Work as Shared Creation
Digital transformation opens up the possibility of reuniting thought and action, shifting value from time spent to the knowledge and meaning generated together.
The industrial economy is built on the idea that value can be measured in hours, tasks and programmable outcomes. Artificial intelligence and digital transformation are now revealing the limits of this conception: a growing share of value arises from the ability to interpret, connect knowledge and generate possibilities.
In his article published in Agenda Digitale, Paolo Zanenga revisits the history of work through the tension between labor and ergon: toil and constraint on one side, work as creative expression on the other. The question concerns less how much work can be automated than the space we can open up for knowledge, freedom and participation.
In the current context of transformation, Zanenga identifies a shift from employment to engagement. The relationship between the individual and the organisation is redefined as generative participation in a learning system. The enterprise itself can evolve from a production structure into a space where experience, tacit knowledge and intelligent technologies contribute to the creation of shared meanings and directions.
Education and training are also changing in nature. As skills rapidly become obsolete, transmitting codified knowledge is no longer sufficient. It becomes essential to develop the ability to interpret contexts, build connections and act under conditions of uncertainty. Learning and work thus tend to converge in a continuous process in which thought and action transform one another.
This vision runs through several areas of research and experimentation at Diotima Society. Conceived as a School of Connection, the C-School draws on the original meaning of scholè and interprets learning as the generation of meaning.
Engagement and enaction define its participatory and living dimension: people and organisations build knowledge through interaction and, in doing so, also transform the ecosystem of which they are part. Collaborations with universities and territories, together with the permanent laboratory of the Transition Institute, bring this perspective into real-world contexts of education, innovation and change.
The future of work therefore emerges as an economic, cultural and political question. As Zanenga observes, John Maynard Keynes wrote in his 1930 essay Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren: “But it will be those peoples, who can keep alive, and cultivate into a fuller perfection, the art of life itself and do not sell themselves for the means of life, who will be able to enjoy the abundance when it comes. The question concerns how we choose to use the possibilities opened up by technology and the value we are able to recognise in knowledge, relationships and the capacity to create together.
Read the full article in Agenda Digitale: Futuro del lavoro: dalla fatica alla creazione condivisa
Nadia Simionato - Diotima Society