Lovely story... I'm not sure that I sent this URL along which points to a recent blogpost of mine telling a somewhat similar (and true) story but from a different angle http://gurstein.wordpress.com/2011/06/09/the-dead-hand-of-western-academe-co mmunity-informatics-in-a-less-developed-country-context/ (http://wp.me/pJQl5-6Z)
M -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Mike Spencer Sent: Thursday, June 23, 2011 8:48 PM To: [email protected] Subject: [Futurework] Re: Why some jobs go begging in tough economy Arthur posted a piece by John W. Schoen: > Why some jobs go begging in tough economy > > http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43465034/ns/business-eye_on_the_economy/ >From the article: Darlene Miller, CEO of Permac Industries in South Burnsville, Minn., said the days are long gone when a new hire could learn how to operate machinery on the job. Miller said she would add another half-dozen workers to her payroll of 38 workers - if she could find people skilled at operating the high-tech equipment she recently purchased to boost productivity. "We just can't afford to take the time and the money to hire and someone to just shadow someone else and learn hands-on," she said. "The equipment is just too high-tech to do that." There's a science fiction story published decades ago that captured this. In a moderately distant future, all the brightest kids go to university where, if they do well, they will be assured of prestigious, highly paid jobs with corporate-financed colonies on newly discovered planets. Only what a university education consists of is learning everything there is to know about some piece of incredibly complex, high-tech piece of industrial equipment. The kids are all exultant when they pass the trials -- being able, say, to repair a huge piece of automated mining equipment, in the dark while (literally) up to their waists in a swamp filled with alien monsters, in 30 minutes flat. The curve ball is that, in a few years, this gear will be obsolete, replaced by newer and even more high-tech stuff. The only place to learn the new gear is at the manufacturer-sponsored uni -- certainly not in some remote mining colony. So as soon as the second wave of settlers arrives with the newest gear on board, this cohort of hotshot, highly technical guys will be totally "surplus to needs." The focus of the story, though, is this one kid who isn't doing so great because, well, because he keeps wasting his time getting what we'd call an education. Reads books instead of drilling on diagnosis of a malfunctioning Digital MegaBlivet(tm). The happy ending is that he is noticed by Those Who Are There to Notice and, after failing the corporate trials, is quietly led aside and told that his real education is just beginning, that he has an assured, even more prestigious, career as a real scientist, engineer, analyst, synthesist or whatever. Great for him but all his high-achieving school chums are destined for obsolescence in the predictable future. Age 37, light years from home and redundant. Of *course* our (non-fictional) companies don't want to spend two or three years training someone to use the high-tech gear. In two or three years, the boss will be looking at replacing it with newer, more competitive stuff. - Mike -- Michael Spencer Nova Scotia, Canada .~. /V\ [email protected] /( )\ http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/ ^^-^^ _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
