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Thanks to the efforts of many people all over the world the Net commerce and work is still not limited as their off-line counterparts. Zero taxes attract more and more of the trade turnover. The Stock Exchange and Currency Exchange systems already inculcated in the telecommunication world. With decreased transaction costs, development of telecommunications and computers the efficiency of these financial spheres is quickly increasing.
Electronic auctions have already came to reality. On AOLtm auctions there are 600 000 bids in different categories now. Surplus directtm and tens other electronic auctions are now in the Internet. This is a dream of classic economists – perfect market with all relevant information freely available. With continuous decrease in transportation costs this can make every market global and make competition perfect, stopping the monopolies. One example is Microsofttm. Can we imagine that it will not succeed in stopping alternative OSes and browsers several years ago, without Internet? Free communications greatly increase the competitiveness of any product. Most on-line shops can offer lower prices for all products than their off-line colleagues can. Distant work makes sexual and race discrimination very difficult and almost impossible. How can you behave badly toward your colleague if you only read his e-mails? How the program written by Chinese is worse than the one written by French? And all harassment will be logged, documented and backed up on a tape drive to be used in the Court.
Also it will provide new unique opportunities for unable people. Nobody will knew about his inabilities and nobody will keep him away from the job.
But the problem with results measuring still remains. How can we train managers and change their minds in order to deal with telework? What I think is that all internal relations need to be built on a completely new basis. The basis of mutual respect and trust. How can "white collars" remain superior over a worker if they are communicating over the computer network? How superiority can survive in the environment where both worker and manager have the same access to information? I am sure this is impossible without personal pressure of managers. So, this will surely lead to a democratisation in the work.
Next problem is that telework isn't as universal as we want. It isn't possible for any job: for example, you won't agree with a distant driving of your taxi in rush hour. The control is necessary when human lives depends on the worker. And until we are not sure that communications will be 100% error free, we cannot avoid physical presence of worker. An example is distant control of an aircraft. Modern aircrafts can take off and land without anybody on board, but human pilots should be available for emergency case. Several pilots in the airport could work for tens of aircrafts, helping them to take off and land safely, then giving several hours of direct flight to a machine. But the storm can terminate the communications and lead to human deaths in non-controllable plane. This shows us how careful we need to be with a new power that computers and communications give us.
In some areas we can't cope without live human being, but… The situation changes. Right now the technologies are available that can change the whole global economy. I mean telesales. This includes all TV presentations, on-line stores, direct mailing. There was a bad idea of paying too much attention to a customer. In the shop there is always a sales manager, available for questions, but most time doing nothing. And he cannot new everything about all the products he is supposed to sale. The situation is different in a modern on-line store. All the information about the product is available in clear form. This can be a multimedia presentation, a chart, table or just a plain text. If additional information is necessary, then the customer can initiate chat session with a competent person, or ask for an e-mail response. Minimised costs. Maximised convenience. Other spheres of physical presence are special services, including police and ambulance, rescuers and fire-fighters. All these jobs require a trained strong and hardy person, physically presenting on the place.
Реферат опубликован: 16/02/2007