I thought some of you folks might be interested in my first contribution to the ILO/World Bank's ICT-JOBS panel... You will note the heavy FW influence on what I've presented... Mikeg ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Tue, 19 May 1998 12:26:15 -0300 (ADT) From: Michael Gurstein <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: ICT-JOBS -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: ICT & Jobs: Creator or Destroyer [I'm Mike Gurstein...Director of the Centre for Community and Enterprise Networking of the University College of Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, Canada <http://ccen.uccb.ns.ca>] ------------------------- ICT & Jobs: Creator or Destroyer The issue whether ICT is a creator or destroyer of jobs is somewhat clearer as "prediction" than in reality. The logic of the discussion is that ICT is being introduced to make work more efficient. More efficient work means more production with fewer jobs, therefore ICT should logically be feared as a net job destroyer. In practise the situation is much more complex. ICT has created new services, and arguably new goods. An example is electronic mail which not only replaces conventional mail but through its ease and effectiveness is becoming a new communications medium...something new or is it a "destroyer" of an existing service? Well "yes" and "no". The same service (message delivery) was of course, available in conventional form (mail, telephone) but the electronic version provides the opportunity for such a massive increase in message quantity AND quality (file attachments, audio, video etc.) that conventional means with whatever increase in employment in the sector could never have coped. E-mail doesn't just replace conventional mail (or telephone calling) it is a totally new form of communications service and while the volume of other types of message communication may be decreasing it is likely that the massive net increase in overall message communication is such as to either directly or indirectly lead to an overall increase (though massive redeployment) in employment associated with message "carriage". It is likely that we will begin to see similar developments in the area of electronic commerce and we are already beginning to see this emerge in the area of GIS/GPS. Meanwhile of course, the deployment from mail handling to electronic messaging leads to job disruption and there is no easy transition path from employment in one to the other and so on and so on. This process of quantity of ICT-use morphing into qualitatively new activities/services/products was not foreseen in the earlier "end of work through ICT" analyses. The result of this development in my country Canada, and in the US is that rates of joblessness appear to be going down overall and in the areas specifically linked to ICT--software development and services, there is reportedly a net North American employee shortage in the hundreds of thousands. It has reached the point where various political figures (Clinton/Chretien) have referred to this as an "employment crisis" and are taking steps to respond by for example, opening up immigration quotas. However, while unemployment numbers are dropping in the high technology and commercial/administrative centres, my own region of Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia continues to experience very high unemployment (in the 20-30% range officially and at least 10% higher unofficially--based on much lower local than national participation rates). This is accompanied by continuous and even accelerating out-migration (.5-1% a year) and precisely in the most productive age categories (17-35). Thus the high technology "boom" is selective in its impact. In fact, ourselves and (based on anecdotal information) other similar peripheral regions (I like to call them lagging regions in leading economies--LRLE's) appear to be suffering precisely the type of "end of work" phenomenon which was so widely discussed in the early 80s and then again in the early 90s... The banks and utilities are closing up their local branches and centralizing operations in regional centres; the public sector is going through similar consolidations and administrative centralization as it cuts back on services such as schools, hospitals and social services; retail distribution is being rationalized/centralized away from the periphery and so on. All of this is being facilitated and accelerated as a more or less direct consequence of the capacity to manage and process information from a distance, through ICT. The alternative promise of ICT--that work could be done from anywhere--rather than a solution for peripheral regions such as ours, appears to be precisely the problem, in that if it can be done from anywhere why would it be done from the periphery. The few enterprises which counter this trend (at least locally) are idiosyncratic and either have very shallow root structures (those attracted by massive government incentives or local life-style amenities) or are undercapitalized and lacking the supportive infrastructure for success (those which are home-grown). Certainly there are opportunities for us in being able to work from anywhere (and I'll describe some of our own experiences with this in subsequent posts), but the realization of these opportunities requires a depth of bureaucratic imagination and political will (and understanding) which regrettably is lacking in these days of market mania. Even with our dramatically lower overhead costs, significantly lower labour costs, and lifestyle amenities it appears to require an unachievable level of political/bureaucratic effort and leadership to ensure any redistribution of ICT oriented employment opportunities beyond the limits of existing or emerging metropolitan catchment areas. Mike Gurstein Michael Gurstein, Ph.D. ECBC/NSERC/SSHRC Associate Chair in the Management of Technological Change Director: Centre for Community and Enterprise Networking (C\CEN) University College of Cape Breton, POBox 5300, Sydney, NS, CANADA B1P 6L2 Tel. 902-563-1369 (o) 902-562-1055 (h) 902-563-1336 (fax) [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://ccen.uccb.ns.ca
