Page 03: Sustainable development, teleworking and unemployment 
 

        We have analyzed three important aspects of our society that will be increasingly modified by the Information Society and telematic networks: sustainable development, teleworking as a new discipline of work that must function alongside traditional ones, and the important question of unemployment: will telematic networks increase or decrease job opportunities? In the first aspect the solution is to dematerialize our society, to think of commodities not in a physical way, of atoms, but in a virtual way, or telematic, which means of bits. 
        Thanks to surveys, we think that teleworking is a job practice that will be placed alongside  traditional ones, and that it is a practice that will be increasingly common, thanks to technology and the change in the attitudes of entrepreneurs. Yet this will not solve the problem of unemployment. We believe it will not have a great impact on the SMEs for quite a long time, because some conditions which are needed can hardly be found in a small enterprise, for example a sufficiently high number of workers, branches of the enterprise which are geographically separated, and the necessity for the continuous upgrading of the firm's data in real time. In regards to unemployment, it should be remembered that telematic networks will not create additional unemployment, but like all technological innovations, it will instead bring about a different redistribution of job skills, a new composition of workers and a different idea of work itself. The Internet could surely be (and for many of us, is already) a great potential in employment, and for the SMEs it is a mean to increase its competitiveness thus of the potential in improving the firm itself. 
        Statistical data has confirmed that the countries which in 70s and 80s had invested in high technological sectors have now a lower unemployment rate compared to other industrialized countries. This implies that the new entreprises will require internal reorganisation, but this is a step needed with every technological innovation. Some European surveys explain that the Information Society will not only create additional employment, but also a wide range of problems and difficulties, especially (but not only) social ones. In particular is necessary ti invest in services instead of manufacturing industries. We also have to solve the problem of unemployment in the short run, which at the moment is exceedingly difficult. 



Page 04: Consequences and advantages caused by the Information Society 

Index
 

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Last update: 15 July 2006