No subject

To the question: What in your opinion will be radically changed in your
professional life and in your personal life as a result of the
globalization of the information society?

Over the past twenty years or so, many in the developing world have
experienced globalization as increased employment opportunities from the
capital investment from G8 countries’ multinationals.  The mobility of
capital is accompanied by the transfer of knowledge as manufacturing
know-how is moved “off-shore”, i.e. away from the western countries and
Japan, to those countries that offer low wages, tax holidays, lax
environmental and social requirements.  The U.S. has pursued this
aggressively in the 1980s and helped create the “Asian tigers” which were
able to ride the information technology (IT) boom.  

In the mid 1990s, up to early 2000s, the IT boom broadened to include the
telecommunications and Internet sectors.  The IT boom brought many people
to North America into the IT field, including many people from overseas. 
With the recession in place and the IT bust, there are several hundreds of
thousands of IT professionals without employment – this is exacerbated by
the transfer of IT jobs to India, China, and other parts of the world,
where there are large pools of skilled IT people, which are augmented by
those who have returned from North America. 

I rode the IT boom and bust.  Many IT jobs will never come back and it is
my professional responsibility to re-train for new skills that will enable
me to work as an information specialist.  To thrive in the future, one
must be highly motivated, adaptable and mobile. It will be a challenging
adventure, as I think re-training and acquisition of new skills will be
needed on a regular basis, as the “information society” will continuously
evolve as long as the “markets” search for the lowest cost of production
in the world and thereby impact the social and political environments in
North America.