The future of work was the most discussed topic in Anglo-Saxon media in 2017. Rightly so, because that year people had become increasingly aware of the consequences of artificial intelligence on human work, and not only thought leaders began to ask questions whose answers are not yet, or not easily, forthcoming. What is the future of work? When will it occur? How do you prepare your children for it? What education does the future of work require? This article attempts to summarize observations of the last decade and provides answers.
 
“The farther back you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see.” [Winston Churchill]

Much has been written about Covid-19 and little I read was of value. The nearsightedness of politicians and the tunnel vision of scientists is deprived of interdisciplinary systems awareness and what Buddhists call the connection between phenomena and noumena: the reflection of moral problems in the material world.

There is however one outstanding quote by Indian novelist Arundhati Roy, which hits the bull's eye: "Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew." The 2nd bubonic plague triggered the end of the dark ages and the emergence of Renaissance. Recurrences of the 2nd bubonic plague gave way to the enlightenment movement and the 3rd bubonic plague to the 19th century revolutions which led to the decline of Empires and Aristocracy.

Some day soon a book will be written like the one above right which will not be titled "The Black Death and the End of the Dark Ages" but "Covid-19 and the End of Modernity". Humanity is at the brink of another major transformation which might rejuvenate a decaying democracy through technological decision making and extend spheres of justice from a few wealthy nations to a united mankind. It might also produce an enlightened absolutism in which Xi Jinping continues the tradition of enlightenment kings like the Prussian Frederick the Great (1740-1772). Who can say for sure? The only thing that is certain about the future is that it will be different.

The wide spread admiration for authoritarian and thus industrial solutions to Covid-19 in the outbreak country China reflects however that large parts of the population support an industrial solution to a multi-layered problem which connects nature with culture. The crisis we experience is at the root one in consciousness of everything being interconnected, one which shows us that the exploitation of people and planet is not any longer sustainable.

Regulations on compulsory vaccinations like the one introduced in Austria on Feb 1 are the product of societies which are not ready to embrace diversity and tolerance. They are fascist in nature and repeat a cultural phenomenon which has materialized in our cultures over the course of history in various forms: the inquisition of the catholic church, the final solution in regard to European Jews, the genocides committed by Tutsis and Hutus, the recurring wars between Israelis and Lebanese, etc.

Courageous Chinese netizens shared at the beginning of the Covid-19 outbreak a clip from Victor Hugo's Les Miserables on wechat and pointed at the  nontransparent top-down approach of the government. Courageous Austrian citizens demonstrate these days in many cities against a regulation which ignores human integrity for the sake of keeping industrial working and schooling conditions in place.

Covid-19 has laid bare an essential characteristic of our contemporary societies and has shown that democratic nations converge under the pressure of systemic challenges like this pandemic episode with authoritarian regimes which have not yet gone through enlightenment movements and bourgeois revolutions. They reveal power structures and power interests which are in contraction with what Fritz Schumacher postulated in Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered.

The future might not be known, but in the words of Peter F. Drucker, the only thing that we know about the future is that it will be different. The best way to predict the future is however to create it.