Have Work and Learning Changed or the Way We Do Work and Learning?

I'm struggling a bit with the question of whether what we need to do around Work and Learning has changed or is it only that the Context and the Methods have changed.

Let me try to explain the question and then I'm hoping I'll get a bit of help on answers.

I believe that the Context we do our Work and Learning is changing:

• Ever increasing pace of information creation
• Greater volume of information
• Improved accessibility of these large quantities of information
• Wider and more varied sources of information
  
• Larger numbers of people creating content
• Greater access to wider networks of people

and I believe that there are many new methods, skills, tools, knowledge around how to accomplish our work and learning (see Needed Skills for New Media).

However, when I look at what I do day-to-day and what other people do day-to-day as part of their work and learning, I don't see it as really being different. Basically, I see us:

• Staying generally knowledgeable on about my industry, my job skills, etc.
• Performing research tasks to figure out things (tacit knowledge work), e.g., what eLearning tools should I be using.
• Performing transactional information work where we get some piece of information and quickly do something with it, e.g., respond to email
  
• Acquire knowledge/skills in new domains
  

That would have been accurate for many years, right? So is there really anything changed about these core tasks? And what do you call this core part? Is there a really good description of these work and learning tasks?