Fast Forward

It's five years ago, and we call you up. We call right in the middle of Seinfeld, because, well, we knew that we'd reach you then. After the ritual pleasantries ("How about that Whitewater deal?") and sports banter ("Will the Yanks ever get back to the Series?"), we come to the point: Tell us, we ask, about the future. Tell us what the world will look like five years from now.

Would you have had any clue that the Internet would explode into our work and lives? That you'd be auctioning off your old 45s on eBay? That your grade-school kids would carry beepers? That your so-called American PC would be assembled in Ireland and loaded with software that was coded in India?

Could you have predicted how completely technology would redefine transactions and interactions? How strategy would be reinvented to incorporate webs of relationships, networks of collaboration, and not just head-to-head competition? How dramatically our relationships to our jobs would be transformed? How forcefully global-capital markets would dictate political and social reform?

Fact is, the past five years have proven to be flat-out extraordinary on any number of metrics, and humans are notoriously bad at predicting the extraordinary. Most of us imagine the future only within the bounds of our present. We can parse change in increments, but we get flummoxed by the prospect of the radical. For a nation of optimists, we're pretty pessimistic that way.

Yet here we are, asking folks about the future -- about the next five years, to be precise -- as part of Act II of the new economy. The Fast Company/Roper Starch Survey invited people to reflect on moments and personalities that have defined our work and business culture since 1996. And the survey pressed them to consider what will define the world by 2006.

We interviewed 1,000 folks via America Online, all of them college-educated, employed adults in households with incomes of at least $75,000 per year. Generally, they indicated optimism about the future. When asked to characterize the next five years in a single word or phrase, 35% picked "prosperous"; another 34% chose "inspiringly innovative."

More striking, though, was their conviction that the next five years would be defined by constant change -- perhaps even more so than the past five years have been. In a short time, these people believe, entire industries could be transformed. Companies that helped define the recent past could expire in the near future.

What the survey says is that change has become hardwired into how we operate. If anything, the survey respondents may still be underestimating how rapidly change will take place. The hows and the whys may remain elusive. But these citizens of the new economy get it: Five years from now, we'll find ourselves someplace that's worlds away from where we are today. The extraordinary, they know, has become the norm.

What are you working on?

For the past five years at work, I have most often been

Cheerfully engaged .......... 24%
Working steadily, but not particularly challenged .......... 31%
Hugely challenged with meaningful work .......... 33%
Overwhelmed -- but mostly by mundane tasks .......... 9%
Bored out of my mind .......... 3%

What are the chances that the company you are employed by now will be the same company that you are employed by five years from now?

I'm here for the long term .......... 34%
Likely, but who knows? .......... 37%
Possible, but unlikely .......... 20%
A snowball's chance in hell .......... 9%

At a time when most technology employers lose 20% of their professional employees every year, just 29% of respondents said they expect to leave their employer within the next five years. In a world that seems continually chaotic, people are searching for a safe haven. But as more than one-third of the poll takers agreed, who knows what can happen? The old safety net has some big holes in it.

Here's what's most telling, though: There's a strong relationship between people's attitudes toward their current work and their expectations for staying put. Among those who describe themselves as "cheerfully engaged" or "hugely challenged with meaningful work," about 40% say that they're "here for the long term." Just 28% of those who say that they're "overwhelmed," and 26% of those who are "not particularly challenged" can muster the same enthusiasm for their prospects. As for workers who are bored out of their minds? Blink, and they'll be gone: Just 7% expect to stick around for the next five years.