With these as the backdrop, the paper devotes attention to "the two most important" GPTs to date, viz. electricity and information technology (IT). Despite satisfying the above criteria, the two GPTs have important differences, state the authors.

IT doesn't enjoy the broad acceptance that electrification has received, though it is "technologically more revolutionary". IT's innovation measures, in terms of patents and trademarks, are more in comparison to the other GPT.

"The price of IT is falling 100 times faster than did the price of electricity," but `productivity slowdown' is more pronounced in IT, opine the authors.

There has been "no comparable sudden collapse of the stock market," to the credit of electricity.

But the authors study the "similarities between the two epochs" to infer what to expect from "the next GPT" and how it will impact economies "when it comes along."

If it comes along...

Three effects of offshoring

ANOTHER paper that IT buffs may be interested in is `Offshoring in a knowledge economy' by Pol Antràs, Luis Garicano and Esteban Rossi-Hansberg.

To the authors, globalisation is "a process that enables the formation of international teams" into which "agents with heterogeneous abilities" get sorted competitively.

The paper shows that characteristics of international offshoring depend on the state of communication technologies: "the lower the communication costs, the higher is the amount of international offshoring, but the lower is its quality."

There are also three effects on the wage structure and economic organisation, which the authors point out. First is the `compositional effect' or `occupational choice effect' that shows in "the proportion of managers in the economy of each country". Second is the `competition effect' arising because of changes in "relative supply" of skilled and low-skilled workers, and manifesting as changes in "the unit skill prices".

And third is the `complementarity effect' that the authors consider `novel' in their theory; they argue that "globalisation increases the difference in ability between the manager assigned to a low and a high-skill worker, and as a result raises the difference between the marginal productivities of their skill." A case, that is, for a `matched employee-employer data' to study differences in `returns to skill'.

IS ethics is needed

SHOSHANA Altschuller's recent paper from Zicklin School of Business, New York, is on an unusual topic: IS ethics. Thus, in `Developing an IT view-based framework for IS ethics research' she writes, "Within each revolutionary use for an information system (IS), there is potential for a revolutionary application of age-old ethics. As information systems become even more strongly integrated into daily routines, uncertainty is experienced as morally questionable situations involving those systems are continually encountered (Mumford, 2003)." Baazee case is an example.

From the paper, I learn that the best known classification of "concerns that make up IS ethics" is PAPA: an acronym for Privacy, Accuracy, Property, and Accessibility, as R.O. Mason said in 1986. "Employee monitoring, archiving of communications, merging databases among companies, and so on" are instances that Shoshana lists under `privacy' issues.

Ethics in `accuracy' become critical where information is used by "systems that make financial decisions, weather pattern predictions, aircraft flight decisions, medical assessments, or wartime combat judgments" because "inaccuracies could potentially have devastating effects." Such as flawed `intelligence' on WMD in Iraq? Under `property' are concerns such as "softlifting, and copying of digital art forms". To the common notion of `accessibility' as the bridge between digital divide, Shoshana adds worries such as "loss of jobs and job tasks due to evolving computer system uses".

That there are five views IS research falls into, is an insight from Orlikowski and Iacono cited in the paper. First is the `tool view', where IT is seen "as a tool to affect, alter or transform different aspects of organisations and society." Second comes the `proxy view' where the focus is on "a key element" such as perception, or capital, "that is understood to represent or stand for the essential aspect, property, or value" of IT.

`Ensemble view' comes as the third, to study "how social influences affect" both introduction and acceptance of IT in a society and how user groups interact with IT. The fourth is the `computational view' that busies itself with the capabilities of IT. And last is the `nominal view' where IT "takes a back seat in the research and is essentially absent as a variable." Now, what's your view?

As easy as 01 10 11

DO you know what COHUM is? Ha-ha, it's computer-oriented humour. Linda Weiser and Hershey H. Friedman study the subject quite seriously in a paper that's again from Zicklin School.

"The computer industry has always seemed to breed its own special brand of humour {minus} intelligent, somewhat superior, and slyly subversive {minus} even from its very earliest days," write the authors.

"This is a field whose jargon can be serious and humorous at the same time, e.g., a nibble is half a byte."

COHUM is studied under five categories: First, `the computer against the world' insists on "anthropomorphic representations of computers as mighty, powerful and omniscient".

Second is the `users vs computer professionals' type, arising out of "common shared experience of having to deal with supercilious know-it-alls who think all users are morons."

The opposite, that is, `computer professionals vs users' is the third category, where "users are incredibly naïve individuals" who use the CD drive as a cup-holder! Fourth comes `antiestablishment humour', which is quite subversive, as your HR man would acknowledge fumingly, if only he were to know.

And last is `knowledge-based humour' relying on "shared knowledge between the narrator and the audience" - such as saying, "It's as easy as 01 10 11."

ITworks@TheHindu.co.in

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