You Don't Need a Job (The Rise of the Network) [Kindle Edition]

Robert Paterson (Author)

Book Description

A series where we explore how the network will overwhelm the machine model for society and thus offer us all the chance of genuine freedom

Product Details

• File Size: 1308 KB
• Print Length: 69 pages
• Simultaneous Device Usage: Unlimited
• Publisher: Robert Paterson (September 30, 2012)
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
• Language: English
• ASIN: B009K8R7OA
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• X-Ray: Not Enabled
• Lending: Enabled
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #336,302 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars The start of what should be a great series October 11, 2012

By Tim Kastelle

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

Rob is planning an ambitious series investigating the impact of thinking about our society as a network rather than a machine. I'm fully behind this idea, as it informs much of my own research. And Rob does an excellent job of taking findings from the natural and social sciences and thinking through their potential impacts. This first book looks at the world of work through this lens.

The basic premise is that the world as we know it is currently changing due to a combination of the emergence of new technologies, the need for sustainability, and the current set of financial crises facing us. The implications for work are that we can achieve many things now through activating a network of acquaintances and supporters that previously required more formal institutions. In other words, we no longer need to have a job working for someone to get by.

While I'm highly sympathetic to Rob's project, there are parts of the book that I don't agree with. This is good though - it's definitely a though-provoking piece of work. One question that I think will need to be addressed as the series progresses concerns the role of expertise. One of the basic premises of this model is that we now have access to all of the information and tools that we need to do many things ourselves that previously required experts. We can educate ourselves, manage for our own retirement, and construct our own work. But can we do all of it? I still think there will be important roles for people that have developed skills in particular areas more fully than others have been able to.

This is an optimistic book, and well worth reading for anyone that is looking for a job, or thinking about the work that they're doing on a day-to-day basis. Everyone should have work that is fulfilling, and some of the ideas in this book might help you achieve this for yourself.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A MUST READ for everyone, especially those who are job hunting or just collecting a paycheque October 9, 2012

By Shannon Courtney

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

"I'm on the job hunt" is a refrain I hear all too often from my friends, who are in their late 20s and 30s. On the university campus where I currently work, I see far too many young, ambitious graduates settling for jobs that neither utilize their skills or develop their potential. It's disheartening for me, even though I am one of the 'lucky ones' because I have a job, albeit on a contract basis, with the constant threat that funding will run out. Us young people have been taught throughout our childhood and young adulthood that the ticket to success is a university degree and the ticket to a secure life is a job. Well, here we are, all grown-up and well-educated and ready to take on the world. But the world is changing and many of us cannot find a place in the old world that we've been shaped for. Many of us feel lost and alone and, quite frankly, afraid for our futures.

Never underestimate the power of words to transform. 'You Don't Need Job' is
a MUST READ for anyone under 35 and anyone over 35 that doesn't feel like they 'fit' in the old, dying world of jobs. Robert Paterson provides guidance to those that seek it on how to be a part of the new 'new world'. It is hopeful, yet grounded. It is what so many of us need to hear. At a time when all the news reports are focused on unemployment rates, austerity and recessions, there is a new world awakening where each of us can be in charge of our own destiny, where each of us can utilize our many different skills to create multiple income streams, where each of us can be a benefactor of our capabilities and integrity (for in the networked world, your reputation means more than your age, lineage or formal education). Please read the introduction, I know you'll be hooked by the second page.

I, for one, am getting geared up to be a pioneer of the new world and am filled with excitement at the prospects that lie ahead. I hope that many of my peers will read this book, for we are the ones caught between the old world and the new one, and Rob Paterson provides us with a map to the new world. It is up to us, then, to set sail!

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars The Rise of the Networked Gig Economy October 7, 2012

By S. William Ives

Format:Kindle Edition

Rob Paterson offers us a very useful book, You Don't Need a Job (The Rise of the Network). Of course, he does not mean you don't need an income but there are others ways to earn an income that a salaried job with an employer. Instead he is talking about what I have been doing since 2004 and an increasing number of others are doing. You can work for yourself as a contractor on multiple projects, initiatives, assignments, or other gigs. Some people started this way to earn a living because they lost their job, others, like Rob, started it because they wanted a change.

Rob has an interesting chart that shows that in the early 1800s over 80% of people earned their living as free agents. After the industrial revolution took hold, the number dropped well below 20%. Now it is back over 40% as free agency is growing once again in the networked world. The focus has shifted from top-down command and control hierarchies to networks of skilled participants. This change is even happening within companies and those that adopt it will be the leaders of the next economy. Rob's book provides some very useful historical context so we can see how we got to where we are now and how we can progress beyond it.

I recently re-watched an excellent video produced by the BBC in 1997, Intellectual capital: The New Wealth of Nations. The film portrayed the industrial revolution as a plague on people where workers were treated as mere extensions of machines. Charles Handy makes the same point as Rob, when the workers own the means of production they will be in control. But unlike Karl Marx, Handy was talking about the machines but the intellectual assets within people's minds that provides them flexibility to move from company to company or become free agents.

Corresponding to this change is the rise of the percentage of enterprise wealth driven from intangible assets. Now the percentage of tangible assets in the corporations in the S&P 500 has shifted from 66% in 1982 to 16% in 1999 and likely continues to fall (see Juergen Daum, Intangible Assets and Value Creation). In its place is the rise of intangible assets as the creators of wealth (over 84% in 1999). These are mostly the ideas in people's minds. Yet many organizations are still managing people as though the wealth was created by tangible assets, machines, and people are just servants of these machines. It is the network within and outside the enterprise that releases this potential for wealth. Now, as Rob, argues, the network increasingly allows you to do not need an enterprise to create a living. It is increasingly possible to escape the yoke of top down authority by simply working as a free agent.

Moving form historical context, Rob offers a lot if practical advise on how to survive and prosper in the new networked world. You can join a community of free agents to share possibilities and collaborate on work. There are Web sites that support this networking. You can turn a hobby into a living. You can learn something new. He offers a number of useful sources to further your ability to thrive in this new world. I highly recommend the book, whether you are inside or outside an organization. It contains survival skills for all of us.

More About the Author

I believe that a sustainable future depends on moving away from highly centralized systems to distributed systems based on the rules of natural networks. The internet itself is a model of such a system. I am writing a series of maybe 20 short books on this topic. I start with the central issue of Jobs and then will move onto Credit, Health and Education. I am trying to offer you a guide to a future that is here but maybe hidden by our habits and experience in the old system.

For part of my life I was a very conventional person. I attended very traditional English Schools and went into Investment Banking as a career.

But much of my early years were spent in nature. As a boy I lived in Ghana and spent most of my time on the beach. Most of my vacations were spent in rural New Brunswick. My teen years were spent in rural England. As a teenager I spent a year as a diamond prospector in Botswana. I lived and worked in the bush under canvas exposed to the majesty of how life must have been lived before civilization. The natural world had seeped into my core.

But I left all that behind and had a career. I was the typical institutional person. But in my 40's I began to feel that something was wrong. Of course I felt that I was the one with the problem, not the system that I had spent my life in. But after much anguish, I woke up. For the last 20 years I have devoted my life to understanding the shift from machine to nature that we are living through. These booklets are a summary of all that I have learned.