Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
English in grade school, watch American TV shows, and are familiar with American
idoms. In 2011 the Philippines, with 400,000 call center employees, surpassed India, with
350,000 call center employees, to become the top offshore site for call centers. Filipino
workers earn about $300 a month, slightly more than Indian call center employees, who
make about $250 a month, but much less than American call center workers, who start
at about $1,700 a month [2].
The globalization of the job market is just one of many changes that information
technology and automation have brought to the workplace. In this chapter we examine
a variety of moral problems brought about by workplace changes. First we consider the
following question: Does automation increase unemployment? Some evidence supports
an affirmative answer to the question, but other evidence suggests that automation
actually creates more jobs than it replaces. There is no doubt that automation has led to
enormous increases in productivity. That leads us to our second question: If productivity
has increased so much, why is everyone working so hard? We examine how we have
chosen to use our extra productivity.
Some futurists warn that advances in artificial intelligence and robotics will lead
to massive unemployment in the not-too-distant future. We consider the morality of
attempting to construct highly intelligent machines.
More mundane information technology has already led to significant changes in the
way companies organize themselves. It has also led to an increase in telework (also called
telecommuting), the use of temporary workers, workplace monitoring, and distributed,
multinational teams. We consider how these changes have improved and harmed the
lives of individual workers.
Globalization is now a fact of life. Some organizations are convinced globalization
benefits everyone in the world, the poor as well as the rich. Others are certain that
globalization harms everyone in the world. We present the arguments offered by each
side to support its position. We also focus on the contentious issue of foreign IT workers
in the United States.
Many view those without access to information technology as being severely disad-
vantaged. The term “digital divide” refers to the opportunity gap brought about because
some people do not have access to modern information technology, particularly the In-
ternet. We look at evidence of the digital divide and study two fundamentally different
models of how new technologies are diffused through a society.
Information technology has made it easier for an unequal share of benefits to ac-
cumulate in the hands of a few top performers, leading some to call this the “winner-
take-all society.” We explore the factors creating the winner-take-all phenomenon, the
economic problems it causes, and potential remedies.
Many science fiction writers have described future worlds where machines do much of
the noncreative work. Some writers paint an optimistic view of these worlds. In Isaac
