Some Work of Noble Note

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Tag Archives: laas


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Business Megacycles & the New Labor Economy

There exists a vast literature exploring the concept of business cycles.  The four basic phases are Expansion, Boom, Recession, Depression, and the economy, or even specific industries, exists in one of those four phases at all times.  In a much broader sense, I wonder about a Societal or Civilization Cycles, characterized by two phases, Fragmentation and Consolidation.  Is society at any given point either self dividing into smaller functional units or seeing those smaller functional units merge into larger ones?

In some ways, this is a silly statement.  Saying society is always either consolidating or fragmenting is sort of like saying the economy is always either growing or shrinking.  It is reflexive.  This dialectic isn’t entirely a meaningless cut of the world since consolidation and fragmentation are motivating factors rather than end results.  The drive towards one or the other is something that defines an end state of societal components.  Other dichotomous distinctions (like growing vs. shrinking) are often mere outputs.  When an economy grows, you can’t draw the same conclusions about its future as you can when you know that it’s going to be consolidating.  (E.g., growth in what direction?)

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Labor-as-a-Service, or, the Next Industrial Revolution

Lifehacking abounds these days, on sites like Quora, Reddit, startup blogs, even NPR.  It’s a perfectly rational trend for society to adopt.  Lifehacking promises not only to help us do things better, it promises to make us happier and give us more time in our lives.  Anyone who follows this trend realizes how closely lifehacking is tied to Silicon Valley culture.  (There’s a reason three out of four links above are from Quora, Reddit, and the hugely popular social media startup Buffer.)  Decomposing the phrase  “life hack” itself should tell you this; it co-opts the term “hack” which has only recently taken on positive connotations through unironic evangelizing by the respected tech establishment.  Hacking refers to subverting a traditional system through well thought out side roads.  In the lifehacking sense, it’s productivity arbitrage.

I can’t help but read deeper meaning into this connection between lifehacking and Silicon Valley.  Tellingly, lifehacking is rarely focused on improving your productivity for the sake of work.  Instead, it’s focused on improving your productivity for one of two things: a) personal fulfillment or b) personal efficiency. That personal focus is key: lifehackers lifehack for entirely selfish purposes.  (How many lifehacking articles start with, “20 Ways To Maximize Your Value To Your Employer”?) Which leads to the question, is it a coincidence that the originators of the “as-a-Service” movement are so desperately seeking ways to improve their own personal productivity?  No.  In fact, I’d argue lifehacking is the enabler of a new “as-a-Service” movement: Labor-as-a-Service (obviously, LaaS).

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