Your network increases your effective intelligence

Jamais Cascio, pondering trends in outsourcing, writes:

Ironically, it's entirely possible that the carbon footprint of shipping may add so much cost to outsourced manufacturing that those jobs get re-localized, whereas the knowledge jobs (needing only an Internet connection) end up being globalized.

So are we headed to a world where the only stable jobs are those that absolutely require hands-on contact—health maintenance, grooming, and the like? Or to one where wages even out across the world of skilled workers? Neither strikes me as terribly appealing or stable.

I think Jamais' observation about the likely re-localisation of manufacturing is quite persuasive. However, I have a feeling he's a bit off target with the second paragraph. While stable jobs for all but the most worker location-dependent tasks may come under threat, my guess is that the economic well-being of the successful knowledge workers will actually only continue to follow a power-law curve, with the richest continuing to get richer.

Knowledge workers don't get hired only for what they know or what they can do, but also for who they know—and, as Clay Shirky long since pointed out, winners take all in social networking. Why do people with great networks get hired? Partly through plain old nepotism, of course, but also because who you know effectively increases both what you know and what you can do by enabling you to outsource task fulfillment across your uniquely-valuable network.