Crowdsourcing and telecommuting are conspiring to reinvent the traditional notion of a job. No longer is the one-employer model the only game in town. Some companies have found that work done by freelancers may be of better quality than what they were used to getting from their in-house employees.

In a society far away and long ago, people mostly farmed and ran storefront businesses where they lived. Then came the migration to the cities, where a new generation of workers stuffed into bulging urban-based factory jobs. Many spent their entire adult lives working for The Man in an upstairs office.

Then more social changes and transportation advancements happened. Those improvements let workers move to a suburban home and travel to city jobs in buses and trains and autos. Sitting in traffic enduring the twice-a-day commute was very bad. But loyalty to The Man and hours commuting to his office building provided workers with long-term benefits that sustained their families. And that was very very good. Or so it seemed.

Linux News: Collaboration: How the Virtual Workforce Is Changing Everything.