IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - December 2015 - 21

Then during the French Revolution the entrepreneurial power
of societies and communities was
unleashed. This process was accelerated during the first industrial revolution in the 18th and 19th centuries,
as more and more investors created
huge companies to concentrate the
hired labor force and optimize the
process of production, as well as to
decrease the high cost of transportation between continents.
By the 20th century, successful
big firms had developed their own
corporate cultures to motivate workers to cooperate and specialize in
further areas for higher profit and
a higher levels of mass production.
Corporations recruited the best workers by offering more lucrative conditions and valuable in-house training
to maintain loyalty and increase
competitiveness, especially in the
age of the rise of nations eager for
colonization. The United States also
stepped unquestionably onto the
world market, founded on the pillars
of entrepreneurships and individualism stemming from the heritage of
the French Revolution.
Access to information about
workers' skills and experience
remained limited for centuries. The
costs of recruiting the best workers on the market, together with
the costs of producing ever more
complex products and services
were increasing all the time. Therefore it was in the best interests of
a company to keep its labor and
knowledge together to prevent
competitors from having access to
new information on technology and
innovation, including access to markets themselves. That is partly why
monopolies were eventually formed
during the age of colonization. In
other words: the overly high risks
of the marketplace justified the
formation of monopolies because
monarchs and states considered
monopolies reasonable compensadecember 2015

tion for the high risks entrepreneurs
had to take.
After the European settlement of
the Americas, the risks of finding and
establishing new trade routes were
extremely high. European nations
started operating in new (globalized)
markets in fierce competition. At the
same time, the corporate world was
also associated with workplace stability. The corporate world provided
a clearer structure with differentiated jobs under the same roof, which
then led to workers having new and
more predictable careers, and a
more secure future. This phenomenon eventually allowed the so-called
middle class to rise and prosper.
Nevertheless, companies continued to have the upper hand because
they had exclusive access to knowledge and relevant information based
on growing and extensive research
within the company. Research and
competitive knowledge, after all,
turned out to be of the greatest
importance, as it was in fact becoming the property of companies who
had been heavily investing in it.
At the end of the last millennium,
personal computers and their wide
application in general also triggered
R&D activities in science. More and
more processes were supported,
evaluated, and finally planned by
so-called data computing, which in
turn replaced thousands of employees. PCs have been inevitably gaining importance and now exert
influence ubiquitously in all spheres
of our lives. And now we are in the
age of the smartphone, which creates a newer momentum in technology and development. The think-tank
Andreessen Horowitz estimates that
new iPhones released and sold during the first weekend in September
2014 had 25 times more computing
power than the whole world back
in 1995. Therefore the use of smart
software has become a fundamental
tool for organized work, providing the
∕

IEEE Technology and Society Magazine

promise of readiness as well as the
ability, even for individuals, to react
immediately to market demand.
Based on the special briefing on the future of work by the
Economist (Jan. 3, 2015) [1], the
editors think that "the ubiquitous platform of the smartphone
to deliver labor and services in a
variety of new ways will challenge
many of the fundamental assumptions of 20th-century capitalism."
Since all the information regarding employees' professional skills,
performance, and their work history has also become available on
line, the transaction costs in many
fields have also become lower in
comparison to traditional forms of
employment. This has driven other
costs down further by opening up
to a globalized work market as well.
For example, the service provider
InCloudCounsel recently undercut big law firms by as much as
80% in fees by using the available
freelancers on the market who can
deal with all the jobs lawyers do
not want to be tied down with. This
actually means that a new form of
economy is emerging: the "on-thedemand individualized economy"
right after the age of knowledgebased economy.
Even though we might not be
aware of it, the real competition
has only just begun. It definitely -
and seemingly inevitably - leads to
a situation where only the best of
the best workers will be able survive by making themselves individual corporations, or who will be
able to create the world of "corporate individualism" equipped with
smart and effective solutions, available on the Internet all around the
globe. The risk is that even these
"winners" might see themselves as
bogus entrepreneurs driven into a
new working status compelled by
economic necessity, cost-efficiency,
and the developing technological

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