This entry is related to assigned readings for the week of 07 January, 2002 for CTL1602 at OISE/UT

Peter Drucker's article from the Atlantic Monthly (Oct/99)
Beyond the Information Revolution tells us that the information revolution is actually a knowledge revolution. This revolution means more and more organizations rely on knowledge workers to be successful.

Attracting and keeping these workers is crucial for successful knowledge-based organizations. Furthermore, Drucker tells us, attempting to bribe the knowledge worker will "simply not work." Drucker closes his article with a prescription for motivating those within knowledge-based industries:

Increasingly, performance in these new knowledge-based industries will come to depend on running the institution so as to attract, hold, and motivate knowledge workers. When this can no longer be done by satisfying knowledge workers' greed, as we are now trying to do, it will have to be done by satisfying their values, and by giving them social recognition and social power. It will have to be done by turning them from subordinates into fellow executives, and from employees, however well paid, into partners.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Internet Paradox: A Social Technology That Reduces Social Involvement and Psychological Well-Being?
Robert Kraut and Vicki Lundmark; Michael Patterson and Sara Kiesler; Tridas Mukopadhyay; William Scherlis
Carnegie Mellon University

This paper is ripe with references and graphs relating the outcomes of measures and experiments, and I need more time with it. So far, I've been struck by what may be contradictions -- maybe this can be attributed to the paradoxical nature of the Internet;)
--
ADDED: 09Jan02
I'm finally getting back to the paradox.

The paper's abstract closes with:

"In this sample, the Internet was used extensively for communication. Nonetheless, greater use of the Internet was associated with declines in participants' communication with family members in the household, declines in the size of their social circle, and increases in their depression and loneliness. These findings have implications for research, for public policy, and for the design of technology."

I'll be back with a post regarding the "implications" listed.