>While I may be wrong, I suspect that the list members have, as a group,
>characteristics that would make them ill suited to copy clerk jobs. But
>we must be careful about rearranging the world so that all the jobs need
>to be filled by people like us... because all the people _aren't_ like us.
>
<stuff deleted>
>If we aren't careful there will be a few jobs for highly
>skilled,educated people... and some jobs requiring manual labor, but no
>"thinking"... and no jobs for the vast number of people who fall "in the
>middle", ability-wise.
>
Economically, in the US, the financial outcomes of the last decade
or so look exactly like this: there appear to be a fair number of jobs for
educated, professional & those NOT technophobic, with substantial pressure
on those who ARE technophobic and/or highly resistant to change in
routines. It is tough to see how a "factory of the future" that makes
extensive use of computers will be able to utilize an illiterate, yet this
was just the situation faced by a plant manager I talked to in Cleveland.
"Those guys used to be able to retrieve inventory 'cause they remembered
where they put it. Computerized inventory doesn't work that way, so the
illiterates haven't a clue . what do we do with them?" Same problem in
putting Statistical Process Control into factory production. And, of
course, these illiterates and innumerates were working in the dirty, hot,
dangerous (and well paying) jobs of basic manufacturing that are precisely
the focus of much computerization effort.
What seems humane (eliminate tough, hazardous jobs) and
economically imperative (computers in manufacturing are more precise, give
more reliable quality and efficiency) has personal consequences for
individuals who may not appreciate our high minded efforts because they
are thereby thrown out of work. My gripe is that we've known about this
for decades, yet our public education doesn't seem to acknowledge it: we
still produce illiterates and innumerates in large numbers. This problem
already exists, in massive array in every major US city and many minor
ones.
Sam
MXJELI@MAIL.WM.EDU
Mariann Jelinek
Richard C. Kraemer Professor of Business
Graduate School of Business,
College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, VA 23185
Tel. (804) 221-2882 FAX: (804) 229-6135