Will There Be a Job for Me in the New Information Age?

The Information Age may present difficulties for the captains of industry … By replacing more and more workers with machines, employers will eventually come up against the two economic Achilles’ heels of the Information Age. The first is a simple problem of supply and demand: If mass numbers of people are underemployed or unemployed, who’s going to buy the flood of products and services being churned out? The second Achilles’ heel for business – and one never talked about – is the effect on capital accumulation when vast numbers of employees are let go or hired on a temporary basis so that employers can avoid paying out benefits – especially pension fund benefits. As it turns out, pension funds, now worth more than $5 trillion in the United States alone, keep much of the capitalist system afloat.

Will There Be a Job for Me in the New Information Age?

Many of the disaffected white men who make up ultraright-wing organizations are high school or community college graduates with limited skills who are forced to compete for a diminishing number of agricultural, manufacturing, and service jobs … The new militants view the government and law enforcement agencies as the enemy. They see a grand conspiracy to deny them their basic freedoms and constitutional rights. And they are arming themselves for a revolution.

Will There Be a Job for Me in the New Information Age?

Even if thousands of new products come along, they are likely to be manufactured in near-workerless factories and marketed by near-virtual companies requiring ever-smaller, more highly skilled workforces. This steady decline of mass labor threatens to undermine the very foundation of the modern American state. For nearly 200 years, the heart of the social contract and the measure of individual human worth have centered on the value of each person’s labor. How does society even begin to adjust to a new era in which labor is devalued or even rendered worthless?

Will There Be a Job for Me in the New Information Age?

We are in the early stages of a shift from “mass labor” to highly skilled “elite labor,” accompanied by increasing automation in the production of goods and the delivery of services. Sophisticated computers, robots, telecommunications, and other Information Age technologies are replacing human beings in nearly every sector. Factory workers, secretaries, receptionists, clerical workers, salesclerks, bank tellers, telephone operators, librarians, wholesalers, and middle managers are just a few of the many occupations destined for virtual extinction. In the United States alone, as many as 90 million jobs in a labor force of 124 million are potentially vulnerable to displacement by automation.

Your “Private” Information May Be Public Property

A driver’s license is no longer just a document allowing you to drive a car. Computer-connected departments of motor vehicles, under the direction of state legislatures, have begun to use drivers’ licenses as instruments of social control and information sharing. In Wisconsin, a court can suspend a driver’s license for nonpayment of any fine, and that includes library fines … Is it ethical to restrict public information that is being re-massaged? In some cases, I would argue yes … Because technology typically outpaces debate on the social impact it is reasonable to ratchet up the effort to create and implement some new guidelines.

Are Hacker Break-ins Ethical?

No matter what laws are passed, and no matter how good security measures might become, they will not be enough for us to have completely secure systems. We also need to develop and act according to some shared ethical values. The members of society need to be educated so that they understand the importance of respecting the privacy and ownership of data. If locks and laws were all that kept people from robbing houses, there would be many more burglars than there are now; the shared mores about the sanctity of personal property are an important influence in the prevention of burglary. It is our duty as informed professionals to help extend those mores into the realm of computers.

Are Hacker Break-ins Ethical?

Too often, we view computers simply as machines and algorithms, and we do not perceive the serious ethical questions inherent in their use … Computers are used to design, analyze, support, and control applications that protect and guide the lives and finances of people. Our use (and misuse) of computing systems may have effects beyond our wildest imagining. Thus, we must reconsider our attitudes about acts demonstrating a lack of respect for the rights and privacy of other people’s computers and data. We must also consider what our attitudes will be toward future security problems. In particular, we should consider the effects of widely publishing the source code for worms, viruses, and other threats to security.

Are Hacker Break-ins Ethical?

Many hackers argue that they follow an ethic that both guides their behavior and justifies their break-ins. This hacker ethic states, in part, that all information should be free. This view holds that information belongs to everyone and there should be no boundaries or restraints … If all information were to be freely available and modifiable, imagine how much damage and chaos would be caused in our real world! Our whole society is based on information whose accuracy must be assured. This includes information held by banks and other financial institutions, credit bureaus, medical agencies and professionals, government agencies such as the IRS, law enforcement agencies, and educational institutions. Clearly, treating all their information as “free” would be unethical in any world where there might be careless and unethical individuals.

Information Technologies Could Threaten Privacy, Freedom, and Democracy

Advocates of electronic democracy fail to see the difference between the inundation of information and reflective political exchange. And computer advocates fail to see the broader issues of manipulation and loss of political accountability as problems; to them, the technology appears to enhance individual choice.