CIO Straight Talk - Issue 8 - 70

So first things first: what is
"digital labor"?
This is a term I've coined to describe a

How will this transition occur?
Not to get too granular here, but
replacing skilled knowledge workers

group of digitally enabled technologies

with software goes through what I see

- big data and analytics, the Internet of

as five stages. The first two stages are

Things, augmented and virtual reality,

basic scripting and orchestration. This

advanced robotics, artificial intelligence,

automation of structured, repeatable tasks

and others - that will collectively replace

leads to productivity gains, but there is

the knowledge worker with advanced

still a high reliance on human labor. The

intelligent software. This transition from

third stage is autonomics - that is, self-

traditional labor to digital labor is part

managing technology able to adapt to

and parcel of the transition from labor-

changing environments, based on real-time

dominant "analog" business models to

monitoring and analysis of unstructured

software-dominant digital business models.

data. The fourth and fifth stages are precognitive and cognitive technologies,
which are capable of pattern recognition,

We've seen manufacturing
workers replaced by
technology. How will
technology affect
knowledge work?

conceptual understanding, dynamic
analytics and forecasting - and very little
reliance on humans.
In the early stages, you're simply digitizing
an analog process. You've got 15 steps
being done by people, and you take 5 or 8
of those steps and do them with software.
The process is more efficient and faster

It's happening in stages. But I think we're

changes about the process itself. In the

soon begin to see what I call a polar shift

later stages, you're able to redesign

- a reversal of the relationship between

the entire process because it has

people and technology in the businesses

been digitized.
Let me use a musical metaphor to

they serve. We're moving from a place
where technology provides support for
human labor, to make workers more
efficient, to a place where human labor
provides support for technology, to make
it more effective. Let me put it another
way. Today, we have business processes
run by people who serve as a kind of
"middleware" for an array of fragmented
supporting technologies. Tomorrow, we'll
have business processes that are directly
driven by a unified technology, one that
is supported by a relatively small cadre of
human experts.

70

and uses fewer people. But nothing really

at or near an inflection point where we'll

describe these five stages. Scripting is a
single musical instrument playing a song.
Orchestration is, well, an orchestra, playing
a symphony together - more complex but
they're still playing set music. Autonomics
is like a jazz riff - that is, it responds
to what's going on in the environment,
responding to feedback it gets from the
audience. Pre-cognitive technologies are
like musicians at a party saying, "We know
that most of the people coming tonight
like country and western music, so we need
to shift to country and western by eight



CIO Straight Talk - Issue 8

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of CIO Straight Talk - Issue 8

Contents
CIO Straight Talk - Issue 8 - Cover1
CIO Straight Talk - Issue 8 - Cover2
CIO Straight Talk - Issue 8 - 1
CIO Straight Talk - Issue 8 - Contents
CIO Straight Talk - Issue 8 - 3
CIO Straight Talk - Issue 8 - 4
CIO Straight Talk - Issue 8 - 5
CIO Straight Talk - Issue 8 - 6
CIO Straight Talk - Issue 8 - 7
CIO Straight Talk - Issue 8 - 8
CIO Straight Talk - Issue 8 - 9
CIO Straight Talk - Issue 8 - 10
CIO Straight Talk - Issue 8 - 11
CIO Straight Talk - Issue 8 - 12
CIO Straight Talk - Issue 8 - 13
CIO Straight Talk - Issue 8 - 14
CIO Straight Talk - Issue 8 - 15
CIO Straight Talk - Issue 8 - 16
CIO Straight Talk - Issue 8 - 17
CIO Straight Talk - Issue 8 - 18
CIO Straight Talk - Issue 8 - 19
CIO Straight Talk - Issue 8 - 20
CIO Straight Talk - Issue 8 - 21
CIO Straight Talk - Issue 8 - 22
CIO Straight Talk - Issue 8 - 23
CIO Straight Talk - Issue 8 - 24
CIO Straight Talk - Issue 8 - 25
CIO Straight Talk - Issue 8 - 26
CIO Straight Talk - Issue 8 - 27
CIO Straight Talk - Issue 8 - 28
CIO Straight Talk - Issue 8 - 29
CIO Straight Talk - Issue 8 - 30
CIO Straight Talk - Issue 8 - 31
CIO Straight Talk - Issue 8 - 32
CIO Straight Talk - Issue 8 - 33
CIO Straight Talk - Issue 8 - 34
CIO Straight Talk - Issue 8 - 35
CIO Straight Talk - Issue 8 - 36
CIO Straight Talk - Issue 8 - 37
CIO Straight Talk - Issue 8 - 38
CIO Straight Talk - Issue 8 - 39
CIO Straight Talk - Issue 8 - 40
CIO Straight Talk - Issue 8 - 41
CIO Straight Talk - Issue 8 - 42
CIO Straight Talk - Issue 8 - 43
CIO Straight Talk - Issue 8 - 44
CIO Straight Talk - Issue 8 - 45
CIO Straight Talk - Issue 8 - 46
CIO Straight Talk - Issue 8 - 47
CIO Straight Talk - Issue 8 - 48
CIO Straight Talk - Issue 8 - 49
CIO Straight Talk - Issue 8 - 50
CIO Straight Talk - Issue 8 - 51
CIO Straight Talk - Issue 8 - 52
CIO Straight Talk - Issue 8 - 53
CIO Straight Talk - Issue 8 - 54
CIO Straight Talk - Issue 8 - 55
CIO Straight Talk - Issue 8 - 56
CIO Straight Talk - Issue 8 - 57
CIO Straight Talk - Issue 8 - 58
CIO Straight Talk - Issue 8 - 59
CIO Straight Talk - Issue 8 - 60
CIO Straight Talk - Issue 8 - 61
CIO Straight Talk - Issue 8 - 62
CIO Straight Talk - Issue 8 - 63
CIO Straight Talk - Issue 8 - 64
CIO Straight Talk - Issue 8 - 65
CIO Straight Talk - Issue 8 - 66
CIO Straight Talk - Issue 8 - 67
CIO Straight Talk - Issue 8 - 68
CIO Straight Talk - Issue 8 - 69
CIO Straight Talk - Issue 8 - 70
CIO Straight Talk - Issue 8 - 71
CIO Straight Talk - Issue 8 - 72
CIO Straight Talk - Issue 8 - 73
CIO Straight Talk - Issue 8 - 74
CIO Straight Talk - Issue 8 - 75
CIO Straight Talk - Issue 8 - Cover3
CIO Straight Talk - Issue 8 - Cover4
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