The World in 2030

258 The World in 2030
goods and services for everyone on Earth with only
a small fraction of the human workforce we now employ.
This will force us to rethink what human beings
will do when they are no longer needed to labour in
the marketplace. 478
In the developed world an information economy has already
replaced the locally-based manufacturing economy (except
in some exceptional cases such as plastics manufacture
where the weight-to-volume ratio of the end products make
a nonsense of shipping raw material around the globe) and
the information economy will morph into what, for want of
a better term, might be called a ‘content economy.’ Instead
of processing information, we will be creating it (or editing,
designing or criticising content).
Attached almost permanently to the ‘super-web’, the
trend for people to work independently of central offices
and locations will have continued, but there will still be a
need for regular physical meetings of work colleagues – a
requirement that the British management writer Charles
Handy 479 calls the need for an ‘office clubhouse’ – because
only regular personal, physical contact can create team spirit
and a shared culture.
Many people will be working alongside robots (see
below), especially in the caring and security professions and,
by 2030, it will have become a common sight to see robots
driving cars (not a robot seated at a steering wheel, but the
cars themselves performing as robots), serving in shops,
working on building sites, fighting fires and standing behind
immigration officers at ports and airports.