Twenty-one years ago, Fortune boldly declared “The End of the JOB.” Thanks to rapid advances in technology, people had been freed from the tyranny of the nine-to-five workplace. Now they could set their own hours and schedules, do without constant oversight and supervision, and concentrate on a more powerful objective: not just “doing their jobs,” but finding better and more innovative ways of “doing what needs to be done.”

In today’s world, Uber Technologies Inc. stands as a perfect example of a “post-job” success story. It is now serving millions of hugely satisfied customers and providing part-time or full-time work for 200,000 active drivers in 311 cities around the world. Its app-based method of connecting users and providers of taxi service is the feather that has knocked a whole industry on its ear—an industry that had been doing the same things in the same way for three-quarters of a century.