I wrote recently about an interesting piece of work by the Turing Institute to try and pull together various bits of research into the future of work.  The aim was to try and pierce some of the myths and allow a more evidence-based approach to understanding what can be an emotive and confusing topic.

Despite the Institute’s best efforts, a recent paper from the RSA suggests that the public still remain largely ignorant of the issues likely to affect their work in the future.  The RSA’s Future of Work Centre have produced a number of reports to try and better understand and inform the debate, and their latest consists of a series of essays to spark new conversations and introduce fresh perspectives.

Just as with the Turing Institute paper, the RSA attempt to dispel some myths and provide a more nuanced and evidence-based approach to the task to help guide industry, governments and the individual through these uncertain times.

The hunt for evidence

Sadly, whilst the essays do perhaps meet the remit of providing a fresh perspective on things, they fail to provide much in the way of evidence or rigour to back up their arguments.  Indeed, whereas the Turing Institute paper provided a host of research and evidence to try and illuminate the way, only two of the seven essays presented by the RSA use any external sources at all.

That’s not to say that the essays aren’t well written and a potential source of interesting conversation starters, but are they really rigorous enough to provide the informed level of debate that the RSA aim to facilitate?

As the paper rightly says, “the quality of the conversation about technology matters greatly to our ability to prepare it,” but perhaps this paper fails to address that, especially as they rightly argue that too much of the debate centers around what might be and the theoretical rather than what has been and what is right now.  There is plenty of evidence out there to guide us, and so it seems a shame that so many of the seven essays fail to tap into that evidence.

Of course, this might simply be a case that the essays fail to meet the lofty expectations bestowed upon them, and the RSA have done some interesting work on the topic over the last few years, so you may still find them useful as you attempt to understand this topic in more depth.