[IP] THE NEW ECONOMY IS BACK -- BUT NOT THE JOBS

[Dave Farber <dave@farber.net>]

Delivered-To: dfarber+@ux13.sp.cs.cmu.edu
Date: Mon, 08 Dec 2003 19:55:50 -0800
From: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne@warpspeed.com>


THE NEW ECONOMY IS BACK -- BUT NOT THE JOBS

The latest economic indicators -- rising productivity, fewer jobs -- could
signal a vindication for all those IT managers who spent big bucks on
technology improvements in the last decade, says Fortune columnist David
Kirkpatrick: "We may be entering the second great technology boom. The
first one, of the late '90s, was a boom in expectations, which pushed up
stock valuations and investor enthusiasm in the belief that the new
technologies born of the Internet would fundamentally transform the
economy? Contrary to what over-eager investors thought in the '90s, the
users of the technology, not the producers, will be the bigger
beneficiaries." Comparing today's corporate processes with those existing
the last time the U.S. emerged from a recession, there are striking
differences. Today, most large manufacturers have built a significant,
sophisticated enterprise resource planning (ERP) infrastructure to automate
the supply chain and provide real-time data on inventory and profits.
E-commerce is now routine -- both for manufacturing giants and for
consumers. Communication among workers both within corporations and between
companies is now automated via e-mail and Web portals, speeding the
implementation of corporate edicts and the fulfillment of business orders.
Meanwhile the casualty of all this efficiency has been jobs -- about 2
million eliminated in the last two years in the U.S. as companies
streamline processes and outsource functions to overseas workers. And
that's not likely to change, says Kirkpatrick, who warns, "To keep your job
in this new world, you'd better be doing something that benefits from a
digitized economy." (Fortune.com 4 Dec 2003)

<http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/ptech/12/04/fortune.ff.real.boom/index.html>

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