SOC 103 Chapter Notes - Chapter 8: Jeremy Rifkin, Tim Wu, Telecommuting

• School: Ryerson University
• Department: Sociology
• Course: SOC 103
• Professor: Zabedia Nazim

Document Summary

Are very few professions in western societies that have not been transformed in some way by technological innovation. Engineering jobs require inventing, designing, producing, or fine-tuning new machines or communications careers that place constant demands on network connectivity and engagement. Nurses and doctors use portable devices to access patient information, self-checkout systems reduce the demand for grocery store cashiers, and the introduction of new machines continually reshape the manufacturing sector. In the introduction to his book progress without people (1995), the technological historian. Ask the printers, postal workers, bank tellers, telephone operators, office workers, grocery clerks, airline reservation agents, warehouse workers, autoworkers, steelworkers, dockworkers if you can find them. Computer-aided manufacturing, robotics, computer inventories, automated switchboards and tellers, telecommunications technologies, all have been used to displace and replace people, to enable employers to reduce labour costs, contract-out, relocate operations. (p. xii) Journalism has been transformed by the internet and icts, and many within that profession have faced layoffs and downsizing.