List of Boxes and Figure xv
Introduction 1
Part I Change
1. The Grand Bargain 9
1.1 Everyday conceptions 10
1.2 The scope of the professions 13
1.3 Historical context 18
1.4 The bargain explained 21
1.5 Theories of the professions 23
1.6 Four central questions 31
1.7 Disconcerting problems 33
1.8 A new mindset 37
1.9 Some common biases 43
2. From the Vanguard 46
2.1 Health 46
2.2 Education 55
2.3 Divinity 61
2.4 Law 66
2.5 Journalism 71
2.6 Management consulting 78
2.7 Tax and audit 84
2.8 Architecture 94
3. Patterns across the Professions 101
3.1 An early challenge 103
3.2 The end of an era 104
3.3 Transformation by technology 109
3.4 Emerging skills and competences 114
3.5 Professional work reconfigured 119
3.6 New labour models 123
3.7 More options for recipients 128
3.8 Preoccupations of professional firms 134
3.9 Demystification 140
Part II Theory
4. Information and Technology 145
4.1 Information substructure 145
4.2 Pre-print and print-based communities 147
4.3 Technology-based Internet society 150
4.4 Future impact 153
4.5 Exponential growth in information technology 155
4.6 Increasingly capable machines 159
4.7 Increasingly pervasive devices 172
4.8 Increasingly connected humans 175
4.9 A fifty-year overview 182
5. Production and Distribution of Knowledge 188
5.1 The economic characteristics of knowledge 189
5.2 Knowledge and the professions 193
5.3 The evolution of professional work 195
5.4 The drive towards externalization 202
5.5 The liberation of expertise: from craft to commons? 210
5.6 The decomposition of professional work 211
5.7 Production and distribution of expertise: seven models 215
Part III Implications
6. Objections and Anxieties 231
6.1 Trust, reliability, quasi-trust 233
6.2 The moral limits of markets 239
6.3 Lost craft 244
6.4 Personal interaction 248
6.5 Empathy 251
6.6 Good work 254
6.7 Becoming expert 258
6.8 No future roles 263
6.9 Three underlying mistakes 267
7. After the Professions 270
7.1 Increasingly capable, non-thinking machines 272
7.2 The need for human beings 277
7.3 Technological unemployment? 284
7.4 The impact of technology on professional work 289
7.5 The question of feasibility 295
Conclusion: What Future Should We Want? 303
Bibliography 309
Index 337