Recently I caught a glimpse of the future of jobs, and jobs as we know them had largely dis-appeared. I needed two graphics for an outside project I was doing for another company, and the deadline was 24 hours away, too tight for that publisher's artists to produce them. Frustrated and desperate, I went online to find a freelancer.

Within an hour of posting my requirements on a reputable website, I had five bids from verified artists whose previous clients had rated them highly. The San Francisco-based artist I chose completed the work within 12 hours, surpassed my expectations and cost half of what I expected to pay.

I couldn't help but wonder why that publisher still had an art department. Then I asked myself, why does any company employ anyone? Certainly there will always be work to do, but do we really need jobs where people work a specific number of hours in return for a set salary for years on end?

Millions of freelance workers, particularly software engineers and Web designers, make their living doing piecework off the Internet everyday. Companies only pay for the work they need, and the freelancer enjoys operating his or her own business.

Before the Industrial Revolution, almost all laborers worked like this. Everyone was an entrepreneur offering labor and building a client base.

Now there is growing evidence that this kind of economy is returning as companies lower overhead, robots perform routine tasks, and online labor markets become more efficient. The big question is whether we are ready.

The working poor, whose tasks many companies have either outsourced or replaced with technology, have already been through this. Those whose jobs couldn't be eliminated often find themselves labeled as independent contractors.

Skilled laborers and white-collar workers will face similar challenges. Due to the nature of the energy and construction industries, Houston is proto- typical, said Jon Roberts, a principal at the Austin-based economic development firm TIP Strategies, which has closely studied workforce trends for the Greater Houston Partnership. Roberts is challenging politicians and economists to reconsider using job numbers as a metric for economic success and urging them to focus on productivity instead.

Right skills, right time

"I see a redefinition of what is a job," he told me. "It's less about the number of jobs than it is about the way in which people work."

He points out that hundreds of thousands of construction and oil field workers already take on short-term assignments on a project-by-project basis. They can often demand a premium by offering the right skills at the right time in the right place.

Americans in general are depending less on employers. No recent college graduate expects to spend his or her working life at one company, and participation in labor unions has dropped. Layoffs are commonplace, with part-time and contractual employment becoming common at every pay level.

Many corporations no longer offer pensions, leaving most Americans to manage their own retirements. Many older workers are voluntarily taking part-time work because the Affordable Care Act lets them buy their own health insurance and they'd rather have the free time, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Robots on the job

This transformation of how we work coincides with the rise of robotics and artificial intelligence. With machines performing routine tasks, companies will need fewer daily employees and will only hire humans on a freelance basis when their unique skills are required. Roberts predicts that only corporate hierarchies will be needed full time.

More than 1,800 tech industry experts, scholars and analysts surveyed by the nonprofit Pew Research Center agreed this change is coming, but opinions split evenly on whether people would do more interesting work and have more free time, or lose their jobs to machines and perform menial tasks for low wages.

"Automation is Voldemort: the terrifying force nobody is willing to name," wrote Jerry Michalski, founder of REX, the Relationship Economy eXpedition, in an answer to the survey. "We hardly dwell on the fact that someone trying to pick a career path that is not likely to be automated will have a very hard time making that choice."

The survey concluded that companies will always need people's creativity, judgment and problem-solving skills. Roberts said individuals will be responsible for making sure their skills are up to date and offered at competitive prices.

"It's up to me to try to find where can I add value, both in terms of what the market wants and what I'm interested in," Roberts said.

But it's not clear people are ready. Management consulting firm Accenture found in a poll that 63 percent of Texas job seekers didn't think they needed additional training, and most said they had turned down recent job offers because the pay wasn't high enough. That's likely a combination of workers overestimating their value and companies lowballing salary offers.

An astonishing 99 percent of Texas employers surveyed said government and educational institutions are not doing enough to train workers. But 49 percent acknowledged they'd never contacted one of these institutions to explain what they want.

The gumption to learn

The transition to a new economy that relies less on full-time employees and more on technology will bring pain to those who are replaced by machines and don't have the opportunity or the gumption to learn something new. It's also a clarion call for a public education system that prioritizes deductive reasoning and creative problem solving.

I've worked as a freelancer, and I know it's tougher than having a salaried job, but I enjoyed deciding when I worked and for whom. The signs are that freelancing is where the economy is headed and that's the world we, and our children, should prepare for.