In the future, our home and work lives will intermingle. We will always be at work. Our social time will be spent in the workplace. Socialization will be a part of work. Work will be a part of personal life.

In the 20th century a job was a place one goes to work. You get in a car and drive to your job, and when you're done at work you drive home and switch to family mode. That was necessary when most work was of the manual labor sort. The equipment that was needed to manufacture a product was housed in a building somewhere. One had to be physically present to do the work.

Now that we are moving away from manual jobs to service jobs, we can do our work from almost anywhere. Portable technology is accessible to the masses. A person is no longer bound to a $5000 IBM PC on a desk that only an employer can afford.

If you can imagine a portable device with internet and cell phone capabilities, a color video screen, and a bunch of storage, then think of how it will change the way we work. Rather than maintain two systems of organization, we can store all of our files together or access them remotely via one device. It is more efficient that way. There is no need to remember which computer a file is stored on. We can have access to our stuff at any time.

We want to be more mobile and more dynamic. In fact, we can be more productive that way. We can do work while waiting in line or riding the subway. We can make social connections that are important to our work more effectively in a meeting place than in an office park somewhere. We can share our work via portable devices more effectively as we sit next to our colleagues than we can if we are separated by miles and email.

The notion of a job will change too. We may not be employed by a single entity any longer. We may not be bound by time sheets and benefits packages. A time will come to pass when we can complete a set quantity of work as we operate as a sole entity, a company of one. We will pay people to work for us too. We can sell our time on eBay. We can write a computer subprogram and sell it to the highest bidder. We can design a video advertisement in trade for product. We can meet a friend of a friend and provide them with job counseling, marriage counseling, or legal advice for a fee. Our friends will be our business contacts and our corporate partners. Our job will be to go out and socialize.

So say goodbye to your old job and hello to your new life. Your work will come to you and you can do it wherever you want to be.