Past Present Future Where Are We Going? The Future Of Work
May 13, 2026
Sarah O’Connor, Financial Times journalist and author of We Are Not Machines, explores how work became identity and security. She traces industrial timekeeping, Taylorism and Fordism, and shows how AI and automation fragment jobs and even monetise human expertise. They discuss modern tech firms, shifting labor power, ageing workforces and the uncertain landscape of skills and careers.
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How Industrialization Created The Modern Job
- Work transformed from fluid household trades to formal paid jobs during the Industrial Revolution, creating a separation of life and work with fixed hours and workplaces.
- Sarah O’Connor highlights clocks, shifts, and later trade unions as drivers that converted precarious piecework into the mid-20th century model of secure, lifetime jobs.
Machines Reshape Jobs Not Just Replace Them
- AI and automation often redesign jobs around machine strengths, leaving humans checking, editing, or supervising rather than doing original tasks.
- Example: translators now post-edit machine translations instead of translating from scratch, changing job content without immediate job loss.
Human-in-the-Loop Watching Warehouse Clips
- A worker in the Himalayas described being the human-in-the-loop watching six to eight second clips of warehouse picking and questioned whether it's even a job.
- He felt disconnected, lonely, and lacked meetings or collective purpose, stripping meaning from the role.
