A Changing World Order - FoW perspectives
E123: Guest Essay by Lavinia Iosub + From the Vault: "Mind the Gap"
Dateline: Goa, India
Inspired by GenZ
and our twisty conversation on the boundless opportunity available to his generation. The old walls of the empire are crumbling and the rules of our parents don’t apply any more. The Future of Work offers a different range of prospects for young people as adventurous and enterprising as Linart. Their access to people and technology is almost immediate as all the intermediate layers of gate-keepers are removed from the picture.Our conversation reminded me of two essays that other readers may also enjoy:
“The Future of Work is Inside the New City Walls” by
a FoW thought leader who offers her perspective on the changing nature of the world order due to the way work will evolve.“Mind the Gap” from “The Vault” - my Future of Work essay for parents and young adults, recommending flexibility and transition skills as key 21st-century skills. This is a multi-decade transition spanning many generations.
The Future of Work is Inside the New City Walls
Author: Lavinia Iosub
Newsletter: Lavinia’s substack
Excerpt from ‘The Future of Work is Inside the New City Walls’
Medieval cities often featured fortified walls. 'First class' citizens lived inside these fortifications, and the ‘others’ (the less privileged, aka coming from the wrong family, lineage, not having enough money, “blue collar” or “untouchable” in today’s terms) lived outside, exposed to barbaric invasions, thieves, rough winds, etc. The gates of the city would close at the end of the day and you’d be left holding on to your hopes and faith that nothing bad would happen through the night. It often did.
For most of human history, your birthplace (or ability to move to a better place), your lineage and your access to privileges like the latest technologies were exclusive, and determined what “class” of citizens you belonged to.
The world was polarized:
People from places without much opportunity all dreamed of and flocked like manic birds (sometimes at great cost) to those places with opportunity.
Those lines have been blurring for a while, and that blurring is quickly accelerating as we speak, as we’ve seen in Alex’s and Wayan’s examples above. (read in the full essay)
Alex didn’t need to be in New York City to make good money as a copywriter anymore. Wayan didn’t need to hold the “right” passport or move to Singapore, Germany or London to access a good job that allows him to support his family *and* have free time *and* some disposable income. He just needed to be good at what he does.
But what both of them have to do is keep up with new technologies and tools, and make Life-Long-Learning a lifestyle, to stay relevant in this new, global labor market.
Or, at the very least, be extremely price-competitive.
These are the new city walls that separate the privileged and ‘the others’’.
Remote work and AI have the simultaneous potential to be the ultimate dividers as well as equalizers our societies have ever seen.
If we step back and look at the whole chess board, the new “class divide” will be along the lines of:
Can work online or has passive income streams vs. depends on a physical job (otherwise known as location-dependent vs. location-independent)
Can use AI/automation/smart digital tools to minimize menial/repetitive work, get more done and, once again, be competitive
For the full context and stories on Wayan and Alex please read the full essay here:
Linart asked me why I choose to champion and encourage GenZ. It is because other parents may not yet see the changing world and the opportunities available for their children as I am able to see and describe them.
“You stand on the horizon of a new world order.” To expand further, I’m sharing an excerpt from one of my more popular essays on the ripple effects of all these new technologies that we associate with the “Future of Work”. You will note the synergies with Lavinia’s essay above
Mind the Gap
Author: Karena de Souza
Newsletter: Tilt the Future (From the Vault)
Excerpt from E78: ‘Mind the Generation Gap’
The good news is that the Future of Work is uncharted and evolving territory. We get to write new rules and create new tools.
Impossible? It’s been done before in history. With generations whose way of life had been disrupted by the beginning of the Industrial Era. With a bunch of “young, scrappy, and hungry” twenty-somethings intent on and able to create change. (h/t Hamilton lyrics)
The Explorer Generation
As they move into uncharted territory, Generation Z and Generation Alpha need a skill set quite different from their parents’.
The Industrial Era needed a workforce that was compliant and managed a dwindling pool of natural resources.
The Intelligence Era is one of an abundance of ideas and connections.
Enter the Explorers. These new global citizens need to be comfortable reading this uncertain terrain, navigating by instinct instead of following a map.
They need a certain blend of survival instincts. These augment (maybe even superseded) the IQ (Intelligence Quotient) skills that were the focus of my education - skills with a rapidly decaying half-life. It is no accident that in the past five years we see a heavier focus on the more persistent EQ (Emotional Quotient) skills such as grit, resourcefulness, and resilience. Community building, communications, and critical thinking. We encourage them to embrace dead ends as discovery - not failure - and are comfortable doing a U-turn.
They freely share their learned wisdom with those who will come after.
I have rebranded the EQ skills as HEIRLOOM skills. They are burnished, carefully polished through frequent use and passed down from our great-grandparents, one generation to the next - generations that survived tremendous change, wars, crossed oceans, all without formal education, degrees and PhDs. This, then, is what I - as a parent - can pass along to my teen to help them navigate uncertainty.
If you found this idea interesting, here is the full read, along with the thought map:
Mind the [].. Generation ..[] Gap
![Mind the [].. Generation ..[] Gap](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_280,h_280,c_fill,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep,g_auto/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F2e47cfa5-9392-4b24-a70c-c1ace7bd6388_6000x2536.jpeg)
The next few generations will live their entire lives with 👣 one foot in the Industrial Era, and the other 👣 in the Intelligence Era. If there is one idea I want you to leave with, it is this: Strap in. It’s going to be a long while before we settle back into a new normal. Multiple decades. If you think our
If you get a chance, I would also follow Linart on his substack, inventily named
! I particularly like his take on productivity and “Anti-Resolutions”.
Leave me a comment. And if you would like to think through these ideas and have your own twisty conversation, DM me.
The essays in this series: E64: Seep into Existence, E65: History Smooshes Stuff, E66: Becoming, E78: Mind the Gap (essay), E123: A Changing World Order
I hope your 2024 is treating you with a healthy dose of possibilities over deliverables.
Here, as members of Tribe Tilt we believe we can make a difference to the people and places that are precious to us - that we have hope and agency within our own lives that ripples through to others.
Stay healthy. From there all else becomes possible. Treat your health as the precious resource it is.
Karena
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Thanks so much for the feature, Karena!
Linart is such a great gen Z rep. Thoroughly enjoyed the read of the read. "I have rebranded the EQ skills as HEIRLOOM skills. They are burnished, carefully polished through frequent use and passed down from our great-grandparents, one generation to the next - generations that survived tremendous change, wars, crossed oceans, all without formal education, degrees and PhDs. This, then, is what I - as a parent - can pass along to my teen to help them navigate uncertainty." - yes, so true! excellent rebranding!
It was lovely chatting with you, Karena. You helped me realize how our world is shifting, and it's important for the people in my generation to understand how we can adapt to these changes.
Education and Relationships. You helped me realize just how valuable these two things are. And like you, I'm making the intention of investing heavily on them as I move forward.
Let's chat again sometime when our schedules align!