these events. So are we prepared to empower our next generation and allow them to save us and themselves from what lies ahead?
Young people may be less experienced in life, but they are the most experienced in the type of life we’ll be living in the future.
