Реферат: How telecommunication change the defenition of work.

Tomorrow

how modern telecommunication change the definition of work

In 1876 Alexander G. Bell created the thing that changed our world.
Changed again…

And it wasn't the last change in the modern history. Later in the XX
century the modulator-demodulator also known as modem was created and
really started the Telecommunications Age. First computers were
connected together and the Net started growing.

In the last 20 years the lifestyle changed very much. Cellular phones
and electronic mail changed the way we communicate, satellite TV and WWW
sites changed the way we get the news and on-line shops and junk e-mail
changed the way we buy products and do our business. Work, social life,
politics – the telecomms are coming everywhere, bringing freedom,
equality and productivity. Now I will try to go deeper into these
spheres.

Since the end of XIX century, when Marx wrote his famous book,
"Capital", the economic meaning of work has changed dramatically. For
Marx labour was nothing more but another resource like capital or land.

In XX century manager shows a bit more respect to employees. They are
now individuals, who need to develop themselves and should be treated
and motivated in right way.

XX century brought us a new idea: workers are paid for their time.
Later, in mid-sixties, it was thought that companies pay their employees
for their skills and personal qualities. Among those qualities were
creativity, company loyalty. For those companies that eventually
switched to new system, it became very difficult to properly measure
worker's contribution to company's results. These companies try to
increase workers morale, motivate them, because it is evident: if
workers don't want to work, they won't work. Or at least, the results
will be extremely poor. That's why in addition to motivation by money,
managers try to create a feeling of mutual trust, belonging to company
and common interests.

What new brings telework to this field? First it is ease of control and
measurement. Results in electronic form can be easily archived, analysed
by computers, forwarded for checking and copied. Next, all information
about time and efforts spent is available. Another thing is that fixed
time-based salaries are gone. The company will no longer care so about
who and how much spent on a task. This will become a question of
personal choice. Now everyone will be given a freedom to decide whether
to work or to have a rest. This can differentiate workaholics from
ordinary lazy people. Right now there are same rules for everybody.
Rarely a company wants to have a lot of part-time workers. We cannot
imagine a worker coming to factory when he is in the right mood. But
with distant jobs you can have workers switching every now and then. We
can even dream about perfect labour marketplace with contracts signed
electronically for several hours. The psychological problems of
switching jobs will be minimised. The retirement will no longer mean
break of social relations, because they aren't based on physical
presence in the company HQ or at the factory.

This system of personal freedom have the potential to eradicate
unemployment by allowing real-time communications and negotiation
between employers and employees, leading to equilibrium labor price.

If you can measure the result of an office work, you can evaluate if it
worth paying the money for result you get. Or the jobs are completely
useless and ineffective. This can lead to boost in productivity. In
telework usually people are paid for results, not for time. This
motivates them to get better results, thus increasing productivity
again! On the other hand, regardless of employee's results, the company
always gets what if pays for! Combined efforts of ten people can cost
the same for the company if they have the same effect. And now together
with perfect labour market we come to what Marx was talking about –
labour is just the same as machines or land. The motivation is the
problem of the person himself! And with a freedom of work choice
motivation is not the problem. With telework one can easily apply for
the job he likes and the company can review all candidates just
comparing the results of their work.

Thanks to the efforts of many people all over the world the Net commerce
and work is still not limited as their off-line counterparts. Zero taxes
attract more and more of the trade turnover. The Stock Exchange and
Currency Exchange systems already inculcated in the telecommunication
world. With decreased transaction costs, development of
telecommunications and computers the efficiency of these financial
spheres is quickly increasing.

Electronic auctions have already came to reality. On AOLtm auctions
there are 600 000 bids in different categories now. Surplus directtm and
tens other electronic auctions are now in the Internet. This is a dream
of classic economists – perfect market with all relevant information
freely available. With continuous decrease in transportation costs this
can make every market global and make competition perfect, stopping the
monopolies. One example is Microsofttm. Can we imagine that it will not
succeed in stopping alternative OSes and browsers several years ago,
without Internet? Free communications greatly increase the
competitiveness of any product. Most on-line shops can offer lower
prices for all products than their off-line colleagues can.

Distant work makes sexual and race discrimination very difficult and
almost impossible. How can you behave badly toward your colleague if you
only read his e-mails? How the program written by Chinese is worse than
the one written by French? And all harassment will be logged, documented
and backed up on a tape drive to be used in the Court.

Also it will provide new unique opportunities for unable people. Nobody
will knew about his inabilities and nobody will keep him away from the
job.

But the problem with results measuring still remains. How can we train
managers and change their minds in order to deal with telework? What I
think is that all internal relations need to be built on a completely
new basis. The basis of mutual respect and trust. How can "white
collars" remain superior over a worker if they are communicating over
the computer network? How superiority can survive in the environment
where both worker and manager have the same access to information? I am
sure this is impossible without personal pressure of managers. So, this
will surely lead to a democratisation in the work.

Next problem is that telework isn't as universal as we want. It isn't
possible for any job: for example, you won't agree with a distant
driving of your taxi in rush hour. The control is necessary when human
lives depends on the worker. And until we are not sure that
communications will be 100% error free, we cannot avoid physical
presence of worker. An example is distant control of an aircraft. Modern
aircrafts can take off and land without anybody on board, but human
pilots should be available for emergency case. Several pilots in the
airport could work for tens of aircrafts, helping them to take off and
land safely, then giving several hours of direct flight to a machine.
But the storm can terminate the communications and lead to human deaths
in non-controllable plane. This shows us how careful we need to be with
a new power that computers and communications give us.

In some areas we can't cope without live human being, but… The situation
changes. Right now the technologies are available that can change the
whole global economy. I mean telesales. This includes all TV
presentations, on-line stores, direct mailing. There was a bad idea of
paying too much attention to a customer. In the shop there is always a
sales manager, available for questions, but most time doing nothing. And
he cannot new everything about all the products he is supposed to sale.
The situation is different in a modern on-line store. All the
information about the product is available in clear form. This can be a
multimedia presentation, a chart, table or just a plain text. If
additional information is necessary, then the customer can initiate chat
session with a competent person, or ask for an e-mail response.
Minimised costs. Maximised convenience.

Other spheres of physical presence are special services, including
police and ambulance, rescuers and fire-fighters. All these jobs require
a trained strong and hardy person, physically presenting on the place.

Next problem is socialising. As we know, work is one of the most
important places together with family and school, where socialising
goes. In some countries this is the main place of social interaction and
the result work itself plays only secondary role. The contact is much
more important. In countries with strong traditions of corporativism
this is especially important. The person will be not able to identify
himself with appropriate social group.

Another problem is quite specific, but isn't less serious. Some American
physicians believe that obesity is a kind of epidemic in the US! Imagine
what can happen with Americans if telecommunication will replace
conventional lifestyle.

Telecommunications will make high-quality education accessible for
everybody. The costs for giving a virtual lecture to one student and one
thousand of students are equal. This unimaginable scale economy (and as
a result – marginal costs of zero) will greatly increase educational
level. The standards will be almost the same in all countries thus
making the workers worldwide more interchangeable. This will back up the
globalisation tendency. And strong arising competition from newly
educated people of third world will increase the desire to study among
American and European students.

To sum it up, I believe that next millennium will bring us to new
horizons of social, political and economical interaction in the virtual
world of modern telecommunicating. This tool offers us not only hope for
economic prosperity but also a possibility to participate more in the
community activities and decision-making in the political system. This
even makes possible the direct democracy, which was left in the times of
ancient Athens. Created by the scientists – the most intelligent and
advanced part of our society, Internet offers equality, freedom of
speech and unique possibilities for self-realisation.

Tomorrow

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Introduction

The concept of work

The drawbacks

Telework –

a new hope

Education

Conclusion