In the early 1980's what was happening was clear: technologies were replacing people, aided by popular dogma of the day.
Specifically, voice mail and word processors doomed secretaries and receptionists to near oblivion.
(In a feminist environment, who wanted to be a "secretary," anyway? Wasn't the movie, now a musical, "9 to 5" filmed in the 80's?)
Back in the days when "big hair" was at its biggest, the litmus test of even the most minimal professional business presence was having a "live" operator answer your phone.
Suddenly, electronic sentries did that. They filtered calls and discouraged trespassers without fatigue, and they did it cheaply, never calling in, sick.
Technology started gobbling-up the organizational food chain. The ranks of middle managers were thinned dramatically, like herds of lame caribou.
Their role, you might recall, was to be the go-betweens, carrying communications up and down corporate ladders.
Email helped to shuttle these folks off to Happy Acres.
And the latest victims of automation seem to be writers and editors, along with music companies and big-time newspapers and book publishers.
Now that amateur journalists have blogs, and aspiring novelists have e-books, the corner copy shop, and printing on demand, what is to become of editors? Aren't they the go-betweens, the doomed sentries and secretaries of literature?
Microsoft Word just helped me to repair the flaws in the preceding paragraph. Like voice mail, it performed automatically, without sentiment, and without charge, its installation costs having been retired long ago. While Word makes silly suggestions, on occasion, it is still doing the work of a copy editor, without the persnickety attitude and schoolmarmish suffocation so typical of its human predecessors.
Editors seem to genuinely like their jobs, even if they are redundant in our technological age. So, they aren't going down without a fight.
In their own blogs and in online discussions they are fighting against the incursion of today's hoards that can't distinguish a plural from a possessive.
In a great battle of Grammarians versus Barbarians, editors are raging against the doppelgangers that are slaying the language.
Who will win?
My money is on technologists, the arms dealers of today's occupational battles. After all, they are among the few that are still profiting in today's anorexic economy.
Dr. Gary S. Goodman is a top speaker, negotiation consultant, attorney, real estate broker, TV and radio commentator and the best-selling author of 12 books, including SIX-FIGURE CONSULTING: HOW TO HAVE A GREAT SECOND CAREER. He is the creator of Nightingale-Conant's successful audio seminar: THE LAW OF LARGE NUMBERS: HOW TO MAKE SUCCESS INEVITABLE. See: http://www.nightingale.com/prod_detail~product~Law_Large_Numbers.aspx His original class, "Best Practices in Negotiation," is offered at UCLA & UC Berkeley Extension and at a number of other fine universities and organizations.
See: http://www.unex.berkeley.edu/cat/course1524.html
Gary conducts seminars and convention presentations around the world and can be reached at: gary@customersatisfaction.com
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