TECH WRECKS MIDDLE CLASS

How Technology Wrecks the Middle Class
By DAVID H. AUTOR AND DAVID DORN
August 24, 2013 2:35 pm
Robot arms welded a vehicle on the assembly line at a General
Motors plant in Lansing, Mich., in 2010.Credit Bill
Pugliano/Getty Images
In the four years since the Great Recession officially ended, the
productivity of American workers — those
lucky enough to have jobs — has risen smartly. But the United
States still has two million fewer jobs than
before the downturn, the unemployment rate is stuck at levels
not seen since the early 1990s and the proportion
of adults who are working is four percentage points off its peak
in 2000.
This job drought has spurred pundits to wonder whether a
profound employment sickness has overtaken us.
And from there, it’s only a short leap to ask whether that illness

isn’t productivity itself. Have we mechanized
and computerized ourselves into obsolescence?
Are we in danger of losing the “race against the machine,” as
the M.I.T. scholars Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew
McAfee argue in a recent book? Are we becoming enslaved to
our “robot overlords,” as the journalist Kevin
Drum warned in Mother Jones? Do “smart machines” threaten
us with “long-term misery,” as the economists
Jeffrey D. Sachs and Laurence J. Kotlikoff prophesied earlier
this year? Have we reached “the end of labor,” as
Noah Smith laments in The Atlantic?
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/author/david-h-autor-and-
david-dorn/
http://digital.mit.edu/erik/
http://andrewmcafee.org/
http://www.motherjones.com/media/2013/05/robots-artificial-
intelligence-jobs-automation
http://www.nber.org/papers/w18629
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/01/the-end-
of-labor-how-to-protect-workers-from-the-rise-of-
robots/267135/
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/?module=BlogMain&actio
n=Click&region=Header&pgtype=Blogs&version=Blog%20Post
&contentCollection=Opinion
Of course, anxiety, and even hysteria, about the adverse effects
of technological change on employment have a

venerable history. In the early 19th century a group of English
textile artisans calling themselves the Luddites
staged a machine-trashing rebellion. Their brashness earned
them a place (rarely positive) in the lexicon, but
they had legitimate reasons for concern.
Economists have historically rejected what we call the “lump of
labor” fallacy: the supposition that an increase
in labor productivity inevitably reduces employment because
there is only a finite amount of work to do. While
intuitively appealing, this idea is demonstrably false. In 1900,
for example, 41 percent of the United States work
force was in agriculture. By 2000, that share had fallen to 2
percent, after the Green Revolution transformed
crop yields. But the employment-to-population ratio rose over
the 20th century as women moved from home to
market, and the unemployment rate fluctuated cyclically, with
no long-term increase.
Labor-saving technological change necessarily displaces
workers performing certain tasks — that’s where the
gains in productivity come from — but over the long run, it
generates new products and services that raise
national income and increase the overall demand for labor. In
1900, no one could foresee that a century later,

health care, finance, information technology, consumer
electronics, hospitality, leisure and entertainment would
employ far more workers than agriculture. Of course, as
societies grow more prosperous, citizens often choose
to work shorter days, take longer vacations and retire earlier —
but that too is progress.
So if technological advances don’t threaten employment, does
that mean workers have nothing to fear from
“smart machines”? Actually, no — and here’s where the
Luddites had a point. Although many 19th-century
Britons benefited from the introduction of newer and better
automated looms — unskilled laborers were hired
as loom operators, and a growing middle class could now afford
mass-produced fabrics — it’s unlikely that
skilled textile workers benefited on the whole.
Fast-forward to the present. The multi-trillionfold decline in the
cost of computing since the 1970s has created
enormous incentives for employers to substitute increasingly
cheap and capable computers for expensive labor.
These rapid advances — which confront us daily as we check in
at airports, order books online, pay bills on our
banks’ Web sites or consult our smartphones for driving
directions — have reawakened fears that workers will
be displaced by machinery. Will this time be different?

A starting point for discussion is the observation that although
computers are ubiquitous, they cannot do
everything. A computer’s ability to accomplish a task quickly
and cheaply depends upon a human
programmer’s ability to write procedures or rules that direct the
machine to take the correct steps at each
contingency. Computers excel at “routine” tasks: organizing,
storing, retrieving and manipulating information,
or executing exactly defined physical movements in production
processes. These tasks are most pervasive in
middle-skill jobs like bookkeeping, clerical work and repetitive
production and quality-assurance jobs.
Logically, computerization has reduced the demand for these
jobs, but it has boosted demand for workers who
perform “nonroutine” tasks that complement the automated
activities. Those tasks happen to lie on opposite
ends of the occupational skill distribution.
At one end are so-called abstract tasks that require problem-
solving, intuition, persuasion and creativity. These
tasks are characteristic of professional, managerial, technical
and creative occupations, like law, medicine,
science, engineering, advertising and design. People in these
jobs typically have high levels of education and

analytical capability, and they benefit from computers that
facilitate the transmission, organization and
processing of information.
On the other end are so-called manual tasks, which require
situational adaptability, visual and language
recognition, and in-person interaction. Preparing a meal, driving
a truck through city traffic or cleaning a hotel
room present mind-bogglingly complex challenges for
computers. But they are straightforward for humans,
requiring primarily innate abilities like dexterity, sightedness
and language recognition, as well as modest
training. These workers can’t be replaced by robots, but their
skills are not scarce, so they usually make low
wages.
Computerization has therefore fostered a polarization of
employment, with job growth concentrated in both the
highest- and lowest-paid occupations, while jobs in the middle
have declined. Surprisingly, overall employment
rates have largely been unaffected in states and cities
undergoing this rapid polarization. Rather, as employment
in routine jobs has ebbed, employment has risen both in high-
wage managerial, professional and technical

occupations and in low-wage, in-person service occupations.
So computerization is not reducing the quantity of jobs, but
rather degrading the quality of jobs for a significant
subset of workers. Demand for highly educated workers who
excel in abstract tasks is robust, but the middle of
the labor market, where the routine task-intensive jobs lie, is
sagging. Workers without college education
therefore concentrate in manual task-intensive jobs — like food
services, cleaning and security — which are
numerous but offer low wages, precarious job security and few
prospects for upward mobility. This bifurcation
of job opportunities has contributed to the historic rise in
income inequality.
HOW can we help workers ride the wave of technological
change rather than be swamped by it? One common
recommendation is that citizens should invest more in their
education. Spurred by growing demand for workers
performing abstract job tasks, the payoff for college and
professional degrees has soared; despite its formidable
price tag, higher education has perhaps never been a better
investment. But it is far from a comprehensive
solution to our labor market problems. Not all high school
graduates — let alone displaced mid- and late-career
workers — are academically or temperamentally prepared to

pursue a four-year college degree. Only 40 percent
of Americans enroll in a four-year college after graduating from
high school, and more than 30 percent of those
who enroll do not complete the degree within eight years.
The good news, however, is that middle-education, middle-wage
jobs are not slated to disappear completely.
While many middle-skill jobs are susceptible to automation,
others demand a mixture of tasks that take
advantage of human flexibility. To take one prominent example,
medical paraprofessional jobs — radiology
technician, phlebotomist, nurse technician — are a rapidly
growing category of relatively well-paid, middle-
skill occupations. While these paraprofessions do not typically
require a four-year college degree, they do
demand some postsecondary vocational training.
These middle-skill jobs will persist, and potentially grow,
because they involve tasks that cannot readily be
unbundled without a substantial drop in quality. Consider, for
example, the frustration of calling a software firm
for technical support, only to discover that the technician knows
nothing more than the standard answers shown
on his or her computer screen — that is, the technician is a
mouthpiece reading from a script, not a problem-

solver. This is not generally a productive form of work
organization because it fails to harness the
complementarities between technical and interpersonal skills.
Simply put, the quality of a service within any
occupation will improve when a worker combines routine
(technical) and nonroutine (flexible) tasks.
Following this logic, we predict that the middle-skill jobs that
survive will combine routine technical tasks with
abstract and manual tasks in which workers have a comparative
advantage — interpersonal interaction,
adaptability and problem-solving. Along with medical
paraprofessionals, this category includes numerous jobs
for people in the skilled trades and repair: plumbers; builders;
electricians; heating, ventilation and air-
conditioning installers; automotive technicians; customer-
service representatives; and even clerical workers
who are required to do more than type and file. Indeed, even as
formerly middle-skill occupations are being
“deskilled,” or stripped of their routine technical tasks
(brokering stocks, for example), other formerly high-end
occupations are becoming accessible to workers with less
esoteric technical mastery (for example, the work of
the nurse practitioner, who increasingly diagnoses illness and
prescribes drugs in lieu of a physician). Lawrence

F. Katz, a labor economist at Harvard, memorably called those
who fruitfully combine the foundational skills of
a high school education with specific vocational skills the “new
artisans.”
The outlook for workers who haven’t finished college is
uncertain, but not devoid of hope. There will be job
opportunities in middle-skill jobs, but not in the traditional
blue-collar production and white-collar office jobs of
the past. Rather, we expect to see growing employment among
the ranks of the “new artisans”: licensed
practical nurses and medical assistants; teachers, tutors and
learning guides at all educational levels; kitchen
designers, construction supervisors and skilled tradespeople of
every variety; expert repair and support
technicians; and the many people who offer personal training
and assistance, like physical therapists, personal
trainers, coaches and guides. These workers will adeptly
combine technical skills with interpersonal interaction,
flexibility and adaptability to offer services that are uniquely
human.
David H. Autor is a professor of economics at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. David Dorn is an

assistant professor of economics at the Center for Monetary and
Financial Studies in Madrid.
How Technology Wrecks the Middle Class
By DAVID H. AUTOR AND DAVID DORN
August 24, 2013 2:35 pm
Robot arms welded a vehicle on the assembly line at a General
Motors plant in Lansing, Mich., in 2010.Credit Bill
Pugliano/Getty Images
In the four years since the Great Recession officially ended, the
productivity of American workers — those
lucky enough to have jobs — has risen smartly. But the United
States still has two million fewer jobs than
before the downturn, the unemployment rate is stuck at levels
not seen since the early 1990s and the proportion
of adults who are working is four percentage points off its peak
in 2000.

This job drought has spurred pundits to wonder whether a
profound employment sickness has overtaken us.
And from there, it’s only a short leap to ask whether that illness
isn’t productivity itself. Have we mechanized
and computerized ourselves into obsolescence?
Are we in danger of losing the “race against the machine,” as
the M.I.T. scholars Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew
McAfee argue in a recent book? Are we becoming enslaved to
our “robot overlords,” as the journalist Kevin
Drum warned in Mother Jones? Do “smart machines” threaten
us with “long-term misery,” as the economists
Jeffrey D. Sachs and Laurence J. Kotlikoff prophesied earlier
this year? Have we reached “the end of labor,” as
Noah Smith laments in The Atlantic?
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/author/david-h-autor-and-
david-dorn/
http://digital.mit.edu/erik/
http://www.motherjones.com/media/2013/05/robots-artificial-
intelligence-jobs-automation
http://www.nber.org/papers/w18629
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/01/the-end-
of-labor-how-to-protect-workers-from-the-rise-of-
robots/267135/
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/?module=BlogMain&actio
n=Click&region=Header&pgtype=Blogs&version=Blog%20Post
&contentCollection=Opinion

Of course, anxiety, and even hysteria, about the adverse effects
of technological change on employment have a
venerable history. In the early 19th century a group of English
textile artisans calling themselves the Luddites
staged a machine-trashing rebellion. Their brashness earned
them a place (rarely positive) in the lexicon, but
they had legitimate reasons for concern.
Economists have historically rejected what we call the “lump of
labor” fallacy: the supposition that an increase
in labor productivity inevitably reduces employment because
there is only a finite amount of work to do. While
intuitively appealing, this idea is demonstrably false. In 1900,
for example, 41 percent of the United States work
force was in agriculture. By 2000, that share had fallen to 2
percent, after the Green Revolution transformed
crop yields. But the employment-to-population ratio rose over
the 20th century as women moved from home to
market, and the unemployment rate fluctuated cyclically, with
no long-term increase.
Labor-saving technological change necessarily displaces
workers performing certain tasks — that’s where the
gains in productivity come from — but over the long run, it
generates new products and services that raise

national income and increase the overall demand for labor. In
1900, no one could foresee that a century later,
health care, finance, information technology, consumer
electronics, hospitality, leisure and entertainment would
employ far more workers than agriculture. Of course, as
societies grow more prosperous, citizens often choose
to work shorter days, take longer vacations and retire earlier —
but that too is progress.
So if technological advances don’t threaten employment, does
that mean workers have nothing to fear from
“smart machines”? Actually, no — and here’s where the
Luddites had a point. Although many 19th-century
Britons benefited from the introduction of newer and better
automated looms — unskilled laborers were hired
as loom operators, and a growing middle class could now afford
mass-produced fabrics — it’s unlikely that
skilled textile workers benefited on the whole.
Fast-forward to the present. The multi-trillionfold decline in the
cost of computing since the 1970s has created
enormous incentives for employers to substitute increasingly
cheap and capable computers for expensive labor.
These rapid advances — which confront us daily as we check in
at airports, order books online, pay bills on our

banks’ Web sites or consult our smartphones for driving
directions — have reawakened fears that workers will
be displaced by machinery. Will this time be different?
A starting point for discussion is the observation that although
computers are ubiquitous, they cannot do
everything. A computer’s ability to accomplish a task quickly
and cheaply depends upon a human
programmer’s ability to write procedures or rules that direct the
machine to take the correct steps at each
contingency. Computers excel at “routine” tasks: organizing,
storing, retrieving and manipulating information,
or executing exactly defined physical movements in production
processes. These tasks are most pervasive in
middle-skill jobs like bookkeeping, clerical work and repetitive
production and quality-assurance jobs.
Logically, computerization has reduced the demand for these
jobs, but it has boosted demand for workers who
perform “nonroutine” tasks that complement the automated
activities. Those tasks happen to lie on opposite
ends of the occupational skill distribution.
At one end are so-called abstract tasks that require problem-
solving, intuition, persuasion and creativity. These
tasks are characteristic of professional, managerial, technical
and creative occupations, like law, medicine,

science, engineering, advertising and design. People in these
jobs typically have high levels of education and
analytical capability, and they benefit from computers that
facilitate the transmission, organization and
processing of information.
On the other end are so-called manual tasks, which require
situational adaptability, visual and language
recognition, and in-person interaction. Preparing a meal, driving
a truck through city traffic or cleaning a hotel
room present mind-bogglingly complex challenges for
computers. But they are straightforward for humans,
requiring primarily innate abilities like dexterity, sightedness
and language recognition, as well as modest
training. These workers can’t be replaced by robots, but their
skills are not scarce, so they usually make low
wages.
Computerization has therefore fostered a polarization of
employment, with job growth concentrated in both the
highest- and lowest-paid occupations, while jobs in the middle
have declined. Surprisingly, overall employment
rates have largely been unaffected in states and cities
undergoing this rapid polarization. Rather, as employment

in routine jobs has ebbed, employment has risen both in high-
wage managerial, professional and technical
occupations and in low-wage, in-person service occupations.
So computerization is not reducing the quantity of jobs, but
rather degrading the quality of jobs for a significant
subset of workers. Demand for highly educated workers who
excel in abstract tasks is robust, but the middle of
the labor market, where the routine task-intensive jobs lie, is
sagging. Workers without college education
therefore concentrate in manual task-intensive jobs — like food
services, cleaning and security — which are
numerous but offer low wages, precarious job security and few
prospects for upward mobility. This bifurcation
of job opportunities has contributed to the historic rise in
income inequality.
HOW can we help workers ride the wave of technological
change rather than be swamped by it? One common
recommendation is that citizens should invest more in their
education. Spurred by growing demand for workers
performing abstract job tasks, the payoff for college and
professional degrees has soared; despite its formidable
price tag, higher education has perhaps never been a better
investment. But it is far from a comprehensive

solution to our labor market problems. Not all high school
graduates — let alone displaced mid- and late-career
workers — are academically or temperamentally prepared to
pursue a four-year college degree. Only 40 percent
of Americans enroll in a four-year college after graduating from
high school, and more than 30 percent of those
who enroll do not complete the degree within eight years.
The good news, however, is that middle-education, middle-wage
jobs are not slated to disappear completely.
While many middle-skill jobs are susceptible to automation,
others demand a mixture of tasks that take
advantage of human flexibility. To take one prominent example,
medical paraprofessional jobs — radiology
technician, phlebotomist, nurse technician — are a rapidly
growing category of relatively well-paid, middle-
skill occupations. While these paraprofessions do not typically
require a four-year college degree, they do
demand some postsecondary vocational training.
These middle-skill jobs will persist, and potentially grow,
because they involve tasks that cannot readily be
unbundled without a substantial drop in quality. Consider, for
example, the frustration of calling a software firm
for technical support, only to discover that the technician knows
nothing more than the standard answers shown

on his or her computer screen — that is, the technician is a
mouthpiece reading from a script, not a problem-
solver. This is not generally a productive form of work
organization because it fails to harness the
complementarities between technical and interpersonal skills.
Simply put, the quality of a service within any
occupation will improve when a worker combines routine
(technical) and nonroutine (flexible) tasks.
Following this logic, we predict that the middle-skill jobs that
survive will combine routine technical tasks with
abstract and manual tasks in which workers have a comparative
advantage — interpersonal interaction,
adaptability and problem-solving. Along with medical
paraprofessionals, this category includes numerous jobs
for people in the skilled trades and repair: plumbers; builders;
electricians; heating, ventilation and air-
conditioning installers; automotive technicians; customer-
service representatives; and even clerical workers
who are required to do more than type and file. Indeed, even as
formerly middle-skill occupations are being
“deskilled,” or stripped of their routine technical tasks
(brokering stocks, for example), other formerly high-end
occupations are becoming accessible to workers with less
esoteric technical mastery (for example, the work of

the nurse practitioner, who increasingly diagnoses illness and
prescribes drugs in lieu of a physician). Lawrence
F. Katz, a labor economist at Harvard, memorably called those
who fruitfully combine the foundational skills of
a high school education with specific vocational skills the “new
artisans.”
The outlook for workers who haven’t finished college is
uncertain, but not devoid of hope. There will be job
opportunities in middle-skill jobs, but not in the traditional
blue-collar production and white-collar office jobs of
the past. Rather, we expect to see growing employment among
the ranks of the “new artisans”: licensed
practical nurses and medical assistants; teachers, tutors and
learning guides at all educational levels; kitchen
designers, construction supervisors and skilled tradespeople of
every variety; expert repair and support
technicians; and the many people who offer personal training
and assistance, like physical therapists, personal
trainers, coaches and guides. These workers will adeptly
combine technical skills with interpersonal interaction,
flexibility and adaptability to offer services that are uniquely
human.

David H. Autor is a professor of economics at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. David Dorn is an
assistant professor of economics at the Center for Monetary and
Financial Studies in Madrid.
Greg Satell Contributor
6/08/2013 @ 8:11AM
How Technology Is Changing The Way
Organizations Learn
People used to be valued for knowing a trade. Then came the
industrial revolution and
those skills became devalued. Machines took over physical
labor and most people
either did simple, repetitive tasks or managed those who did.
By the late 20th century, a knowledge economy began to take
hold. Workers became
valued not for their labor, but for specialized knowledge, much
of which was inscrutable
to their superiors. Successful enterprises became learning
organizations.
Now, we are entering a new industrial revolution and machines
are starting to take over

cognitive tasks as well. Therefore, much like in the first
industrial revolution, the role of
humans is again being rapidly redefined. Organizations will
have to change the way that
they learn and managers’ primary task will be to design the
curricula.
First Principles vs. Experience
Knowledge, strangely enough, has been a source of fierce
debate for over two thousand years, beginning with a
disagreement between Plato and his most famous student,
Aristotle.
Plato believed in ideal forms. To him, true knowledge consisted
of familiarity with those forms and virtue (which, in a
modern terms would have been closer to ability than to
morality) was a matter of actualizing those forms in everyday
life. Plato would have felt comfortable as a factory manager
whose workers carried out instructions to the tee.
Aristotle, on the other hand, believed in empirical knowledge,
which you gain from experience. In contrast to Plato,
we can imagine Aristotle as a Six Sigma black belt, constantly
analyzing data in order to come up with a better way
of doing things.
Both methods, the indoctrination of principles and the
collection of data have played a role in learning organizations.
The difference now is that much of the learning is being taken
over by machines.
How Machines Are Learning To Take Over
Not so long ago, we depended on human knowledge for many
things, such as setting up travel itineraries, trading
financial instruments and buying media that are highly
automated today. As we progress, new areas, such as

making medical diagnoses, legal discovery and even creative
output are becoming mediated by computers.
Perhaps not surprisingly, the algorithms blend Platonic and
Aristotelian approaches just like humans do. Initially,
their thinking is driven by time honored principles supplied by
human experts (sometimes called “God parameters”).
Then, as more information comes in, the computer begins to
learn from its own mistakes, getting better and better at
its task.
This process continues at accelerating speeds. Much like the
rise of the knowledge economy empowered
knowledge workers, because they had expertise that their bosses
didn’t, computers are now coming up with
answers that knowledge workers themselves can’t understand.
That will prove incredibly disruptive in the years to
come.
It also presents a particularly thorny problem: How can
organizations empower employees whose skills are being
outsourced to the cloud?
http://www.forbes.com/sites/gregsatell/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_economy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learning_organization
http://www.digitaltonto.com/2012/the-new-industrial-
revolution/
http://www.digitaltonto.com/2013/how-the-machines-are-
learning-to-take-over/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_Forms
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empiricism
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/04/health/quest-to-eliminate-
diagnostic-lapses.html?pagewanted=all

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/05/science/05legal.html
http://www.digitaltonto.com/2012/creative-intelligence/
http://www.digitaltonto.com/2012/the-new-new-economy-of-
accelerating-returns/
http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2013/02/
will_computers_eventually_make_scientific_discoveries_we_ca
n_t_comprehend.2.html
http://www.forbes.com/
Consequences of An Algorithmic Age
Just as the first industrial revolution transformed business and
society, this new algorithmic age will bring not just
efficiency, but significant, cultural changes. While the future is
uncertain, some of the shifts are already becoming
apparent:
Bayesian Strategy: The knowledge economy coincided with the
rising influence of business strategists. Highly
trained executives would analyze business conditions and devise
intricate plans for the future. Managerial
performance, therefore, was widely evaluated as a function of
their ability to “execute the plan.”
However, good strategy is becoming less visionary and more
Bayesian. Strategic plans will play a similar role to
“God parameters” that will be honed through an evolutionary
process of simulation and feedback. Strategists, to a
great extent, will become hackers rather than planners.
Brands as Open API’s: One little noted consequence of the
knowledge economy is the rise of intangible value,
which often far exceeds tangible assets in corporations. Brands,

therefore, became tightly controlled assets that
were nurtured and protected.
That’s beginning to change as brands are becoming platforms
for collaboration rather than assets to be leveraged.
Marketers who used to jealously guard their brands are now
aggressively courting outside developers with
Application Programming Interfaces (API’s) and Software
Development Kits (SDK’s). Our economy is increasingly
becoming a semantic economy.
Firms ranging from Microsoft to Nike to The New York Times
have also created accelerator programs, where young
companies get financial, managerial and technical support to
come up with new innovations (and potentially,
enhance the business of their benefactors).
The Human Touch: While much of the discussion about the
rising tide of technology focuses on cognitive skills,
Richard Florida argues that social skills will be just as
important. Many of the fastest growing professions are those
which emphasize personal contact.
As computers take over more of the work, the role of humans
will increasingly focus on caring for other humans.
Flying By Wire
Pilots don’t fly planes anymore, not really. Whereas they used
to have direct control over the aircraft, now they fly by
wire. Today, their instruments connect not to the airplane’s
mechanism, but to computers which carry out their
commands, modulated by the collective intelligence gained from
millions of similar flights.
In essense, pilots perform three roles: they direct intent (where
to go, how fast, when to change course), manage

knowledge and (rarely) take over during emergencies.
Professionals in other industries will have to learn to perform
their jobs in a similar way.
The function of organizations in the industrial age was to direct
work. The function of organizations in the algorithmic
age will be to focus passion and purpose.
Managers, rather than focusing on building skills to recognize
patterns and take action, will need to focus on
designing the curricula, to direct which patterns computers
should focus on learning and to what ends their actions
should serve.
http://www.digitaltonto.com/2013/bayesian-strategy/
http://www.digitaltonto.com/2013/the-simulation-economy/
http://www.digitaltonto.com/2012/the-hacker-way/
http://www.digitaltonto.com/2012/7-principles-of-marketing/
http://www.digitaltonto.com/2012/the-brands-new-open-
architecture/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Application_programming_interfac
e
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_development_kit
http://www.digitaltonto.com/2012/the-semantic-economy/
http://www.15inno.com/2013/03/21/kinect-2/
http://nikeinc.com/news/nike-accelerator-companies-announced
http://www.nytimes.com/timespace/
http://chronicle.com/article/Robots-Arent-the-Problem-/138007/
http://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_table_103.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fly-by-wire
http://www.digitaltonto.com/2012/the-evolution-of-intelligence/
http://www.digitaltonto.com/2010/the-passion-economy/

The American Prospect ,Volume 13, Issue 1. January 1, 2002 -
January 14, 2002.
How to Judge Globalism
Amartya Sen
Globalization is often seen as global Westernization. On this
point, there is substantial
agreement among many proponents and opponents. Those who
take an upbeat view of
globalization see it as a marvelous contribution of Western
civilization to the world.
There is a nicely stylized history in which the great
developments happened in
Europe: First came the Renaissance, then the Enlightenment and
the Industrial
Revolution, and these led to a massive increase in living
standards in the West. And
now the great achievements of the West are spreading to the
world. In this view,
globalization is not only good, it is also a gift from the West to
the world. The
champions of this reading of history tend to feel upset not just
because this great
benefaction is seen as a curse but also because it is undervalued
and castigated by an
ungrateful world.
From the opposite perspective, Western dominance--sometimes
seen as a continuation
of Western imperialism--is the devil of the piece. In this view,
contemporary
capitalism, driven and led by greedy and grabby Western
countries in Europe and

North America, has established rules of trade and business
relations that do not serve
the interests of the poorer people in the world. The celebration
of various non-
Western identities--defined by religion (as in Islamic
fundamentalism), region (as in
the championing of Asian values), or culture (as in the
glorification of Confucian
ethics)--can add fuel to the fire of confrontation with the West.
Is globalization really a new Western curse? It is, in fact,
neither new nor necessarily
Western; and it is not a curse. Over thousands of years,
globalization has contributed
to the progress of the world through travel, trade, migration,
spread of cultural
influences, and dissemination of knowledge and understanding
(including that of
science and technology). These global interrelations have often
been very productive
in the advancement of different countries. They have not
necessarily taken the form of
increased Western influence. Indeed, the active agents of
globalization have often
been located far from the West.
To illustrate, consider the world at the beginning of the last
millennium rather than at
its end. Around 1000 A.D., global reach of science, technology,
and mathematics was
changing the nature of the old world, but the dissemination then
was, to a great extent,
in the opposite direction of what we see today. The high
technology in the world of
1000 A.D. included paper, the printing press, the crossbow,
gunpowder, the iron-

chain suspension bridge, the kite, the magnetic compass, the
wheelbarrow, and the
rotary fan. A millennium ago, these items were used extensively
in China--and were
practically unknown elsewhere. Globalization spread them
across the world, including
Europe.
A similar movement occurred in the Eastern influence on
Western mathematics. The
decimal system emerged and became well developed in India
between the second and
sixth centuries; it was used by Arab mathematicians soon
thereafter. These
mathematical innovations reached Europe mainly in the last
quarter of the tenth
century and began having an impact in the early years of the
last millennium, playing
an important part in the scientific revolution that helped to
transform Europe. The
agents of globalization are neither European nor exclusively
Western, nor are they
necessarily linked to Western dominance. Indeed, Europe would
have been a lot
poorer--economically, culturally, and scientifically--had it
resisted the globalization of
mathematics, science, and technology at that time. And today,
the same principle
applies, though in the reverse direction (from West to East). To
reject the
globalization of science and technology because it represents
Western influence and
imperialism would not only amount to overlooking global

contributions--drawn from
many different parts of the world--that lie solidly behind so-
called Western science
and technology, but would also be quite a daft practical
decision, given the extent to
which the whole world can benefit from the process.
A Global Heritage
In resisting the diagnosis of globalization as a phenomenon of
quintessentially
Western origin, we have to be suspicious not only of the anti-
Western rhetoric but
also of the pro-Western chauvinism in many contemporary
writings. Certainly, the
Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and the Industrial Revolution
were great
achievements--and they occurred mainly in Europe and, later, in
America. Yet many
of these developments drew on the experience of the rest of the
world, rather than
being confined within the boundaries of a discrete Western
civilization.
Our global civilization is a world heritage--not just a collection
of disparate local
cultures. When a modern mathematician in Boston invokes an
algorithm to solve a
difficult computational problem, she may not be aware that she
is helping to
commemorate the Arab mathematician Mohammad Ibn Musa-al-
Khwarizmi, who
flourished in the first half of the ninth century. (The word
algorithm is derived from
the name al-Khwarizmi.) There is a chain of intellectual
relations that link Western

mathematics and science to a collection of distinctly non-
Western practitioners, of
whom al-Khwarizmi was one. (The term algebra is derived from
the title of his
famous book Al-Jabr wa-al-Muqabilah.) Indeed, al-Khwarizmi
is one of many non-
Western contributors whose works influenced the European
Renaissance and, later,
the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution. The West must
get full credit for the
remarkable achievements that occurred in Europe and
Europeanized America, but the
idea of an immaculate Western conception is an imaginative
fantasy.
Not only is the progress of global science and technology not an
exclusively West- led
phenomenon, but there were major global developments in
which the West was not
even involved. The printing of the world's first book was a
marvelously globalized
event. The technology of printing was, of course, entirely an
achievement of the
Chinese. But the content came from elsewhere. The first printed
book was an Indian
Sanskrit treatise, translated into Chinese by a half- Turk. The
book, Vajracchedika
Prajnaparamitasutra (sometimes referred to as "The Diamond
Sutra"), is an old
treatise on Buddhism; it was translated into Chinese from
Sanskrit in the fifth century
by Kumarajiva, a half-Indian and half- Turkish scholar who
lived in a part of eastern
Turkistan called Kucha but later migrated to China. It was
printed fo ur centuries later,
in 868 a.d. All this involving China, Turkey, and India is

globalization, all right, but
the West is not even in sight.
Global Interdependences and Movements
The misdiagnosis that globalization of ideas and practices has to
be resisted because it
entails dreaded Westernization has played quite a regressive
part in the colonial and
postcolonial world. This assumption incites parochial
tendencies and undermines the
possibility of objectivity in science and knowledge. It is not
only counterproductive in
itself; given the global interactions throughout history, it can
also cause non-Western
societies to shoot themselves in the foot--even in their precious
cultural foot.
Consider the resistance in India to the use of Western ideas and
concepts in science
and mathematics. In the nineteenth century, this debate fitted
into a broader
controversy about Western education versus indigenous Indian
education. The
"Westernizers," such as the redoubtable Thomas Babington
Macaulay, saw no merit
whatsoever in Indian tradition. "I have never found one among
them [advocates of
Indian tradition] who could deny that a single shelf of a good
European library was
worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia," he
declared. Partly in
retaliation, the advocates of native education resisted Western

imports altogether.
Both sides, however, accepted too readily the foundational
dichotomy between two
disparate civilizations.
European mathematics, with its use of such concepts as sine,
was viewed as a purely
"Western" import into India. In fact, the fifth-century Indian
mathematician
Aryabhata had discussed the concept of sine in his classic work
on astronomy and
mathematics in 499 a.d., calling it by its Sanskrit name, jya-
ardha (literally, "half-
chord"). This word, first shortened to jya in Sanskrit, eventually
became the Arabic
jiba and, later, jaib, which means "a cove or a bay." In his
history of mathematics,
Howard Eves explains that around 1150 a.d., Gherardo of
Cremona, in his translations
from the Arabic, rendered jaib as the Latin sinus, the
corresponding word for a cove
or a bay. And this is the source of the modern word sine. The
concept had traveled
full circle--from India, and then back.
To see globalization as merely Western imperialism of ideas
and beliefs (as the
rhetoric often suggests) would be a serious and costly error, in
the same way that any
European resistance to Eastern influence would have been at the
beginning of the last
millennium. Of course, there are issues related to globalization
that do connect with
imperialism (the history of conquests, colonialism, and alien
rule remains relevant
today in many ways), and a postcolonial understanding of the

world has its merits.
But it would be a great mistake to see globalization primarily as
a feature of
imperialism. It is much bigger-- much greater--than that.
The issue of the distribution of economic gains and losses from
globalization remains
an entirely separate question, and it must be addressed as a
further--and extremely
relevant--issue. There is extensive evidence that the global
economy has brought
prosperity to many different areas of the globe. Pervasive
poverty dominated the
world a few centuries ago; there were only a few rare pockets of
affluence. In
overcoming that penury, extensive economic interrelations and
modern technology
have been and remain influential. What has happened in Europe,
America, Japan, and
East Asia has important messages for all other regions, and we
cannot go very far into
understanding the nature of globalization today without first
acknowledging the
positive fruits of global economic contacts.
Indeed, we cannot reverse the economic predicament of the poor
across the world by
withholding from them the great advantages of contemporary
technology, the well-
established efficiency of international trade and exchange, and
the social as well as
economic merits of living in an open society. Rather, the main
issue is how to make

good use of the remarkable benefits of economic intercourse
and technological
progress in a way that pays adequate attention to the interests of
the deprived and the
underdog. That is, I would argue, the constructive question that
emerges from the so-
called antiglobalization movements.
Are the Poor Getting Poorer?
The principal challenge relates to inequality--international as
well as intranational.
The troubling inequalities include disparities in affluence and
also gross asymmetries
in political, social, and economic opportunities and power.
A crucial question concerns the sharing of the potential gains
from globalization--
between rich and poor countries and among different groups
within a country. It is not
sufficient to understand that the poor of the world need
globalization as much as the
rich do; it is also important to make sure that they actually get
what they need. This
may require extensive institutional reform, even as
globalization is defended.
There is also a need for more clarity in formulating the
distributional questions. For
example, it is often argued that the rich are getting richer and
the poor poorer. But this
is by no means uniformly so, even though there are cases in
which this has happened.
Much depends on the region or the group chosen and what
indicators of economic
prosperity are used. But the attempt to base the castigation of

economic globalization
on this rather thin ice produces a peculiarly fragile critique.
On the other side, the apologists of globalization point to their
belief that the poor
who participate in trade and exchange are mostly getting richer.
Ergo--the argument
runs--globalization is not unfair to the poor: they too benefit. If
the central relevance
of this question is accepted, then the whole debate turns on
determining which side is
correct in this empirical dispute. But is this the right
battleground in the first place? I
would argue that it is not.
Global Justice and the Bargaining Problem
Even if the poor were to get just a little richer, this would not
necessarily imply that
the poor were getting a fair share of the potentially vast benefits
of global economic
interrelations. It is not adequate to ask whether international
inequality is getting
marginally larger or smaller. In order to rebel against the
appalling poverty and the
staggering inequalities that characterize the contemporary
world--or to protest against
the unfair sharing of benefits of global cooperation--it is not
necessary to show that
the massive inequality or distributional unfairness is also
getting marginally larger.
This is a separate issue altogether.
When there are gains from cooperation, there can be many
possible arrangements. As
the game theorist and mathematician John Nash discussed more

than half a century
ago (in "The Bargaining Problem," published in Econometrica
in 1950, which was
cited, among othe r writings, by the Royal Swedish Academy of
Sciences when Nash
was awarded the Nobel Prize in economics), the central issue in
general is not
whether a particular arrangement is better for everyone than no
cooperation at all
would be, but whether that is a fair division of the benefits. One
cannot rebut the
criticism that a distributional arrangement is unfair simply by
noting that all the
parties are better off than they would be in the absence of
cooperation; the real
exercise is the choice between these alternatives.
An Analogy with the Family
By analogy, to argue that a particularly unequal and sexist
family arrangement is
unfair, one does not have to show that women would have done
comparatively better
had there been no families at all, but only that the sharing of the
benefits is seriously
unequal in that particular arrangement. Before the issue of
gender justice became an
explicitly recognized concern (as it has in recent decades), there
were attempts to
dismiss the issue of unfair arrangements within the family by
suggesting that women
did not need to live in families if they found the arrangements
so unjust. It was also

argued that since women as well as men benefit from living in
families, the existing
arrangements could not be unfair. But even when it is accepted
that both men and
women may typically gain from living in a family, the question
of distributional
fairness remains. Many different family arrangements--when
compared with the
absence of any family system--would satisfy the condition of
being beneficial to both
men and women. The real issue concerns how fairly benefits
associated with these
respective arrangements are distributed.
Likewise, one cannot rebut the charge that the global system is
unfair by showing that
even the poor gain something from global contacts and are not
necessarily made
poorer. That answer may or may not be wrong, but the question
certainly is. The
critical issue is not whether the poor are getting marginally
poorer or richer. Nor is it
whether they are better off than they would be had they
excluded themselves from
globalized interactions.
Again, the real issue is the distribution of globalization's
benefits. Indeed, this is why
many of the antiglobalization protesters, who seek a better deal
for the underdogs of
the world economy, are not--contrary to their own rhetoric and
to the views attributed
to them by others--really "antiglobalization." It is also why
there is no real
contradiction in the fact that the so-called antiglobalization
protests have become

among the most globalized events in the contemporary world.
Altering Global Arrangements
However, can those less-well-off groups get a better deal from
globalized economic
and social relations without dispensing with the market
economy itself? They
certainly can. The use of the market economy is consistent with
many different
ownership patterns, resource availabilities, social opportunities,
and rules of operation
(such as patent laws and antitrust regulations). And depending
on these conditions, the
market economy would generate different prices, terms of trade,
income distribution,
and, more generally, diverse overall outcomes. The
arrangements for social security
and other public interventions can make further modifications to
the outcomes of the
market processes, and together they can yield varying levels of
inequality and
poverty.
The central question is not whether to use the market economy.
That shallow question
is easy to answer, because it is hard to achieve economic
prosperity without making
extensive use of the opportunities of exchange and
specialization that market relations
offer. Even though the operation of a given market economy can
be significantly
defective, there is no way of dispensing with the institution of

markets in general as a
powerful engine of economic progress.
But this recognition does not end the discussion about
globalized market relations.
The market economy does not work by itself in global relations-
-indeed, it cannot
operate alone even within a given country. It is not only the
case that a
marketinclusive system can generate very distinct results
depending on various
enabling conditions (such as how physical resources are
distributed, how human
resources are developed, what rules of business relations
prevail, what social-security
arrangements are in place, and so on). These enabling
conditions themselves depend
critically on economic, social, and political institutions that
operate nationally and
globally.
The crucial role of the markets does not make the other institut
ions insignificant, even
in terms of the results that the market economy can produce. As
has been amply
established in empirical studies, market outcomes are massively
influenced by public
policies in education, epidemiology, land reform, microcredit
facilities, appropriate
legal protections, et cetera; and in each of these fields, there is
work to be done
through public action that can radically alter the outcome of
local and global
economic relations.
Institutions and Inequality

Globalization has much to offer; but even as we defend it, we
must also, without any
contradiction, see the legitimacy of many questions that the
antiglobalization
protesters ask. There may be a misdiagnosis about where the
main problems lie (they
do not lie in globalization, as such), but the ethical and human
concerns that yield
these questions call for serious reassessments of the adequacy
of the national and
global institutional arrangements that characterize the
contemporary world and shape
globalized economic and social relations.
Global capitalism is much more concerned with expanding the
domain of market
relations than with, say, establishing democracy, expanding
elementary education, or
enhancing the social opportunities of society's underdogs. Since
globalization of
markets is, on its own, a very inadequate approach to world
prosperity, there is a need
to go beyond the priorities that find expression in the chosen
focus of global
capitalism. As George Soros has pointed out, international
business concerns often
have a strong preference for working in orderly and highly
organized autocracies
rather than in activist and less-regimented democracies, and this
can be a regressive
influence on equitable development. Further, multinational
firms can exert their
influence on the priorities of public expenditure in less secure
third-world countries
by giving preference to the safety and convenience of the

managerial classes and of
privileged workers over the removal of widespread illiteracy,
medical deprivation,
and other adversities of the poor. These possibilities do not, of
course, impose any
insurmountable barrier to development, but it is important to
make sure that the
surmountable barriers are actually surmounted.
Omissions and Commissions
The injustices that characterize the world are closely related to
various omissions that
need to be addressed, particularly in institutional arrangements.
I have tried to identify
some of the main problems in my book Development as
Freedom (Knopf, 1999).
Global policies have a role here in helping the development of
national institutions
(for example, through defending democracy and supporting
schooling and health
facilities), but there is also a need to re-examine the adequacy
of global institutional
arrangements themselves. The distribution of the benefits in the
global economy
depends, among other things, on a variety of global institutional
arrangements,
including those for fair trade, medical initiatives, educational
exchanges, facilities for
technological dissemination, ecological and environmental
restraints, and fair
treatment of accumulated debts that were often incurred by
irresponsible military

rulers of the past. In addition to the momentous omissions that
need to be rectified,
there are also serious problems of commission that must be
addressed for even
elementary global ethics. These include not only inefficient and
inequitable trade
restrictions that repress exports from poor countries, but also
patent laws that inhibit
the use of lifesaving drugs—for diseases like AIDS--and that
give inadequate
incentive for medical research aimed at developing
nonrepeating medicines (such as
vaccines). These issues have been much discussed on their own,
but we must also
note how they fit into a general pattern of unhelpful
arrangements that undermine
what globalization could offer.
Another--somewhat less discussed--global "commission" that
causes intense misery
as well as lasting deprivation relates to the involvement of the
world powers in
globalized arms trade. This is a field in which a new global
initiative is urgently
required, going beyond the need--the very important need--to
curb terrorism, on
which the focus is so heavily concentrated right now. Local
wars and military
conflicts, which have very destructive consequences (not least
on the economic
prospects of poor countries), draw not only on regional tensions
but also on global
trade in arms and weapons. The world establishment is firmly
entrenched in this
business: the Permanent Members of the Security Council of the
United Natio ns were

together responsible for 81 percent of world arms exports from
1996 through 2000.
Indeed, the world leaders who express deep frustration at the
"irresponsibility" of
antiglobalization protesters lead the countries that make the
most money in this
terrible trade. The G-8 countries sold 87 percent of the total
supply of arms exported
in the entire world. The U.S. share alone has just gone up to
almost 50 percent of the
total sales in the world. Furthermore, as much as 68 percent of
the American arms
exports went to developing countries.
The arms are used with bloody results--and with devastating
effects on the economy,
the polity, and the society. In some ways, this is a continuation
of the unhelpful role
of world powers in the genesis and flowering of political
militarism in Africa from the
1960s to the 1980s, when the Cold War was fought over Africa.
During these
decades, when military overlords--Mobuto Sese Seko or Jonas
Savimbi or whoever--
busted social and political arrangements (and, ultimately,
economic order as well) in
Africa, they could rely on support either from the United States
and its allies or from
the Soviet Union, depending on their military alliances. The
world powers bear an
awesome responsibility for helping in the subversion of
democracy in Africa and for
all the far-reaching negative consequences of that subversion.

The pursuit of arms
"pushing" gives them a continuing role in the escalation of
military conflicts today--in
Africa and elsewhere. The U.S. refusal to agree to a joint
crackdown even on illicit
sales of small arms (as proposed by UN Secretary-General Kofi
Annan) illustrates the
difficulties involved.
Fair Sharing of Global Opportunities
To conclude, the confounding of globalization with
Westernization is not only
ahistorical, it also distracts attention from the many potential
benefits of global
integration. Globalization is a historical process that has offered
an abundance of
opportunities and rewards in the past and continues to do so
today. The very existence
of potentially large benefits makes the question of fairness in
sharing the benefits of
globalization so critically important.
The central issue of contention is not globalization itself, nor is
it the use of the
market as an institution, but the inequity in the overall balance
of institutional
arrangements--which produces very unequal sharing of the
benefits of globalization.
The question is not just whether the poor, too, gain something
from globalization, but
whether they get a fair share and a fair opportunity. There is an
urgent need for
reforming institutional arrangements--in addition to national
ones--in order to
overcome both the errors of omission and those of commission

that tend to give the
poor across the world such limited opportunities. Globalization
deserves a reasoned
defense, but it also needs reform.
Preferred Citation: Amartya Sen, "How to Judge Globalism,"
The American Prospect
vol. 13 no. 1, January 1, 2002
200 words for forum
100 words for respond to the student (the image from
attachment is the one u should reply)
Assignment Instructions
This week we turn our attention to the future of work in the 21st
century "knowledge economy.”
Read:
1. Future Work Skills 2020 - The University of Phoenix
Institute (2011).
2. The Future of Work. Lynda Bratton (Business Strategy
Review, 2010). – Both readings describe major forces driving
change in the economy and prescribe the competencies workers
will need in order to have successful careers.
3. Sen, Amartya. How to Judge Globalisation
4. Satell, Gregg. How Technology is Changing the Way
Organizations Learn
5. Rotman, David. How Technology is Destroying Jobs
6. Autor, David, and Dorn, David. How Technology Wrecks the
Middle Class
7. Microchips for Employees? One Company Says Yes,
NYTimes
Forum:
1. Choose one of the two readings on the future of work. What
are the driving forces of change and the requisite competencies
for the modern workplace? Do you agree or disagree with the
author of the reading you chose with the driving forces the

competencies she identifies? Explain and provide your own
analysis supported by outside evidence not just your opinion.
2. What skills and competencies do you think are the most
important in the modern workplace? Why?
Be sure to look over the scoring checklist (on the class slides)
so that you know what is expected in your responses.
Forum assignments are to be completed in the [Forums] tab. Do
not submit your responses in the [Assignments] tab or anywhere
else on Sakai (you will not get credit if your posts are not
submitted in the right place, even if you happen to submit them
on time). Click on your group number in the [Forums] section
and complete your assignments by clicking on [Post Reply].
Please do not submit your responses as an attachment.
FIRST POST (50 points)
· Choose one of the two readings on the future of work.What are
the driving forces of change and the requisite competencies for
the modern workplace?Do you agree or disagree with the author
of the reading you chose with the driving forces the
competencies she identifies?Explain and provide your own
analysis supported by outside evidence not just your
opinion. [35 points]
Objective
Possible Points
Total Points
Choose one of the readings and identify what the article says
are the driving forces of change and the competencies that
workers in the modern workplace will need in order to have
successful careers.
10
2 bonus points if they provided definitions
Identify whether you agree or disagree with the author of the
article you chose
5

Explain and provide your analysis. In other words, explain why
you think the author is right or wrong about the driving forces
of change and competencies s/he identifies.
10
Use and cite outside sources to support your argument
10
· What skills and competencies do you think are the most
important in the modern workplace?Why? [15 points]
Objective
Possible Points
Total Points
Identifying skills and competencies
5
Explanation
10
SECOND POST (50 points)
Objective
Possible Points
Total Points
Identifying your reaction (agreement, disagreement, etc.)
10
Focusing on a group member or members or the group as a
whole
10
Providing a substantive response
10

Providing evidence or anecdotal evidence
10
Quality of the writing
10
Greg Satell Contributor
6/08/2013 @ 8:11AM
How Technology Is Changing The Way
Organizations Learn
People used to be valued for knowing a trade. Then came the
industrial revolution and
those skills became devalued. Machines took over physical
labor and most people
either did simple, repetitive tasks or managed those who did.
By the late 20th century, a knowledge economy began to take
hold. Workers became
valued not for their labor, but for specialized knowledge, much
of which was inscrutable
to their superiors. Successful enterprises became learning
organizations.
Now, we are entering a new industrial revolution and machines
are starting to take over
cognitive tasks as well. Therefore, much like in the first
industrial revolution, the role of

humans is again being rapidly redefined. Organizations will
have to change the way that
they learn and managers’ primary task will be to design the
curricula.
First Principles vs. Experience
Knowledge, strangely enough, has been a source of fierce
debate for over two thousand years, beginning with a
disagreement between Plato and his most famous student,
Aristotle.
Plato believed in ideal forms. To him, true knowledge consisted
of familiarity with those forms and virtue (which, in a
modern terms would have been closer to ability than to
morality) was a matter of actualizing those forms in everyday
life. Plato would have felt comfortable as a factory manager
whose workers carried out instructions to the tee.
Aristotle, on the other hand, believed in empirical knowledge,
which you gain from experience. In contrast to Plato,
we can imagine Aristotle as a Six Sigma black belt, constantly
analyzing data in order to come up with a better way
of doing things.
Both methods, the indoctrination of principles and the
collection of data have played a role in learning organizations.
The difference now is that much of the learning is being taken
over by machines.
How Machines Are Learning To Take Over
Not so long ago, we depended on human knowledge for many
things, such as setting up travel itineraries, trading
financial instruments and buying media that are highly
automated today. As we progress, new areas, such as
making medical diagnoses, legal discovery and even creative
output are becoming mediated by computers.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the algorithms blend Platonic and
Aristotelian approaches just like humans do. Initially,
their thinking is driven by time honored principles supplied by
human experts (sometimes called “God parameters”).
Then, as more information comes in, the computer begins to
learn from its own mistakes, getting better and better at
its task.
This process continues at accelerating speeds. Much like the
rise of the knowledge economy empowered
knowledge workers, because they had expertise that their bosses
didn’t, computers are now coming up with
answers that knowledge workers themselves can’t understand.
That will prove incredibly disruptive in the years to
come.
It also presents a particularly thorny problem: How can
organizations empower employees whose skills are being
outsourced to the cloud?
http://www.forbes.com/sites/gregsatell/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_economy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learning_organization
http://www.digitaltonto.com/2012/the-new-industrial-
revolution/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_Forms
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empiricism
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/04/health/quest-to-eliminate-
diagnostic-lapses.html?pagewanted=all
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/05/science/05legal.html
http://www.digitaltonto.com/2012/creative-intelligence/

http://www.digitaltonto.com/2012/the-new-new-economy-of-
accelerating-returns/
http://www.forbes.com/
Consequences of An Algorithmic Age
Just as the first industrial revolution transformed business and
society, this new algorithmic age will bring not just
efficiency, but significant, cultural changes. While the future is
uncertain, some of the shifts are already becoming
apparent:
Bayesian Strategy: The knowledge economy coincided with the
rising influence of business strategists. Highly
trained executives would analyze business conditions and devise
intricate plans for the future. Managerial
performance, therefore, was widely evaluated as a function of
their ability to “execute the plan.”
However, good strategy is becoming less visionary and more
Bayesian. Strategic plans will play a similar role to
“God parameters” that will be honed through an evolutionary
process of simulation and feedback. Strategists, to a
great extent, will become hackers rather than planners.
Brands as Open API’s: One little noted consequence of the
knowledge economy is the rise of intangible value,
which often far exceeds tangible assets in corporations. Brands,
therefore, became tightly controlled assets that
were nurtured and protected.

That’s beginning to change as brands are becoming platforms
for collaboration rather than assets to be leveraged.
Marketers who used to jealously guard their brands are now
aggressively courting outside developers with
Application Programming Interfaces (API’s) and Software
Development Kits (SDK’s). Our economy is increasingly
becoming a semantic economy.
Firms ranging from Microsoft to Nike to The New York Times
have also created accelerator programs, where young
companies get financial, managerial and technical support to
come up with new innovations (and potentially,
enhance the business of their benefactors).
The Human Touch: While much of the discussion about the
rising tide of technology focuses on cognitive skills,
Richard Florida argues that social skills will be just as
important. Many of the fastest growing professions are those
which emphasize personal contact.
As computers take over more of the work, the role of humans
will increasingly focus on caring for other humans.
Flying By Wire
Pilots don’t fly planes anymore, not really. Whereas they used
to have direct control over the aircraft, now they fly by
wire. Today, their instruments connect not to the airplane’s
mechanism, but to computers which carry out their
commands, modulated by the collective intelligence gained from
millions of similar flights.
In essense, pilots perform three roles: they direct intent (where
to go, how fast, when to change course), manage
knowledge and (rarely) take over during emergencies.
Professionals in other industries will have to learn to perform

their jobs in a similar way.
The function of organizations in the industrial age was to direct
work. The function of organizations in the algorithmic
age will be to focus passion and purpose.
Managers, rather than focusing on building skills to recognize
patterns and take action, will need to focus on
designing the curricula, to direct which patterns computers
should focus on learning and to what ends their actions
should serve.
http://www.digitaltonto.com/2013/bayesian-strategy/
http://www.digitaltonto.com/2013/the-simulation-economy/
http://www.digitaltonto.com/2012/the-hacker-way/
http://www.digitaltonto.com/2012/7-principles-of-marketing/
http://www.digitaltonto.com/2012/the-brands-new-open-
architecture/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Application_programming_interfac
e
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_development_kit
http://www.digitaltonto.com/2012/the-semantic-economy/
http://www.15inno.com/2013/03/21/kinect-2/
http://nikeinc.com/news/nike-accelerator-companies-announced
http://www.nytimes.com/timespace/
http://chronicle.com/article/Robots-Arent-the-Problem-/138007/
http://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_table_103.htm
http://www.digitaltonto.com/2012/the-evolution-of-intelligence/
http://www.digitaltonto.com/2010/the-passion-economy/
The American Prospect ,Volume 13, Issue 1. January 1, 2002 -
January 14, 2002.

How to Judge Globalism
Amartya Sen
Globalization is often seen as global Westernization. On this
point, there is substantial
agreement among many proponents and opponents. Those who
take an upbeat view of
globalization see it as a marvelous contribution of Western
civilization to the world.
There is a nicely stylized history in which the great
developments happened in
Europe: First came the Renaissance, then the Enlightenment and
the Industrial
Revolution, and these led to a massive increase in living
standards in the West. And
now the great achievements of the West are spreading to the
world. In this view,
globalization is not only good, it is also a gift from the West to
the world. The
champions of this reading of history tend to feel upset not just
because this great
benefaction is seen as a curse but also because it is undervalued
and castigated by an
ungrateful world.
From the opposite perspective, Western dominance--sometimes
seen as a continuation
of Western imperialism--is the devil of the piece. In this view,
contemporary
capitalism, driven and led by greedy and grabby Western
countries in Europe and
North America, has established rules of trade and business
relations that do not serve

the interests of the poorer people in the world. The celebration
of various non-
Western identities--defined by religion (as in Islamic
fundamentalism), region (as in
the championing of Asian values), or culture (as in the
glorification of Confucian
ethics)--can add fuel to the fire of confrontation with the West.
Is globalization really a new Western curse? It is, in fact,
neither new nor necessarily
Western; and it is not a curse. Over thousands of years,
globalization has contributed
to the progress of the world through travel, trade, migration,
spread of cultural
influences, and dissemination of knowledge and understanding
(including that of
science and technology). These global interrelations have often
been very productive
in the advancement of different countries. They have not
necessarily taken the form of
increased Western influence. Indeed, the active agents of
globalization have often
been located far from the West.
To illustrate, consider the world at the beginning of the last
millennium rather than at
its end. Around 1000 A.D., global reach of science, technology,
and mathematics was
changing the nature of the old world, but the dissemination then
was, to a great extent,
in the opposite direction of what we see today. The high
technology in the world of
1000 A.D. included paper, the printing press, the crossbow,
gunpowder, the iron-
chain suspension bridge, the kite, the magnetic compass, the
wheelbarrow, and the

rotary fan. A millennium ago, these items were used extensively
in China--and were
practically unknown elsewhere. Globalization spread them
across the world, including
Europe.
A similar movement occurred in the Eastern influence on
Western mathematics. The
decimal system emerged and became well developed in India
between the second and
sixth centuries; it was used by Arab mathematicians soon
thereafter. These
mathematical innovations reached Europe mainly in the last
quarter of the tenth
century and began having an impact in the early years of the
last millennium, playing
an important part in the scientific revolution that helped to
transform Europe. The
agents of globalization are neither European nor exclusively
Western, nor are they
necessarily linked to Western dominance. Indeed, Europe would
have been a lot
poorer--economically, culturally, and scientifically--had it
resisted the globalization of
mathematics, science, and technology at that time. And today,
the same principle
applies, though in the reverse direction (from West to East). To
reject the
globalization of science and technology because it represents
Western influence and
imperialism would not only amount to overlooking global
contributions--drawn from
many different parts of the world--that lie solidly behind so-

called Western science
and technology, but would also be quite a daft practical
decision, given the extent to
which the whole world can benefit from the process.
A Global Heritage
In resisting the diagnosis of globalization as a phenomenon of
quintessentially
Western origin, we have to be suspicious not only of the anti-
Western rhetoric but
also of the pro-Western chauvinism in many contemporary
writings. Certainly, the
Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and the Industrial Revolution
were great
achievements--and they occurred mainly in Europe and, later, in
America. Yet many
of these developments drew on the experience of the rest of the
world, rather than
being confined within the boundaries of a discrete Western
civilization.
Our global civilization is a world heritage--not just a collection
of disparate local
cultures. When a modern mathematician in Boston invokes an
algorithm to solve a
difficult computational problem, she may not be aware that she
is helping to
commemorate the Arab mathematician Mohammad Ibn Musa-al-
Khwarizmi, who
flourished in the first half of the ninth century. (The word
algorithm is derived from
the name al-Khwarizmi.) There is a chain of intellectual
relations that link Western
mathematics and science to a collection of distinctly non-
Western practitioners, of

whom al-Khwarizmi was one. (The term algebra is derived from
the title of his
famous book Al-Jabr wa-al-Muqabilah.) Indeed, al-Khwarizmi
is one of many non-
Western contributors whose works influenced the European
Renaissance and, later,
the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution. The West must
get full credit for the
remarkable achievements that occurred in Europe and
Europeanized America, but the
idea of an immaculate Western conception is an imaginative
fantasy.
Not only is the progress of global science and technology not an
exclusively West- led
phenomenon, but there were major global developments in
which the West was not
even involved. The printing of the world's first book was a
marvelously globalized
event. The technology of printing was, of course, entirely an
achievement of the
Chinese. But the content came from elsewhere. The first printed
book was an Indian
Sanskrit treatise, translated into Chinese by a half- Turk. The
book, Vajracchedika
Prajnaparamitasutra (sometimes referred to as "The Diamond
Sutra"), is an old
treatise on Buddhism; it was translated into Chinese from
Sanskrit in the fifth century
by Kumarajiva, a half-Indian and half- Turkish scholar who
lived in a part of eastern
Turkistan called Kucha but later migrated to China. It was
printed fo ur centuries later,
in 868 a.d. All this involving China, Turkey, and India is
globalization, all right, but
the West is not even in sight.

Global Interdependences and Movements
The misdiagnosis that globalization of ideas and practices has to
be resisted because it
entails dreaded Westernization has played quite a regressive
part in the colonial and
postcolonial world. This assumption incites parochial
tendencies and undermines the
possibility of objectivity in science and knowledge. It is not
only counterproductive in
itself; given the global interactions throughout history, it can
also cause non-Western
societies to shoot themselves in the foot--even in their precious
cultural foot.
Consider the resistance in India to the use of Western ideas and
concepts in science
and mathematics. In the nineteenth century, this debate fitted
into a broader
controversy about Western education versus indigenous Indian
education. The
"Westernizers," such as the redoubtable Thomas Babington
Macaulay, saw no merit
whatsoever in Indian tradition. "I have never found one among
them [advocates of
Indian tradition] who could deny that a single shelf of a good
European library was
worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia," he
declared. Partly in
retaliation, the advocates of native education resisted Western
imports altogether.
Both sides, however, accepted too readily the foundational

dichotomy between two
disparate civilizations.
European mathematics, with its use of such concepts as sine,
was viewed as a purely
"Western" import into India. In fact, the fifth-century Indian
mathematician
Aryabhata had discussed the concept of sine in his classic work
on astronomy and
mathematics in 499 a.d., calling it by its Sanskrit name, jya-
ardha (literally, "half-
chord"). This word, first shortened to jya in Sanskrit, eventually
became the Arabic
jiba and, later, jaib, which means "a cove or a bay." In his
history of mathematics,
Howard Eves explains that around 1150 a.d., Gherardo of
Cremona, in his translations
from the Arabic, rendered jaib as the Latin sinus, the
corresponding word for a cove
or a bay. And this is the source of the modern word sine. The
concept had traveled
full circle--from India, and then back.
To see globalization as merely Western imperialism of ideas
and beliefs (as the
rhetoric often suggests) would be a serious and costly error, in
the same way that any
European resistance to Eastern influence would have been at the
beginning of the last
millennium. Of course, there are issues related to globalization
that do connect with
imperialism (the history of conquests, colonialism, and alien
rule remains relevant
today in many ways), and a postcolonial understanding of the
world has its merits.
But it would be a great mistake to see globalization primarily as

a feature of
imperialism. It is much bigger-- much greater--than that.
The issue of the distribution of economic gains and losses from
globalization remains
an entirely separate question, and it must be addressed as a
further--and extremely
relevant--issue. There is extensive evidence that the global
economy has brought
prosperity to many different areas of the globe. Pervasive
poverty dominated the
world a few centuries ago; there were only a few rare pockets of
affluence. In
overcoming that penury, extensive economic interrelations and
modern technology
have been and remain influential. What has happened in Europe,
America, Japan, and
East Asia has important messages for all other regions, and we
cannot go very far into
understanding the nature of globalization today without first
acknowledging the
positive fruits of global economic contacts.
Indeed, we cannot reverse the economic predicament of the poor
across the world by
withholding from them the great advantages of contemporary
technology, the well-
established efficiency of international trade and exchange, and
the social as well as
economic merits of living in an open society. Rather, the main
issue is how to make
good use of the remarkable benefits of economic intercourse
and technological

progress in a way that pays adequate attention to the interests of
the deprived and the
underdog. That is, I would argue, the constructive question that
emerges from the so-
called antiglobalization movements.
Are the Poor Getting Poorer?
The principal challenge relates to inequality--international as
well as intranational.
The troubling inequalities include disparities in affluence and
also gross asymmetries
in political, social, and economic opportunities and power.
A crucial question concerns the sharing of the potential gains
from globalization--
between rich and poor countries and among different groups
within a country. It is not
sufficient to understand that the poor of the world need
globalization as much as the
rich do; it is also important to make sure that they actually get
what they need. This
may require extensive institutional reform, even as
globalization is defended.
There is also a need for more clarity in formulating the
distributional questions. For
example, it is often argued that the rich are getting richer and
the poor poorer. But this
is by no means uniformly so, even though there are cases in
which this has happened.
Much depends on the region or the group chosen and what
indicators of economic
prosperity are used. But the attempt to base the castigation of
economic globalization
on this rather thin ice produces a peculiarly fragile critique.

On the other side, the apologists of globalization point to their
belief that the poor
who participate in trade and exchange are mostly getting richer.
Ergo--the argument
runs--globalization is not unfair to the poor: they too benefit. If
the central relevance
of this question is accepted, then the whole debate turns on
determining which side is
correct in this empirical dispute. But is this the right
battleground in the first place? I
would argue that it is not.
Global Justice and the Bargaining Problem
Even if the poor were to get just a little richer, this would not
necessarily imply that
the poor were getting a fair share of the potentially vast benefits
of global economic
interrelations. It is not adequate to ask whether international
inequality is getting
marginally larger or smaller. In order to rebel against the
appalling poverty and the
staggering inequalities that characterize the contemporary
world--or to protest against
the unfair sharing of benefits of global cooperation--it is not
necessary to show that
the massive inequality or distributional unfairness is also
getting marginally larger.
This is a separate issue altogether.
When there are gains from cooperation, there can be many
possible arrangements. As
the game theorist and mathematician John Nash discussed more
than half a century
ago (in "The Bargaining Problem," published in Econometrica

in 1950, which was
cited, among othe r writings, by the Royal Swedish Academy of
Sciences when Nash
was awarded the Nobel Prize in economics), the central issue in
general is not
whether a particular arrangement is better for everyone than no
cooperation at all
would be, but whether that is a fair division of the benefits. One
cannot rebut the
criticism that a distributional arrangement is unfair simply by
noting that all the
parties are better off than they would be in the absence of
cooperation; the real
exercise is the choice between these alternatives.
An Analogy with the Family
By analogy, to argue that a particularly unequal and sexist
family arrangement is
unfair, one does not have to show that women would have done
comparatively better
had there been no families at all, but only that the sharing of the
benefits is seriously
unequal in that particular arrangement. Before the issue of
gender justice became an
explicitly recognized concern (as it has in recent decades), there
were attempts to
dismiss the issue of unfair arrangements within the family by
suggesting that women
did not need to live in families if they found the arrangements
so unjust. It was also
argued that since women as well as men benefit from living in
families, the existing

arrangements could not be unfair. But even when it is accepted
that both men and
women may typically gain from living in a family, the question
of distributional
fairness remains. Many different family arrangements--when
compared with the
absence of any family system--would satisfy the condition of
being beneficial to both
men and women. The real issue concerns how fairly benefits
associated with these
respective arrangements are distributed.
Likewise, one cannot rebut the charge that the global system is
unfair by showing that
even the poor gain something from global contacts and are not
necessarily made
poorer. That answer may or may not be wrong, but the question
certainly is. The
critical issue is not whether the poor are getting marginally
poorer or richer. Nor is it
whether they are better off than they would be had they
excluded themselves from
globalized interactions.
Again, the real issue is the distribution of globalization's
benefits. Indeed, this is why
many of the antiglobalization protesters, who seek a better deal
for the underdogs of
the world economy, are not--contrary to their own rhetoric and
to the views attributed
to them by others--really "antiglobalization." It is also why
there is no real
contradiction in the fact that the so-called antiglobalization
protests have become
among the most globalized events in the contemporary world.

Altering Global Arrangements
However, can those less-well-off groups get a better deal from
globalized economic
and social relations without dispensing with the market
economy itself? They
certainly can. The use of the market economy is consistent with
many different
ownership patterns, resource availabilities, social opportunities,
and rules of operation
(such as patent laws and antitrust regulations). And depending
on these conditions, the
market economy would generate different prices, terms of trade,
income distribution,
and, more generally, diverse overall outcomes. The
arrangements for social security
and other public interventions can make further modifications to
the outcomes of the
market processes, and together they can yield varying levels of
inequality and
poverty.
The central question is not whether to use the market economy.
That shallow question
is easy to answer, because it is hard to achieve economic
prosperity without making
extensive use of the opportunities of exchange and
specialization that market relations
offer. Even though the operation of a given market economy can
be significantly
defective, there is no way of dispensing with the institution of
markets in general as a
powerful engine of economic progress.

But this recognition does not end the discussion about
globalized market relations.
The market economy does not work by itself in global relations-
-indeed, it cannot
operate alone even within a given country. It is not only the
case that a
marketinclusive system can generate very distinct results
depending on various
enabling conditions (such as how physical resources are
distributed, how human
resources are developed, what rules of business relations
prevail, what social-security
arrangements are in place, and so on). These enabling
conditions themselves depend
critically on economic, social, and political institutions that
operate nationally and
globally.
The crucial role of the markets does not make the other institut
ions insignificant, even
in terms of the results that the market economy can produce. As
has been amply
established in empirical studies, market outcomes are massively
influenced by public
policies in education, epidemiology, land reform, microcredit
facilities, appropriate
legal protections, et cetera; and in each of these fields, there is
work to be done
through public action that can radically alter the outcome of
local and global
economic relations.
Institutions and Inequality
Globalization has much to offer; but even as we defend it, we

must also, without any
contradiction, see the legitimacy of many questions that the
antiglobalization
protesters ask. There may be a misdiagnosis about where the
main problems lie (they
do not lie in globalization, as such), but the ethical and human
concerns that yield
these questions call for serious reassessments of the adequacy
of the national and
global institutional arrangements that characterize the
contemporary world and shape
globalized economic and social relations.
Global capitalism is much more concerned with expanding the
domain of market
relations than with, say, establishing democracy, expanding
elementary education, or
enhancing the social opportunities of society's underdogs. Since
globalization of
markets is, on its own, a very inadequate approach to world
prosperity, there is a need
to go beyond the priorities that find expression in the chosen
focus of global
capitalism. As George Soros has pointed out, international
business concerns often
have a strong preference for working in orderly and highly
organized autocracies
rather than in activist and less-regimented democracies, and this
can be a regressive
influence on equitable development. Further, multinational
firms can exert their
influence on the priorities of public expenditure in less secure
third-world countries
by giving preference to the safety and convenience of the
managerial classes and of
privileged workers over the removal of widespread illiteracy,

medical deprivation,
and other adversities of the poor. These possibilities do not, of
course, impose any
insurmountable barrier to development, but it is important to
make sure that the
surmountable barriers are actually surmounted.
Omissions and Commissions
The injustices that characterize the world are closely related to
various omissions that
need to be addressed, particularly in institutional arrangements.
I have tried to identify
some of the main problems in my book Development as
Freedom (Knopf, 1999).
Global policies have a role here in helping the development of
national institutions
(for example, through defending democracy and supporting
schooling and health
facilities), but there is also a need to re-examine the adequacy
of global institutional
arrangements themselves. The distribution of the benefits in the
global economy
depends, among other things, on a variety of global institutional
arrangements,
including those for fair trade, medical initiatives, educational
exchanges, facilities for
technological dissemination, ecological and environmental
restraints, and fair
treatment of accumulated debts that were often incurred by
irresponsible military
rulers of the past. In addition to the momentous omissions that
need to be rectified,

there are also serious problems of commission that must be
addressed for even
elementary global ethics. These include not only inefficient and
inequitable trade
restrictions that repress exports from poor countries, but also
patent laws that inhibit
the use of lifesaving drugs—for diseases like AIDS--and that
give inadequate
incentive for medical research aimed at developing
nonrepeating medicines (such as
vaccines). These issues have been much discussed on their own,
but we must also
note how they fit into a general pattern of unhelpful
arrangements that undermine
what globalization could offer.
Another--somewhat less discussed--global "commission" that
causes intense misery
as well as lasting deprivation relates to the involvement of the
world powers in
globalized arms trade. This is a field in which a new global
initiative is urgently
required, going beyond the need--the very important need--to
curb terrorism, on
which the focus is so heavily concentrated right now. Local
wars and military
conflicts, which have very destructive consequences (not least
on the economic
prospects of poor countries), draw not only on regional tensions
but also on global
trade in arms and weapons. The world establishment is firmly
entrenched in this
business: the Permanent Members of the Security Council of the
United Natio ns were
together responsible for 81 percent of world arms exports from
1996 through 2000.

Indeed, the world leaders who express deep frustration at the
"irresponsibility" of
antiglobalization protesters lead the countries that make the
most money in this
terrible trade. The G-8 countries sold 87 percent of the total
supply of arms exported
in the entire world. The U.S. share alone has just gone up to
almost 50 percent of the
total sales in the world. Furthermore, as much as 68 percent of
the American arms
exports went to developing countries.
The arms are used with bloody results--and with devastating
effects on the economy,
the polity, and the society. In some ways, this is a continuation
of the unhelpful role
of world powers in the genesis and flowering of political
militarism in Africa from the
1960s to the 1980s, when the Cold War was fought over Africa.
During these
decades, when military overlords--Mobuto Sese Seko or Jonas
Savimbi or whoever--
busted social and political arrangements (and, ultimately,
economic order as well) in
Africa, they could rely on support either from the United States
and its allies or from
the Soviet Union, depending on their military alliances. The
world powers bear an
awesome responsibility for helping in the subversion of
democracy in Africa and for
all the far-reaching negative consequences of that subversion.
The pursuit of arms
"pushing" gives them a continuing role in the escalation of

military conflicts today--in
Africa and elsewhere. The U.S. refusal to agree to a joint
crackdown even on illicit
sales of small arms (as proposed by UN Secretary-General Kofi
Annan) illustrates the
difficulties involved.
Fair Sharing of Global Opportunities
To conclude, the confounding of globalization with
Westernization is not only
ahistorical, it also distracts attention from the many potential
benefits of global
integration. Globalization is a historical process that has offered
an abundance of
opportunities and rewards in the past and continues to do so
today. The very existence
of potentially large benefits makes the question of fairness in
sharing the benefits of
globalization so critically important.
The central issue of contention is not globalization itself, nor is
it the use of the
market as an institution, but the inequity in the overall balance
of institutional
arrangements--which produces very unequal sharing of the
benefits of globalization.
The question is not just whether the poor, too, gain something
from globalization, but
whether they get a fair share and a fair opportunity. There is an
urgent need for
reforming institutional arrangements--in addition to national
ones--in order to
overcome both the errors of omission and those of commission
that tend to give the
poor across the world such limited opportunities. Globalization

deserves a reasoned
defense, but it also needs reform.
Preferred Citation: Amartya Sen, "How to Judge Globalism,"
The American Prospect
vol. 13 no. 1, January 1, 2002
200 words for forum
100 words for respond to the student (the image from
attachment is the one u should reply)
Assignment Instructions
This week we turn our attention to the future of work in the 21st
century "knowledge economy.”
Read:
1. Future Work Skills 2020 - The University of Phoenix
Institute (2011).
2. The Future of Work. Lynda Bratton (Business Strategy
Review, 2010). – Both readings describe major forces driving
change in the economy and prescribe the competencies workers
will need in order to have successful careers.
3. Sen, Amartya. How to Judge Globalisation
4. Satell, Gregg. How Technology is Changing the Way
Organizations Learn
5. Rotman, David. How Technology is Destroying Jobs
6. Autor, David, and Dorn, David. How Technology Wrecks the
Middle Class
7. Microchips for Employees? One Company Says Yes,
NYTimes
Forum:
1. Choose one of the two readings on the future of work. What

2. What skills and competencies do you think are the most
important in the modern workplace? Why?
Be sure to look over the scoring checklist (on the class slides)
so that you know what is expected in your responses.
Forum assignments are to be completed in the [Forums] tab. Do
not submit your responses in the [Assignments] tab or anywhere
else on Sakai (you will not get credit if your posts are not
submitted in the right place, even if you happen to submit them
on time). Click on your group number in the [Forums] section
and complete your assignments by clicking on [Post Reply].
Please do not submit your responses as an attachment.
FIRST POST (50 points)
· Choose one of the two readings on the future of work. What
[35 points]
Objective
Possible Points
Total Points
Choose one of the readings and identify what the article says
are the driving forces of change and the competencies that
workers in the modern workplace will need in order to have
successful careers.
10
2 bonus points if they provided definitions
Identify whether you agree or disagree with the author of the
article you chose
5

Explain and provide your analysis. In other words, explain why
you think the author is right or wrong about the driving forces
of change and competencies s/he identifies.
10
Use and cite outside sources to support your argument
10
· What skills and competencies do you think are the most
important in the modern workplace? Why? [15 points]
Objective
Possible Points
Total Points
Identifying skills and competencies
5
Explanation
10
SECOND POST (50 points)
Objective
Possible Points
Total Points
Identifying your reaction (agreement, disagreement, etc.)
10
Focusing on a group member or members or the group as a
whole
10
Providing a substantive response

10
Providing evidence or anecdotal evidence
10
Quality of the writing
10

TECH WRECKS MIDDLE CLASS

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TECH WRECKS MIDDLE CLASS