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Contemplating Roads Less Traveled, by Kevin Hunt
Equality in the Virtual World
Early in the book Gates reiterates the vision he had as a
teenager contemplating the impact of low-cost computers. This
vision is now Microsoft's much-touted corporate mission: "A
computer on every desk and in every home" (p. 4). Throughout the
book, he would like us to believe that his vision is democratic,
that the advances in communication and in access to information
that the information highway will facilitate will enable greater
equality among all the world's citizen's. Indeed, this is how he
describes it:
"We are all created equal in the virtual world, and we can use
this equality to help address some of the sociological problems
that society has yet to solve in the physical world. The network
will not eliminate barriers of prejudice or inequality, but it
will be a powerful force in that direction."
Yet despite this lofty claim, the examples that Gates provides of
how communications technology will be used in the coming years
all point to a scenario in which technology will be pressed into
service primarily to increase the efficiency of a market-driven
business culture populated by what Labor Secretary Robert Reich
calls "symbolic analysts," those employed in professions
involving the creation, manipulation, dissemination, and
brokering of symbols--data, words, oral and visual
representations. Symbolic analysts, according to Reich, include
design engineers, software engineers, investment bankers,
lawyers, public relations executives, and all manner of
consultants: financial, management, organizational, energy, and
so on. All share a common mode of doing work:
"Symbolic analysts often work alone or in small teams, which may
be connected to larger organizations, including worldwide webs.
Teamwork is often critical. Since neither problems nor solutions
cn be defined in advance, frequent and informal conversations
help ensure that insights and discoveries are put to their best
uses and subjected to quick, critical evaluation."
When not conversing with their teammates, symbolic analysts sit
before computer terminals--examining words and numbers, moving
them, altering them, trying out new words and numbers,
formulating and testing hypotheses, designing or strategizing."
(The Work of Nations, p. 179)
This is exactly the type of work that Gates describes over and
over in his musings about vast increases needed in business
productivity:
"Conventionally, businesses share information internally by
exchanging paperwork, placing telephone calls, and/or gathering
around a conference table or white board. Plenty of time and
plenty of expensive face-to-face meetings and presentations are
required to reach good decisions this way." (pp. 141-142)
Therefore, when Gates speaks of increasing the productivity at
work via the information highway and other technologies, he is
really talking about catering to the needs of a limited range of
people. The cadre of symbolic analysts that Gates speaks to make
up only about a fifth of the workforce in the United States, (and
even less of the world's). For Gates, the other four-fifths
occupy the employment landscape that is off the road. But Gates
expresses this in
 other
ways too.
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CMC Magazine / February 1, 1996
