Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!ucsd!sdcsvax!ucsdhub!hp-sdd!hplabs!hplabsz!taylor
From: haste+@andrew.cmu.edu (Dani Zweig)
Newsgroups: comp.society
Subject: Re: Effect of Computers on Society at Large
Message-ID: <1826@hplabsz.HPL.HP.COM>
Date: 4 Apr 88 06:47:03 GMT
Sender: taylor@hplabsz.HPL.HP.COM
Lines: 31
Approved: taylor@hplabs

Ralph J. Marshall wrote:

> ... I think it will become increasingly difficult to get a decent job 
> in this country if you are unable to even USE a computer, let alone 
> program one....dooming large numbers of people to menial labor or 
> unemployment in a workplace with fewer and fewer 'traditional' jobs ?

The phrase "use a computer" is ill-defined.  In many ways computers are
becoming easier and easier for non-specialists to use.  Functional literacy 
is often optional.  Is the claim that people won't be able to get jobs as
cashiers because they don't know how to run a light pen over a package?  
Seems improbable.  That people won't be able to get jobs as bank tellers 
unless they're taught to use the bank's terminals?  Sounds familiar, but not
alarming.

It seems to me that the sum total of the argument is that ex-steelworkers and
ex-carpenters and ex-automobile-workers are not going to get middle management
jobs if they are not computer literate.  And, sure enough, they aren't getting
them.  Of course, other people *are* getting them.

> ... it made me wonder about the future for people who are _already_ short 
> of skills needed to find a job.

There aren't large numbers of jobs (on a national scale) going begging 
because people don't have the skills to fill them.  It would be nice if 
there were.  So until more jobs are created, giving people who are "already 
short of skills" the requisite skills is the democratic thing to do -- it 
would increase the number of people in competition for the scarce good 
jobs -- but it wouldn't decrease the number of people going *without* those 
jobs.

Dani Zweig