Sam Lanfranco's comment, below, is worth serious reflection,
particularly his last sentence (copied up, here):
The challenge is to keep the skilled personnel in service for local
society.
There is a famous line which goes something like this How do you keep
them down on the farm after they have seen Paris. Society is even more
mobile today. The cell phone, also mentioned by Sam, is a paradigmatic
example. It is expected that nearly all ICT services will be
deliverable, mobile, in the foreseeable future. Today, on a cell, I can
be located by GPS, check on jobs, converse, operate my tablet PC, turn
on my dinner at home, etc. All of this without being attached to a wire
(power cord recharging is excepted). Thus, skilled ICT persons are not
even bound by space. Nor are many jobs bounded by space as we see with
the concern in the US with off-shore ICT jobs and other white collar
work increasing and not just manufacturing jobs.
Every company has faced this issue. Expending resources to train skilled
personnel is not a guarantee that they will remain or even that the
company will need them in the future. The US military is faced with this
fact, having offered to provide college programs as inducements for
individuals to join.
It seems to me that the problem has been turned upside down. We need a
livable and desirable community to induce individuals to either not
leave, or in some cases, return or locate in that community. If that
exists, then the needed skills will come and/or skilled individuals will
remain. In the US we have a group of highly qualified individuals who
move to remote locations because they find them attractive, and the
infrastructure support (e.g. broad band access) and good mobility
support them in these spaces.
ICT's are not a magic bullet nor are they like a narcotic which compels
an individual or a business to become obligated or committed to a
location. They are only one of many components that make a community
desirable, though some may see them as of greater importance than other
quality of life indicators. One has to make sure that we do not see
these like the proverbial hammer where all problems begin to look like
nails.
One must remember the prefix on this list, 'GKD', Global Knowledge for
Development. Remember that at one time trains had to stop for water and
fuel, causing towns to be built at these stations. When new knowledge
built trains which did not need to stop, many of these towns faded and
disappeared. There is no guarantee that with highly mobile, wireless
ICT's that communities which have always existed, should remain where
they are in the future. ICT's may lead to a creative destruction and
reallocation of human resources as new opportunities outweigh past
static communities. At one time, many groups of humans were nomadic.
Permanance may not be a desirable characteristic, at least as we imagine
it based on our past.
ICT's open new possibilities and do not necessarily favor old patterns
of civilization. We can never go back to a past that never was anymore
than we can reach for a future that never will be. Sam's insightful
statement reflects the concerns of many and these ideas may be built on
rapidly shifting sands.
thoughts?
tom abeles
On June 16, 2004, Sam Lanfranco wrote:
On Tue, June 15, 2004, Femi Oyesanya [EMAIL PROTECTED] posed the
following question to my analysis about the need for organizational
change (Knowledge Mangement Learning Organization Behaviour):
Why then did developing Countries in Africa embrace the typewriter,
mobile phone, and fax machine? I submit, that the notion of
organizational cultural changes as a significant prerequisite for ICT
skill development is flawed.
Femi is correct in this observation. The suggestion was not that
organizational cultural changes are a prerequisite for ICT-enhanced
skill development. The suggestion was that they are a co-requisite if
the local society expects to both effectively utilize those skills, and
to keep those skilled personnel in local residence, for service to the
local society. There is no question that skilled personnel are turning
to ICT-enhanced opportunities on an as can basis. For evidence of
this, one only has to look at how wireless telephony (cell phones) have
raced ahead, and been widely deployed, in contrast to all other forms of
ICT-supported applications. The challenge is to keep the skilled
personnel in service for local society.
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