Phil Wainewright: Go cloud, young man

Although Phil may not be saying anything that hasn’t already been said in his previous posts, this piece was striking for the directness and clarity of its vision. This could very well be an addendum to Tom Friedman’s ‘The World is Flat‘, updated to reflect the changes that we are seeing in the workplace thanks to the proliferation of Cloud Computing. The interesting part of Phil’s post is that it addresses the shift of white collar work to “the cloud,” whereas much of the discussion around work automation to this point has focused primarily on traditionally blue collar and manual professions.

Three key points:

We’re just at the beginning of a white-collar shake-out that is going to transform professions and will ultimately reshape our cities as office-based work becomes more mobile and dispersed. It’s going to be a scary, disruptive transformation…but resistance is futile.

Some may find it scary, though, as the Web makes it possible to contract work by the hour or minute, eviscerating established notions of job security.

As this upheaval works its way through society over the coming years, few people are going to feel truly in control of their destiny. Those determined to succeed by embracing the cloud and the Web will have the best chances.