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Go back to medieval times, back to the 12th and 13th centuries. Back before there were companies and unions, back before there were venture capitalists and entrepreneurs. Go back, and you arrive in the Middle Ages, before Europe knew of a New World, never mind a new economy. Back when there were guilds: merchant guilds, which sought to organize and control how business would be done within a given geographic territory; and craft guilds, which formed to establish work standards, to protect the interests of the workers, and to look after the old or sick members of the guild. In the medieval world, guilds played a crucial role in organizing commerce and in structuring how work got done.

Now, says Thomas Malone, a professor at MIT's Sloan School of Management and founder of the Center for Coordination Science, take a look at the future of commerce and at the structure of how work will get done. Look particularly at the choices that are available to free agents and talented workers, and what you'll discover is . . . the reemergence of guilds. Malone, 48, says that guilds offer talented workers an organizing principle by which they can associate with others who share an occupational affinity, develop professional skills, and share their need for new ways to provide for benefits and security. According to Malone and MIT research associate Robert Laubacher, new-economy guilds are emerging to help free agents meet financial and social needs outside of traditional full-time jobs. From the research at his center, Malone says, he intends "to identify the choices that are available and to find new ways to organize work as creatively and as wisely as possible." Fast Company visited Malone in his Cambridge, Massachusetts office.

How should we imagine guilds operating to help free agents?

You don't have to imagine anything! We have guilds today -- think of the Screen Actors Guild (SAG). Guilds are organizations that provide a wide range of services for mobile workers, the kinds of services that employers have traditionally provided. For example, sag contracts stipulate that producers pay a surcharge into the guild's benefits fund -- an amount that can be as much as 30% of an actor's base pay. SAG members need to earn only $6,000 in a calendar year to qualify for full health benefits for the entire subsequent year. SAG offers educational and professional-development seminars to its members, and, because many actors have relatively short careers, SAG also provides very generous pension benefits.

New guilds could provide those services, among others. They could create cross-firm skills-accreditation standards, develop industry-wide job descriptions and salary guidelines, and even design a way for members to build the equivalent of a personnel file whenever a person's career involves working for more than one firm.

Those are largely economic functions, but guilds also could provide opportunities for e-lancers (electronically connected freelancers) to socialize with their peers -- both on the Web and in physical locations. Guilds could provide a meaningful sense of identity that goes beyond that of a company: You may not be an employee of Ford Motor Co., but you may be a member of the automotive-engineers guild, working a particular grade level.

Is there something that makes guilds appropriate now?