Incentives work on low cognition tasks.
Intrinsic motivation works on high cognition tasks.
Low cognition tasks can be automated or outsourced.
High cognition tasks can not (as of time of this writing) be.

The smart money is on high cognition tasks.

We are becoming a world of gunslingers.

Well, there is this dream that little boys grow up with that one day they are going to be a Fireman or a Superhero or a Space Cowboy or something.

The core of the wish is that they will be free to roam the plains bringing joy and light to a world in need. Information technology and the web are bringing us one geeky step closer. It’s bringing into being a world where traditional career paths are shifting wildly and may, dare I say it, become extinct.

It’s stunning when you think about how many thousands of job descriptions won’t exist at the close of the next decade. There are just the jobs that will be automated and oursourced away. Much worse, many more jobs that once took a half-dozen people will may be able to be done part-time by a single person with the right combination of off the shelf technology and savvy.

Where does that leave the legions of information workers who will find themselves on their butts in a few ears? Well, since it’s work or starve the most clever of these folks will take up their guns and spurs and put themselves up for hire. We are seeing it already in Social Media. It’s the rise of the Consultant Culture, people who in any other time would have found themselves inside firms are blazing their own trails and creating new styles of work.

It’s a world so far removed from anything that we have seen previously that the question isn’t what effect a herd of wild consultants will have on a particular industry, it’s what in the world could a cult of knowledge workers all with slightly different jobs mean for a society and an economy.