My new book is nearing the end of the editing process and is headed to the design agency. It should be released by middle of September.
Here’s a synopsis:
“Never before have people had such a broad choice of occupations – and the opportunity to try on so many employment hats over the course of a career. Never before have so many technologies converged that are making jobs safer, smarter, speedier, more interesting and more compelling.
And yet… while it should be a Golden Era for the workplace, there is extreme pessimism in many quarters about dystopian futures due to the supposed job-killing impact of an array of automation technologies: robots, drones, autonomous vehicles, white collar bots, 3-D printing, and many more.
Meanwhile, the job economy is dysfunctional, with millions of unfilled employment vacancies combined with a restless, fearful, even angry workforce.
Tackling this complex weave of forces, Mirchandani blends several distinct voices in this book – the innovation enthusiast, the industrial historian, and the policy analyst. Assembling a vast collection of voices, examples, and perspectives , he catalogs in detail over 50 jobs that are being transformed by technologies – spanning the gamut from handsomely compensated basketball players to much more modest garbage collectors.
He next turns historian and looks at automation over decades - in the grocery industry, in the automobile industry, in public accounting, in the US Postal Service among other sectors. He finds "evolution, not revolution" and uses that to confront the pessimism about jobs coming out of academia and politicians.
With his analyst hat he looks at how employers, regulators, unions, and workers have all confused the labor economy. He concludes we should not be worried about machines. We should be far more worried about man-made damage.
The end result is an optimistic read on the changing nature of work, a celebration of outstanding workers, and the machines which are making them even better.”
As with previous books, I will excerpting from the book on this and the New Florence blogs over the next several weeks.
Several readers told me they liked the format of my last book. They found it ideal for a cross-country or cross-ocean plane ride. This book is similarly fast paced. Hope you enjoy, but more importantly, I hope it helps you offset the doom and gloom that surrounds us.
