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WORK
Replaceable You
THE BIONIC MAN IS NO LONGER JUST A TV CHARACTER: In 2020, sophisticated
robotic limbs, spinal implants, and stem cell therapies typically restore mobility for
those paralyzed by injury or disease. Other wonders of medical technology are now
keeping our bodies moving longer, but the biggest breakthrough at the doctor’s office
is the new generation of drugs designed to prevent our minds from turning on us.
Artificial hearts and lungs have proved harder to make than medical pioneers
dreamed back in the 1970s. Coming faster to the market, however, are personalized drugs tailored to our individual genetic makeup. Several firms are racing to
commercialize genetic mapping, with the goal of sequencing a human genome
for $1,000. Jay Flatley, CEO of the San Diego biotech company Illumina, has
predicted that mapping the genome of babies at birth could be routine by 2019.
Another long-promised breakthrough: help for the aging mind. Effective
Alzheimer’s drugs—those that forestall the growth of the brain plaques and
tangles that mark the disease—could be available within a decade, predicts David
Linden, a professor of neuroscience at Johns Hopkins University and the author
of The Accidental Mind: How Brain Evolution Has Given Us Love, Memory,
Dreams and God. Some “smart drugs” already being tweaked in the lab may shave
years off your brain’s age. So though these meds may not be a time machine,
someday we will likely be able to take pills that restore some of the zest of youth.
“The idea of brushing your teeth in the morning, then taking a pill that gets your
brain back to the fast,
high-functioning brain
of your 20s, is amaz-
ing to me,” says Laura
Carstensen, director of
the Stanford Center on
Longevity. “But we may
soon get there.”
r
THE
FLEXIBLE
FUTURE
9 A.M. MEETING ALERT!:
Your boss is talking, but
you’re not in the office. You’re
sipping coffee in your jam-mies. No problem. You boot
up the Telework 3000 and it’s
as if you’re in the conference
room. At least you think so—
you haven’t been there since
2017, when you traded your
E-Z Pass for a houseboat in
Hawaii. Now, if you could just
ignore the late-night texts
from your colleagues.
HEALTH &
WELLNESS
“telepresence” videoconferencing—will accelerate this long-
brewing trend but so will a changing workplace culture.
“Companies are finding that workers like to be trusted,” says Paul
Rowson, managing director of the human resources association
WorldAt Work. “Top performers tend to be more productive and
more engaged when given a bit of freedom.”
This long leash might benefit older workers who can work without
managerial oversight. And experienced employees will have lots of
company, as more of us expect to work late in life. Avoiding hassles
such as commuting will likely hasten a shift from full-time to flex-
time, rather than retirement. “Maybe you can take that long vaca-
tion you always dreamed of and earn a paycheck while you’re doing
it,” says workplace futurist Joanne H. Pratt. But there’s a downside
to being allowed to work from anywhere: being required to work
from anywhere. “As more people become available 24/7, there’ll be
an expectation that you will be, too,” Pratt says. You won’t have to go
into the office—but you might not be able to get away from it, either.
It might get lonely around
the water cooler by 2020.
What we call telecommuting
will evolve into the “flexible
work environment,” in which
firms let employees work
from home on their own
schedules. Technology—
mobile computers, broadband networks, and
immersive, high-definition
