The future of work is on the blockchain
It’s been almost 60 years since the premiere of the Jetsons, in 1962. Since then, most of their predictions have been oddly accurate, including video conferencing, flat TVs, and smartwatches. While things like flying cars have not yet become realities, we’re certainly headed in that direction.
The Workplace in 2062
George Jetson: Yesterday, I worked two full hours!
Jane: Well, what does Spacely think he’s running? A sweatshop!?!?
George Jetson: It’s his latest plan, the slave driver. Imagine, two full hours a day. What does he think this is? The 20th century?
The Jetsons, Episode 19: G.I. Jetson (1962)
While automation is constantly getting us closer to the 2-hour workday, we’re still a bit far from actually achieving it, perhaps even for 2062 standards. We do, however, have technologies that not even the Jetsons could predict.
One thing, in particular, stands out when you think of this utopian future where space travel has become more common than cooking your breakfast, and that thing is the blockchain. Its possible applications go beyond anything the Jetsons could have ever predicted.
Imagine the following scenario — it’s the year 2062 and humanity has become an interplanetary civilization, with one base on the Moon and one on Mars. Your grandparents live on the Moon and one of your best buds is chilling on Mars.
It’s Christmas so your grandparents want to send you some cash for you to enjoy the holidays. There’s no way Western Union or a bank is going to do the trick. Unless you’re fine with getting your money in the new galactic year and only about half of it.
That’s where Blockchain comes in. Each planetary base can have its instance of a blockchain, and all of them are interconnected with one another. The result is that any communication between them is going to take a couple of seconds (assuming the speed of light).
When comparing the two options, by the time the transfer arrives in your earthen bank account, you could’ve made a trip to the red planet, smoke a bowl with your mate, and still have enough time to catch the return Starship.
Blockchain Vs. The 2-hour workweek
The current standard of daily working hours in the blockchain industry is closer to 12, rather than 2 hours, granted. That, however, is because of the importance blockchain holds for our future work schedules, among its many other applications.
Self-help gurus and motivational speakers have always been preaching the “love your work” mantra if you want to live a good life. We’re not going to get into the correlation between success and enjoying your work, but there’s some truth to that.
Just think of how fast time flies by when you’re chatting with friends compared to when the boss is constantly badgering you at work. Maybe that’s because your boss sucks, or you simply don’t like your coworkers. In reality, it doesn’t matter what the reason is, that the underlying problem is much simpler: Your pool of choices is constrained by your geographical location, just to give one of many examples, leading you to choose the lesser of two evils.
It seems that even the Jetsons are no exception to geographical limitations!
George Jetson: I’m a big coward.
Henry Orbit: Now, now, Mr. Coward. Er, I mean Mr. Jetson, there’s lots of other workarounds. Why I got a third cousin who’s making out well on Mars.
George Jetson: I don’t think I could take Mars, Henry. I hear those little green bosses are murdering.
The Jetsons, Episode 10: Uniblab (1962)
Borderless & Trustless
Blockchain makes any type of collaboration between any two parties, become borderless and, perhaps even more important, trustless.
Now that we threw some fancy words out there, the question remains: why does this matter?
The Internet was our first move toward becoming a borderless society. Take memes for example or any type of online content in general.
No one cares what country they come from as long as they’re good. As our society progresses, we care less and less about what race, sex, or background someone has, but regardless of how much our mentality evolves, it’s impossible to ignore someone’s physical location, at least for now.
The blockchain is amazing for a multitude of reasons, but let’s talk about how it affects the global workforce:
- As blockchain adoption progresses and traditional office jobs shift towards freelancing, salaries will become skill-based or experience-based at the worst, not location-based. Imagine being in Nepal while you’re working on a next-gen VR game. Digital nomads have already become a trend in recent years, so here’s a cool website to get you started before blockchain takes over.
- It takes the risk out of it, or most of it, at the very least. Right now, the biggest problem office workers bring up when discussing shifting to freelancing is payment security. People are afraid the employer might find an excuse to not pay, and for good reason, on Upwork alone, this happens in at least 20% of the cases. Guess what, Blockchain is trustless. The funds are escrowed through a smart contract, which means both you and your upcoming vacation trip are safe.
- Let’s bring up another interesting point: Disputes. What happens if someone did screw up the job and doesn’t deserve to get paid? No problem, there’s a solution for everything on blockchain, and this one is called a decentralized dispute resolution layer. The best thing about blockchain is anyone can build on top of it, like this layer. Check it out: Kleros.
These are just some of the things that Blockchain makes possible for the future workforce. There are dozens of them but even if we just had the 3 above it would be enough to fix some of the most pressing issues in traditional employment and even modern freelancing.
Becoming the Jetsons
Luckily for us, at this point, there’s not much else that needs to be done for the future of work to be on the blockchain, it’s already a given and our only choice is to take advantage of the opportunity or let it slip by.
After our initial Proof-of-Concept with Bountyhive, we’re confident that HYVE can bring major changes to the way we collaborate, whether you’re a freelancer, traditional employee, recruiter, or company.
There’s a role for everyone inside the HYVE Ecosystem and the best thing is everything is completely transparent and transactions are provable by anyone.
If you want to learn more about the HYVE Ecosystem and its underlying Protocol, check out these two articles.
Lastly, here are some words from Peter Drucker, the founder of modern management. Despite the passage of time, his words are strangely contemporary and fit well with the article’s theme.
“If you want something new, you have to stop doing something old”
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