Erica Orange's blog

Locally and globally, we continue to see that the nature of jobs is profoundly changing, and what we do in order to earn our incomes, and how we do it, will never be the same. Importantly, none of this will ever again conform to what were the norms or rules or expectations across companies or through the years.

There has been a lot of talk in recent years about outsourcing – the movement of work to other entities and other places. The most contentious part of that issue was offshoring – the movement of work and jobs to other countries. However, the real issue for the future is othersourcing – the increasing ability to have work done not only off-site and by other entities, but by non-humans.

Storytelling is as old as human history. Traditionally, we have thought of all stories as having a beginning, a middle and an end. But it appears that the non-linear approach is becoming more common in the world today. The popular filmmaker Christopher Nolan exemplifies this approach in his movies. Back in 2000, his film Memento told the story of a man whose memory does not exist.

Urban Chinese society is also undergoing changes, as the rituals of courtship, and traditional definitions of family, are challenged. Rapid modernization has led the country to undergo enormous changes. Sex ratios are becoming skewed in much of the world thanks in part to a growing global imbalance of male-to-female ratios.

The popularly contested nature versus nurture debate is as appealing as it is unresolvable in answering the question: how and why do we become who we are? While some believe that people behave according to genetic predispositions, others believe that people think and behave in certain ways because they are taught to do so.

Even though public opinion polls show a general distaste for partisan divisions, a rising tide of political partisanship is sweeping into many aspects of American public life. Witness the several recent examples of how partisanship and ideology have replaced civil discussion and pragmatism.

One thing is clear: the future will happen with or without you. In other words…change is coming whether you like it or not! But in order to know what the future may bring, we have to be constantly aware of what is going on around us. There is an experiment from several years ago which demonstrates this point very well.