Tomorrow's People

by Susan Greenfield

  However, there will be some fallout from this happy scheme of things; probably a significant sector of the population will be simply unable to metamorphose into a perpetual-learning mindset. Most likely, a critical factor will be the degree of stress involved – you could be frantically scrabbling for new skills, anxious that, any day now,

  your current expertise will be deemed obsolete. Who knows if we would wish to conduct our working lives in such a state of red-alert, or whether we would find the constant change stimulating. In any case, we might not actually be up to it as our brains age, regardless of the era in which we are born.

  Up until now, at least, older people have found learning new things difficult. Not only are the molecular mechanisms less sprightly but at the more macro, cognitive level too the ‘fluid’ intelligence of the young brain, mopping up information like a sponge, gives way to the ‘crystalline’ intelligence of the mature brain, evaluating any incoming information against what is already known. Only a fraction of the incoming traffic ceaselessly bombarding the maturing brain will therefore finally be assimilated and itself add to the sales-resistance against any subsequent novelty. And an age-sensitive discrepancy is exacerbated by a one-off aspect of early-21st-century life: there are those for whom the net and web have always been part of their lives, who are infinitely more at home with keyboard, screen and mouse than with pen, paper and book – and on the other side of the divide, those for whom the reverse is true.

  It's easy to imagine being endlessly on the back foot, trying to keep up with the demands of an anonymous screen-based boss, and over the longer term always being just-out-of-date rather than just-in-time with the skills that you have. And lurking and smirking in the background would be the minority of elite young technocrats who know everything and are conspicuously in control of their lives, writing their own job descriptions as they go along. The average employee might feel demoralized, inadequate and old as they compete for niches alongside a younger generation so comfortable with change and shifting realities, with interactive cyber-worlds of no permanence, that they ceaselessly adapt to new demands – a generation for whom technology is as natural a phenomenon as life itself. Meanwhile older and/or non-technically adept workers might be unprepared, untrained and frightened by the prospect of taking their careers into their own hands.

  Yet there is a more positive possibility, even for those of us on the wrong side of the age-divide during this time of transition. It need not be all doom and gloom for those of us who can remember the Cold War and the advent of TV and of avocado pears. Since commerce will become more global, there will be a need for local perspectives and hence for the leaders who can make a difference in the virtual workspace, whilst being at the same time more mobile and international. Some actually think that baby boomers, far from being risible relics of a bygone era, will constitute this wiser, senior stratum of the workforce within the next few decades, staying on at work and offsetting the decline in birth rate in first world countries.

  But sooner or later the majority of the grey workforce will be in crisis: the next few decades of this century will surely witness a gaping fissure between the work-style abilities of the baby boomers (born between 1946 and 1965), generation X (born between 1966 and 1982) and generation Y (those born after 1983). It could well be an irony of the first half of the 21st century that just as the older workforce is increasingly unable to meet the new demands, so more work becomes available for senior citizens.

  Although we tend to imagine that, as the computer gradually takes over the grunt-work of work, we will automatically have more leisure each day and indeed over our lifespans, the increasingly pervasive IT might, paradoxically, encourage people to stay at work beyond the traditional, 20th-century Rubicon of retirement age. After all, IT and a service-oriented economy will offer more flexibility and gentler hours, along with growing opportunities to work from home, with consequently fewer demands on physical strength. At the same time, older people could well be fitter and in search of brain stimulation and a sense of self-worth, not to mention income. We might find that there is no longer such a clear schism between work and retirement – a comforting thought bearing in mind that within the next ten years ninety million of the population of Europe will be over the age of sixty.

  Some even think that the concept of retirement will disappear. Older people, and the society in which they live, will be ever less likely to accept the fate, played out nowadays in so many old people's homes, of vegetating in a chair, staring at the walls. At the moment it is difficult enough, in terms of resources, to ensure that the residents are warm, well fed and clean. But in the future it is very likely that, at very little cost, we will be able to devise some means of stimulating the aged brain. As computing decreases in price and becomes ever more ubiquitous, invisible, interactive and smart, so older people may have the opportunity to take themselves through a series of interactive exercises, interfaced in a way that fits their physical capabilities and needs no external nursing supervision: a kind of brain gym. Perhaps, once everyone is IT-instinctive rather than merely IT-literate, even the ‘natural’ tendency for the ageing brain to slow down might come into question. Improved healthcare could ensure that we will have not just 150 years of wisdom, but enough energy to use it and to extend our productivity.

  But although a grey workforce of lively minded and able-bodied senior citizens seems as plausible as it is desirable, it is unlikely that the elderly will have the absolute physical prowess of those in their twenties. Moreover, they will be contributing a different type of intelligence, crystalline wisdom rather than the rapid adaptation skills that characterize the younger brain. Such contributions could have a range of outcomes. First, the outlook of the senior workforce may jar with that of younger colleagues; or secondly, they may enrich the workplace and product; thirdly, perhaps age differences will not mean differences in performance since people will all have been exposed to a homogeneous cyber-world for most of their daily lives, and will thus be much more homogeneous in outlook than different generations are nowadays. If physical health is no longer a means of discrimination, and if knowledge is to be stored with easily accessible cyber-experts, and if much of life in general will be virtual, then for the first time we might be squaring up to a society with a far less clear-cut demarcation of distinct generations. Society may end up the poorer for lacking the diversity of different groups with very different outlooks on life, and diverse tastes in foods, fashions, music and so on. On the other hand, a culturally uniform society may be a small price to pay for a healthier and more fulfilled populace – so long as the individual really is more fulfilled.

  In any event, by 2050, the workforce as a whole will be very different: only about half of the US population will be non-Hispanic whites. So, we can expect not only an older but also a more multicultural workforce. There will also, most likely, be even more women. In the USA already more women are finishing college than men. Moreover, the traditionally subordinate sex appears to have real leadership potential: currently over 50 per cent of editors and reporters, and 54 per cent of authors, are women. Women (70 per cent) are enrolling in college at a higher rate than men (64 per cent) too. But probably these increasing numbers will flatten out at some stage soon, once issues and factors relating to childbirth and child-rearing take effect – if one assumes that the nuclear family, and a woman's role in it, remains as it has been – and immigration and welfare laws are embedded.

  Indeed, the phenomenon of the strained and burnt-out superwomen who strive in vain to ‘have it all’ is now contrasted by movements advocating a complete reversal back to the ‘surrendered wife’, captured so well, at a time when such an idea was ridiculous, in the cult 1975 film The Step ford Wives. The stay-at-home wife is financially dependent on her husband, taking on cooking, cleaning and childcare whilst the husband is out of the home working for most of the day. The good news – in fact the argument for ‘surrendering’ – is that women are allowed not to strive to have it
all, and to spend much more time with their children. However, the bad news is that this advice extends to allowing one's husband to win arguments, and to concede to him on all family matters, including financial ones. It is hard to see how maintaining such a mindset in the late 20th century, let alone in the 21st, wouldn't place a strain on the women trying to unpick several decades of the culture and education in which they have grown up. On a more prosaic level, in a world where the home will be a very different place from what it is now, where it will merge so seamlessly with the workplace, the role that the ‘traditional’ wife might have is far from obvious.

  John Gray, author of the acclaimed Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus, suggests that men used to have the edge at work because they could devote more time to it; but now the flexibility of the computer and the trend towards increased home working, coupled with the natural communication skills of women, all amount to a shift in the gender balance in senior positions. But a more fundamental consideration is that in a future in which, it seems so far, the very nature of individuality will be threatened, and in which we will become the passive recipients of incoming information and immediate sensations, clearly defined roles within a home and family will no longer be appropriate or helpful. We saw earlier that the dynamic of the family unit will be shifting, not just as a result of serial monogamy, divorce and remarriage but also due to the growth of gay and lesbian unions, and a possible blurring of gender roles.

  Nonetheless, Christopher Jones, Professor of Political Science at Eastern Oregon State College, sees the prospects of this new century as still far from perfect for women. In legislation and in the boardroom there is still gaping under-representation, a ‘glass-ceiling’ syndrome and institutionalized sexism. Yet over the last thirty years the time a married woman with children spends outside the home has doubled. Parents in the USA spend fewer than twenty-two hours per week with their families, whilst at least one in five households are responsible for informal care of a friend or relative over fifty. This figure will more than double in the next five years. A large number of people therefore may soon find themselves sandwiched between caring for the very old and the very young.

  A hypothetical working day in 2030 has been predicted to run as follows: get up very early, to deal with domestic errands, then spend the next few hours in virtual meetings amidst 3D images of your colleagues. A video camera will transmit back to your supervisor a real-time record of you working to your maximum productivity. You may then spend an hour or so with grandma before picking up the children, putting in some alpha parent time, and recouping lost hours by working from 8–10.30 p.m. In essence, your workday will be flexible, disconnected, personalized – but lengthy.

  So, more even than for today's workforce, frustration and mental fatigue could be part of the working day. ‘Desk rage’ has apparently already hit the workplace, a phenomenon characterized, as might be imagined, by stressed-out employees indulging in rude and inappropriate behaviour. However, the increased flexibility needed in our complex portfolio lives will lead to a blurring of the line between work and private life: we will, increasingly, have fewer qualms about sorting out our electronic domestic jobs, like organizing our home arrangements and online shopping, from the office whilst at the same time using the enhanced IT opportunities to do more and more work from home.

  And, like the merging of work and retirement, the merging of work and home together with a lack of structure and security in the workplace could all lead to still more misery. In his book Britain on the Couch, the psychologist Oliver James examines why the British are more depressed now compared to over half a century ago, when they were materially far worse off. He concludes that unrealistic expectations, increased competition, unstable relationships and the strain of being ‘individual’ have all induced a national lowering of the neurotransmitter serotonin.

  Serotonin is a pervasive, fountain-like chemical messenger in the brain. When serotonin is low, depression ensues; indeed, Prozac works primarily by elevating brain serotonin levels. We do not know why a low or high level of this particular chemical changes the configuration of working groups of neurons, which in turn translates respectively into negative or positive feelings, but we do know that such fluctuating levels can be modified by the environment, for example, by your perceived status in society. That said, it is important to remember that we can't just jump from a chemical transmitter, like serotonin, to a sophisticated mental function, like fretting about status. Rather, the chemical is a bit player contributing to a change in the configuration of neuronal networks that in some as yet unknown way matches up with changes in mood. The notion of a ‘low-serotonin society’ is therefore shorthand, describing a collective, general mental dysfunction, an index of which might be, among multiple other indices, lower levels of serotonin.

  In any event, the surprising frequency of the gloomy mindset in our comfortable modern lifestyle corresponds also with the conclusions of psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. Csikszentmihalyi has spent much of his life engaged in a longitudinal study of human happiness, from which he has developed the idea of ‘flow’. Csikszentmihalyi has found that the level of happiness is not related to per capita income. Rather, we apparently each have a kind of internal happiness-thermostat, irrespective of our circumstances. Lottery winners, for instance, are down to their pre-win ‘happiness level’ within sixteen months. But our levels may rise or fall in different environments: executives are happiest at work whereas clerical workers are happiest at home, and assembly-line workers are different again, being happiest at bars and in cinemas. Happiness is not a function of what you own but, once again, how you perceive yourself in relation to the society around you.

  The impact of the IT revolution on work in the future could have either of two effects on our collective mood. Perhaps the increasingly passive role that later generations will adopt, together with a loss of professional identity, will lead to a fall in self-esteem, or even the loss of a sense of self altogether. If society becomes one which places emphasis on achievement and competition, on going it alone, braving the insecurity of new and unstructured workplaces and learning new skills, then the serotonin levels in the brains of many look set to plummet. This unfortunate outcome will be even more likely if, paradoxically, the IT revolution that has triggered these changes at the same time robs us of the ability to be proactive, to think without computer aid, to have a clear sense of identity compared to the outside world and to others – indeed to have ‘normal’ relationships. Without a clear sense of identity, with no motivating need to feel fulfilled, sedated by easy cyber-experiences – why make the effort?

  The much rosier alternative would be that the new technology will enable the self to be more readily expressed. Imagine therefore a multifaceted workforce, ranging from the quick-witted and quick-learning youth to the clear-minded and wiser elderly, a workforce unencumbered by bigoted cultural baggage and unconcerned, thanks to flexible, distance-work patterns, with gender or childbirth. Each individual would be aware of their own skills and preferences and be prepared to develop their own career path without comparison with anyone else. Alert to shifting demands, they would want to find things out and to help improve the world; above all – contrary to human nature as this might seem – they would actually enjoy working.

  Both these scenarios are obviously overly simplistic caricatures. Most likely there will be a spectrum between the two, but the big question is how polarized that spectrum will become, how far along, and in which direction, the majority of humanity will be positioned. The positive outcome places great hope on the bulk of society being far more adept at high-tech, confident, curious and self-sufficient than it has been in the past. The alternative would be a truly divided society with those who are not intellectually agile or outgoing increasingly at the mercy of the minority who are. Depending on energy supplies, economic growth and the degree of automation, the disenfranchised majority might be engaged in highly routine tasks, 21st-century equivalents of Silas
Marner; alternatively, they could be condemned to a life emptied of purpose and filled with leisure. But unadulterated free time does not appear so far to have caught on.

  The great visionary George Bernard Shaw predicted that in the future we would need to work for only two hours a day. Similarly, the economist John Maynard Keynes prophesied back in the 1930s that the working week a century hence would be a gentle fifteen hours. Even into the 1960s the main prediction people were making about work was simply that there would be less of it. One happy picture was painted by The New York Times: ‘By the year 2000, people will work no more than four days a week… in an annual working period of 147 days [on] and 218 days off’. And similarly, in 1966, from a mandarin at General Motors: ‘People will start to go to work at about age twenty-five. Six-month vacations would not be out of the question.’

  Even back then, however, it was clear that lives unfettered from the routine of work might take some rethinking. In 1966, an article in Time read: ‘By 2000, the machines will be producing so much that everyone in the US will, in effect, be independently wealthy. How to use leisure meaningfully will be a major problem.’ In the same vein some two years later, Arthur C. Clarke, author of the work that inspired the film 2001, wrote on the theme of the real 2001: ‘Our descendants [will be] faced with a future of utter boredom, where the main problem in life is deciding which of the several hundred TV channels to select.’

  For the first time ever, we human beings may be confronted with the mind-boggling luxury of leisure on a grand scale – not just snatched vacations or short-break weekends, but day after day freed from hunger, cold and pain. The question is far more difficult than it might at first seem: it is not as if suddenly robots will liberate us from the Dickensian factory floor letting us loose into the nirvana of the suburban back-garden circa 1950. Rather, we have to ask ourselves those adolescent questions about what our lives actually mean, and, once the demands of survival are removed, what we are going to do with our time.