Peer-to-peer work in the digital meaning society 2050
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ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Peer-to-peer work in the digital meaning society 2050 Juho Ruotsalainen 1 & Sirkka Heinonen 1
&
Joni Karjalainen 1 & Marjukka Parkkinen 1
Received: 29 July 2016 / Accepted: 21 October 2016 # The Author(s) 2016. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com
Abstract The article discusses possible futures of selforganising peer-to-peer work through four transformative scenarios constructed in the Neo-Carbon Energy research project. These futures images probe the futures of work from the perspective of peer-to-peer organisations and distributed renewable energy production. The scenarios lay a systemic view on the development of societies, studying how decentralised renewable energy with low costs could affect society and its social relations. We anticipate the emergence of a digital meaning society, in which the economy is based on the production of meanings and meaningfulness. The article analyses the results of a futures workshop on the futures of work by classifying them to seven core themes. The results of the analysis are compared to related implications for policy-making, and to the Millennium Project Work/Technology Scenarios 2050 for international perspectives. The article presents possible disruptions and key emerging issues, including the novel drivers for inequalities of peer-to-peer work. Keywords Futures of work . Peer-to-peer . Transformation . Scenarios . Digital meaning society . Low-cost renewable energy * Sirkka Heinonen [email protected] Juho Ruotsalainen [email protected] Joni Karjalainen [email protected] Marjukka Parkkinen [email protected] 1
Finland Futures Research Centre (FFRC), University of Turku, Korkeavuorenkatu 25 a 2, 00130 Helsinki, Finland
Introduction – near-zero marginal costs and neo-carbon scenarios 2050 A wholly renewable energy system can be achieved by 2050. It would be based mainly on solar and wind energy and their storage technologies [5, 6]. This would signify a major shift in how energy is produced and consumed. However, studies of new energy systems often neglect the social and societal aspects of the transition [29]. From a whole-of-society perspective, perhaps the most radical consequence of the renewable energy transition would be the plummeting marginal cost of energy – wind and solar energy are in principle free, once their fixed costs have been covered [35]. The falling marginal costs of energy would be one more addition to an intriguing group of events. Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) have dramatically decreased the costs of producing, processing, and distributing information. Thus the marginal costs of information have been close to zero for a while already [3]. As physical production is being automated, and as information is increasingly applied to material production processes, the marginal costs of physical production are also decreasing, and will probably continue to do so at an accelerating pace [30]. Together, these developments will have radical impacts on practically every
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