Atomized systems professionals would be connected by multimedia Internet workstations. This would allow these individuals to offer their services in an electronic auction market. The allocation of resources would then be accomplished by competition and not by “management.” I have labeled this model “electronically mediated mercenary outsourcing.”
Predictor: Malone, Thomas
Prediction, in context:In a 1995 article for American Programmer, Paul Strassman writes the following account of a discussion at which MIT’s Thomas Malone appeared. In it he paraphrases Malone’s ideas about the future: ”The MIT Sloan School of Management recently hosted a roundtable of distinguished executives and professors to discuss the organization of work in the year 2020. The vision advanced by MIT’s Thomas Malone – and not disputed much by the other participants – was of a workplace consisting of firms with only one employee working from home or a hotel-like office. These ‘freelance’ operators would come together only in temporary combinations whenever new projects were authorized. According to Malone’s vision, independent consultants would do all systems work. Work would be outsourced to computer services corporations that would specialize in contracting for the individual contributors. Using the movie industry as a model, systems projects would be put together the same way movies are produced-using temporary teams of directors, camera people, and actors working on a rented set. The atomized systems professionals would be connected by multimedia Internet workstations. This would allow these individuals to offer their services in an electronic auction market. The allocation of resources would then be accomplished by competition and not by ‘management.’ I have labeled this model ‘electronically mediated mercenary outsourcing.'”
Date of prediction: January 1, 1995
Topic of prediction: Economic structures
Subtopic: Employment
Name of publication: American Programmer
Title, headline, chapter name: The Internet: A Way of Outsourcing Infomercenaries?
Quote Type: Paraphrase
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://www.strassmann.com/pubs/infomerc.html
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Vellucci, Amanda L.