Job transformation in the age of the net

Reviewer: Rudolph E. Hirsch

The authors, whose professional focus appears to include designing and administering surveys, wanted to find out how the Internet will change our work. As respondents they selected “technopioneers,” that is, “people on the cutting edge,” on the probably sound assumption that near-term changes that affect them often become long-term changes for the rest of us. The survey design and respondent recruitment methods are reported in detail, perhaps too much detail for IT professionals. Findings are briefly given for two groups of technopioneers: newspaper reporters and teachers. The Internet provides newspaper reporters with new data capture and manipulation tools and techniques. Reporters progressive enough to use them are able to ask better questions, and not merely to report the answers. They will be less dependent on the “informed sources” of yesteryear, because they can now retrieve at least some of the information they need for themselves. Teachers using the Internet find it useful as a source of lesson plans, project ideas, and contents. Their traditional expert role is now widened to include advising students on how to use the Internet for their courses and research. The Internet is also useful for teacher-student communication. Too many of us remember how difficult it often was to maintain good contacts with our professors. This paper would have been more interesting to IT professionals if it had listed all of the technopioneer categories surveyed, not just two, and had summarized the results for each category. Those of us who are philosophically minded would also have liked to see a prediction of what will happen to job categories such as journalist and librarian once the inevitable day arrives when the Internet becomes as ubiquitous as telephones and television already are.