Article Relations: How the Job market has changed.

The main thing these three articles, "The Social Network as a Career Safety Net," "A Company Computer and Questions about E-mail Privacy," and "An Introduction to the Information Age," have in common is an explanation of how the job market all over the world has been rapidly changing. All three articles bring up very different points that all prove how diffucult the world of employment has become.

In Wednesday's class we discussed the decline of unions and labour organizations that protect workers in the information age due to the social polarization and exclusion that comes with globalization, business networking, and the individualization of the worker. This causes problems because the worker is left to their own devices in relation to the job market and their own relationship to their company. In "A Company Computer and Questions about E-mail Privacy," a man named Scott Sidell is fired from his job and accusses his company of reading his personal emails. Apparently, companies are allowed to monitor their emplyee's email communication when they are using a company computer, but they are not supposed to be able to access their emplyee's personal email accounts. The laws for these issues are still evolving, but in the past where a labour union could protect a worker and demand certain rights, the present day situation has a more gray area. Mr. Sidell was in the process of suing his old company, and his case was raising new issues concerning the relationships between companies and their employees. Another comment in class made was statistic of the number of jobs people will now have in their lifetime, between seven and fourteen. It's going to be harder for a worker to gain any sort of power or rights when they are only working at a company for a limited amount of time.
Which leads us to the discussion of flexi-workers. Flexi-workers represent the individualizaton of work, because they will not stay at the same company for long, which is a good tactic in today's world with statistics like seven to fourteen jobs per career. And a useful tool for these flexi-workers, and workers of the information age, is their social network. Social networking sites like Facebook and LinkedIn are becoming very popular for workers because of the instability of our economy and the individualization of work as we discussed before. These sites allow workers to connect with people who can help them get a job or find a new one, and stay in touch with people around the world. But as Castell mentioned in "An Introduction to the Information Age," this networking stabilizes the global economy, but only for those who can afford it, and ignores the common unskilled laborer.
These three articles are extremely informative and illustrate a decent picture of what the global job market is currently like and what it will probably look like for the next few decades, however frightening that may be to college undergraduates who will be looking for jobs in a few years to come.

Book Reading vs. Online Articles

For this semester...
My classes in which I am actually reading books are as follows:
World Literature: 8 novels
Itermediate Spanish II: Two text books
My classes in which I am reading online articles:
Intro to Communications: 27 online articles
New Information Technologies: so far seven online articles...more to come

So half of my classes are online articles whereas the other half are readings from actual books.

Technology does drive history, and will probably continue to do so...but to who's advantage?

In Merrit Roe Smith's article "Does Technology Drive History?" some very interesting points were brought up. The one painting titled "American Progress" that Roe discussed represents America moving into a great and successful future with technology, and leaving behind those who are not apart of this technological journey, nature and the Native Americans. So if we jump foward 150 years to current times, which groups are the new Native Americans? We are a nation of immeadiacy, we always need the next new technology, whether it's the new i phone, i pod, etc; technology is still driving our nation and our lives, and it's expensive. Not everyone in the United States are middle to upper class, and as the technologies become more involved in our everyday life, people who cannot afford these things are getting left behind. There are going to be less oppurtunites for the lower classes because they are not going to understand the technologies that are driving our world, and thus the jobs within it. I'm afraid to wonder what the world will be like in twenty years; how much further will technology have advanced, what kind of jobs will be availible, and how will people react to it?

24 hour observation of technology use

Technology is a huge part of my life. I wake up every day to my cell phone alarm, and then proceed to go on the internet to check my e mail, facebook, and the news. When I’m on my way to class I’m texting or calling someone on my cell phone. Because my friends and I all have different schedules, we text constantly throughout the day to see when we can meet up or get lunch. All my home work is done through the internet, checking my email to see if my professor’s sent anything, or going on blackboard to look for posted assignments. I’ll sometimes i-chat with my friends from home online too in order to keep in touch. Yesterday I was having trouble with my printer, so I was texting people to see if they could help. I eventually went to Office of Information Technology and they sent someone to help. It seems if any technological error occurs, my life is put on hold. Before I go to bed, I'm either texting or talking to my friends on my cell phone, and then I'll watch a show or movie on my laptop. I definitely have a patterned schedule of technology uses throughout my day.

First Post

This is my first post, I've just created my new blog.