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at today. As one observer put it, “In the next 40 years analytics systems
will replace much of what the knowledge worker does today” (Dignan
2011a). This conclusion draws from another Gartner presentation, which
maintained that cloud computing and analytics will lead to massive job
elimination and increasing polarization in the workforce (ibid.). We are
beginning to see this happening today as colleges and universities rely
more on online education to deliver curricula, including the spread of
massive open online courses (MOOCs) (Lewin 2013; Chronicle of Higher
Education 2013). Moreover, while MOOCs get the attention, we tend to
neglect elementary and secondary schools where it is expected that the
cloud will take up 35 percent of annual budgets by 2017 (Nagel 2013).
Librarians are giving way to automated systems that deliver e-documents
from the cloud (Goldner 2010). 7 The journalism profession is in rapid
decline as print advertising has evaporated and freelance and unpaid or
low-paid intern workers replace full-time reporters. Moreover, centralized
editing from the cloud is replacing editorial staff associated with speciic
publications (Pew Research Center 2013). There is an inevitable decline
in the quality of work for these and other professions whose labor can
be centralized and concentrated in the cloud. But it appears that institu-
tions are willing to accept some erosion in quality for massive savings in
labor costs.
Cloud computing essentially deepens and extends opportunities to
eliminate jobs and restructure the workforce. Whereas technology once
only displaced workers in industrial settings, it began to be deployed to
eliminate knowledge workers in the 1970s, at a time when accelerating
energy costs and the emergence of industrial centers in non-Western
societies challenged companies to cut costs and restructure by drawing
on a global workforce. Combined with the growing analytical capabilities
of computer systems that give new life to the “scientiic management”
of the workplace, the cloud is creating opportunities to eliminate several
levels of decision makers in organizations (Lohr 2013b). Already there is
widespread fear in IT and human resources departments that job loss is
inevitable and, where jobs are saved, control will be lost because companies
will rely on automated decision-making systems based on big-data ana-
lytics (Linthicum 2013b)—hence the conclusions of the Gartner experts
about the erosion in jobs, including at most levels of management, and
the polarization in the workforce between those in low-skilled/low-pay
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