Carnoy, Professor of Education and Economics at Stanford University, argues that even though global competition and the spread of information technology have pushed businesses to become more efficient by reorganizing work around decentralized management and less permanent employment, there is a price to pay for this labor market flexibility. In the year 2000 the idiosyncrasies of Silicon Valley in the 1970s are becoming the dominant American culture of work-and they are also spreading quickly to other countries.
Young people move from job to job without blinking an eye.
They are as detached from their workplace as they are from their government and their community. Their world has speeded up. Families don't mean the same thing as a generation ago, especially for the children growing up in them. With both parents working and working longer hours, already unstable families are less able to invest time in their kids. We have to develop new institutions through which individuals can reconnect to others in our fast-paced, high risk society.