Jobs: Work, Social & Play

If you've ever watched Madmen, or are older than 50, you know that the workplace used to be a place where work, social and play all occurred and co-existed.

Owing to multiple factors, not least of which being the great many abuses that took place in the name of "fun," play was the first element to be steadily extricated from the workplace. Professionalization is the euphemism that is often employed to signal this change, especially in startups that want to shed their "sophomoric" image and signal they have become a place totally focused on work and the generation of profits.

At most jobs today, regardless of what the leadership or PR departments might say, the demarcation between work and 'social' is also getting starker by the day. The work/life balance that most employees demand and many employers claim they provide speaks to this. That said, while it may be a shell of its former self, the social aspect of work cannot be fully eliminated from jobs that require employees to work out of physical offices.

The splitting of the constitutional elements of the workplace - work, social and play - as a way to create the purest form of distilled work possible would seem to have its apotheosis in gig economy jobs that have begun to come online over the past few years. In the so-called gig economy the job is work, and work is the job. It should go without saying, but the workplace-as-family has no home in the gig economy.

While jobs have been made play-less over the last half century or so, it's my belief that the social aspect of the office has made work bearable. The British and American versions of the classic TV show 'The Office' make this clear - in a very ironic way to be sure. But just try to imagine what the gig economy equivalent of 'The Office' would look like. If they made it about Uber drivers, for example, well, it'd just be fooking depressing.

And that's kind of the rub, for me personally at least, when it comes to the gig economy and its future prospects. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely think the gig economy is where the overwhelming majority of new jobs will be created heading forward. That said, I think it would be an incredible mistake to simply play forward the trend of the work maximizing and social/play minimizing workplace that originated in and has been propagated throughout the world by the West.

What if, instead, there was a way to bring the social and play elements - without their past problematic baggage that led to their respective minimization and extirpation from the realm of work - back into the gig economy which is the future of work?

What if, amidst the slog of isolating digital work, the gig economy worker could sit down at the equivalent of a digital bar and simultaneously tap into that social connection and lost play?

Furthermore what if that digital social and play facilitates, bolsters and contributes to digital work of that gig economy worker?

I am envisioning something along the lines of a digital weigh station (the evaluation centers of the quintessential 20th century nomadic worker, the trucker) that users will be able to use to verify certain basic or minimum requirements in addition to everyone's favorite local watering hole where digital laborers can connect and have a little fun. And that is exactly what I see Cent positioning itself as, all the while strengthening its vision of allowing anyone to earn money anywhere by providing their knowledge and creativity, Madmen style.