From Ubiquity, a journal of the Association for Computing Machinery, an interview with Abbe Mowshowitz, the person generally credited with originating the term ‘virtual organization.’ Anyone in the workplace during the past 15 years will recognize the forces he is describing. More freightening, yet IMHO no less accurate , is the future he describes, one of ‘virtual feudalism’ where
“Being short of money, central governments will continue to shift responsibility for social programs to local government, without regard to the availability of funds. The US government will reduce grants to the states, without at the same time reducing the states’ responsibilities for health and welfare. The states in turn will have revenue shortages, and shift the responsibilities to the counties, cities and local communities. The local communities will be stuck with the burdens but they won’t have the funds or the taxing authority to handle the problems. This shift is just one implication of the growing shortage of government revenues accompanying fundamental changes in the political economy. Resources are being placed out of reach and government is playing a shell game. In the near term, probably nobody will pick up the slack. That means reduced funding for education, for health insurance or for programs like Medicaid and Medicare. More people in the United States will fall outside the scope of these programs and there will be a higher proportion of people without educational opportunities, without medical insurance, and without pension plans. As in earlier periods of history, people will turn to private enterprise to ensure their welfare and security, and the authority of government will diminish.“
Sound familiar?
See also excerpts from his book, Virtual Organization: Toward a Theory of Societal Transformation Stimulated by Information Technology at http://www.acm.org/ubiquity/book/a_mowshowitz_2.html. - SWL
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