Response to Jeremy Rifkin's 1996
The End of Work: The Decline of the Global Labor Force
and the Dawn of the Post-Market Era.
Kerry Betsold   University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth
"Welcome to Audix, please enter extension and pound sign." "You've got
mail!" "This is a test of the emergency broadcast system." All of these
are common automated responses we have grown accustomed to, even attached
to. I realized more and more reading Rifkin's book just how dependent on
technology we've become. While this doesn't seem like a bad thing as I
sit here typing my paper, talking to a friend on AOL Instant Messenger,
and listening to some music, I know that my future is uncertain. I'm an
English major by choice, and I like it. I don't know where I'll be once
I graduate; I try not to think about it most of the time. But one thing
I do know is that there will always be a demand for people who can think
critically, express themselves on paper (or computer as the case may be),
and can communicate with people. These are the skills I'm hoping to gain
with my degree, not technical skills involved in majors like engineering,
computer science, and biology.
Rifkin paints a bleak picture as he leads from the dawn of the mass
production market to where we'll be going tomorrow. The introduction of
the assembly line in the early twentieth century brought a boom in
production and our economy unlike anything we've seen before. Then in
1941, the first computer was invented. From then on, our commercial
economy has been more and more automated. From the middle of the
twentieth century to today, blue-collar workers have been replaced by
machines at an astounding rate. Rifkin shows examples of AT&T replacing
operators with machines, and a lot of factories have been run solely on
machines for quite some time. As Rifkin said, computers don't need sleep,
they don't eat, they don't complain about work conditions, and they don't
complain about wage increases. What we're moving into today is a new
high-tech world. The consequences of this are still unsure. Some things
that Rifkin highlights are an increase in violence, increase in daily
stress, and the most obvious widening of the gap between rich and poor.
One can only imagine what our world will be like in ten or twenty years.
While reading Rifkin, I found myself having conversations with people
about these issues. Just the other night Sarah, my roommate, and I had
a discussion about this, about our economy, about the staggering numbers
Sarah came up with that show how much money the top ten percent of our
population controls. And while for a minute I thought it was kind of odd
that we were having this discussion, I realized that this is what we're
supposed to be doing. Rifkin probably wrote this book for us to educate
ourselves and open our eyes. After talking, we all felt depressed, most
of us being liberal arts or fine arts majors. But it did make us think.
While looking for summer jobs, I have found a lot of web material that
makes me feel a little better about my decision to change my major, the
various fields that English majors get into, and how I can do almost
anything I want from here. After reading The End of Work, I couldn't
help but feel a little depressed but also a little more aware of what
is going on in our world. I have no doubt that I'll be fine. The world
will not eat me alive; I won't let it. And in twenty years, I think that
no matter where I am or where the world is, most of us will be all right.