Knowledge worker, and damn proud of it

A long time ago, I was still in high school. The class was economics, in grade 10. I was 15 years old.

I still remember how my teacher looked. I still remember the topic of the class that day: ‘the making of the workforce in the near future’ (litteral translation as I studied in French).

This was at a time when computers weren’t ubiquitous yet. The internet barely existed, and yet, we’re only talking 1986.That day, the teacher was telling us that knowledge workers will make up an important part of the workforce in the future. People will be paid to learn and manage information. And I thought to myself, at that very moment: ‘That’s what I’m gonna do. I’ll know lots of stuff and people will pay me for that.

Well, what do you know, here I am 20 years later in the workforce doing just that. I still get the occasional blank stare as I try to explain what I do for a living, but less so today than when I started more than 10 years ago.

And although working from home is still seen as a perk by many, in my neighbourhood, it seems to be more and more common. I’ve actually already thought of creating a local group with my neighbours to have lunch together: a bunch of telecommuters going for a pic-nic once in a while, just to get out of our AC’ed and wired homes… that’d be interesting…