The one collar of the knowledge worker

January is a month where the word “device” gets a lot of attention. Last week the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas introduced the world to plenty of devices: devices that connect things we use to the Internet; devices that compute data in a new way; devices that make our cars smarter, our laptops lighter, and our lives just all around cooler. OK, that feeling cooler part is a CES mind trick, but it certainly works for me.

Released just after the show, a study from research firm IHS proposed three technologies that will, in its words, “transform the world over the next five years.” The first is no surprise: 3-D printing, an industry that has “cool devices” at its very core. The firm predicts that total revenue from the 3-D printing industry will grow nearly 40 percent annually through 2020.

The second is cloud computing, which IHS says is “changing the way enterprises interact with their suppliers, customers, and developers.” Big data is a big business, and the firm predicts it will nearly double in size by 2017, when it will be a $230 billion industry. Cloud computing has helped make the smart “device” ubiquitous. The most ubiquitous device of all, our phones, are pretty dumb; it’s the cloud that makes them smart.

Lastly, IHS cites the Internet of things, “a technological evolution that is based on the way that Internet-connected devices can be used to enhance communication, automate complex industrial processes, and generate a wealth of information.”

All this sounds great, but I feel there’s one missing element: people. Within the past decade I have yet to talk to a shop owner or manager who has told me that technology alone has made the company successful. Instead, they’ve talked about how technology has changed the demands of the employee. It has helped push knowledge and, at some fabricators, the decision-making authority to the front lines.

Technology has transformed the world of work. Our technical devices are wiping away the distinction between blue collar and white collar. We all now wear one collar, that of the knowledge worker. In the coming years, this fact may truly change the world.