Page 03: Sustainable
development, teleworking and unemployment
We have analyzed three important
aspects of our society that will be increasingly modified by the Information
Society and telematic networks: sustainable development, teleworking as
a new discipline of work that must function alongside traditional ones,
and the important question of unemployment: will telematic networks increase
or decrease job opportunities? In the first aspect the solution is to dematerialize
our society, to think of commodities not in a physical way, of atoms, but
in a virtual way, or telematic, which means of bits.
Thanks to surveys, we think
that teleworking is a job practice that will be placed alongside
traditional ones, and that it is a practice that will be increasingly common,
thanks to technology and the change in the attitudes of entrepreneurs.
Yet this will not solve the problem of unemployment. We believe it will
not have a great impact on the SMEs for quite a long time, because some
conditions which are needed can hardly be found in a small enterprise,
for example a sufficiently high number of workers, branches of the enterprise
which are geographically separated, and the necessity for the continuous
upgrading of the firm's data in real time. In regards to unemployment,
it should be remembered that telematic networks will not create additional
unemployment, but like all technological innovations, it will instead bring
about a different redistribution of job skills, a new composition of workers
and a different idea of work itself. The Internet could surely be (and
for many of us, is already) a great potential in employment, and for the
SMEs it is a mean to increase its competitiveness thus of the potential
in improving the firm itself.
Statistical data has confirmed
that the countries which in 70s and 80s had invested in high technological
sectors have now a lower unemployment rate compared to other industrialized
countries. This implies that the new entreprises will require internal
reorganisation, but this is a step needed with every technological innovation.
Some European surveys explain that the Information Society will not only
create additional employment, but also a wide range of problems and difficulties,
especially (but not only) social ones. In particular is necessary ti invest
in services instead of manufacturing industries. We also have to solve
the problem of unemployment in the short run, which at the moment is exceedingly
difficult.
Page 04: Consequences
and advantages caused by the Information Society
Index
Go to the link
page referred to these topics.
Last update: 15 July 2006
|