Born in the late 70´s, I´m part of the 'coca-cola generation', Atari, walkman and so many other revolutions through which society had lived until nowadays. It was only in 1997, when I started studying Psychology in college, that I first used the computer strictly to academic goals. Back in those days, I remember very well, there were just a few people who own 'the machines' in their homes, and those who had it were considered "lords in the land of the poors" (a brazilian portuguese saying for having what everybody doesn´t). Internet was still crawling, only to file, process and transfer institutional data. Twitter, Facebook, Google, MSN??? None of these existed and people would be gladly happy with a mobile phone that had a fair range of signal.
I don´t need to say how fast and painful were the changes that I experimented through college! Connections, providers, servers, users and, finally, 'internauts' started to show up in the surface.
Still in college I had a class about the influence of internet in people´s lives. Obviously, like any other freshman, I didn´t take seriously the teacher arguements (despite all her efforts to make it interesting!). Not that I didn´t pay attention nor put enough effort on it. Simply, I didn´t realize the revolution that was about to come. The teacher, a lady in her fifties, perceived from far away the changes that were coming. I was already part of the revolution, without knowing it.
But, after all, what does internet, digital revolution and the virtual world have to do with Careers and Professions?
Well, there are so many intersections between the new paradigm of virtuality and the job market. To start with the huge amount of new jobs created from the need of technological especialization and technical knowledge of computers and data network analysis. And the relation between the market and the digital world never stopped growing. From the creation of new jobs, we walked through the globalization of information, imediate access to news around the globe, chat-rooms, sites and domains in which you can find almost everything - from companies advertising services/ products and hiring people online, to personal profiles and institutions located in the end of the world.
It´s obvious, therefore, the transforming relation between internet and the job market. However, like any other revolution or transforming action, the velocity of those changes brought by the digitalized world caused consequences to people´s lives. Today it´s not easy to live without a mobilephone, who would say not having a profile on Facebook! The person who isn´t searchable in one of these domaines it´s soon treated like old-fashioned or, at the worse case scenario, as anti-social. That means, or you join or you join! It seems that are no other options for those who prefer a 'eye to eye' meeting to solve any issue.
Time and space - conditioning variables of life since human beings are considered humans - have grown in elasticity and virtual potential never seen before. This elasticity allowed us to interact in different levels of relationship with people in different time and space from ours. This virtual potential have driven us in different directions, different rhythms and frequences that search to conciliate personal, professional, family and social lives on the same time and space.
Certainly, there are many micro-revolutions caused by the digitalization and virtuality of life - and, therefore, of the two conditioning variables of life, time and space.
Their effects upon professional life are vast and worthy of a closer look:
1. Along with the development of new technologies and work tools, job options have increased together with courses offered by institutions, causing great confusion and anxiety over the thousands of freshmen starting college.
2. The velocity of sharing ideas and easy ways to obtain information online collaborate to a progressive isolation of people, once it´s no longer necessary to go anywhere to 'find things'.
3. The constant updating of services and gadgets operates a chain reaction of unleashed buying and a feeling of low self esteem if you don´t have the latest mobile equipment or if you don´t share the same gadgets thrown into the market.
4. The expansion of the virtual world configured a new model of professional success: you can sell a product or a service online for U$ 1.00, if you reach the right market on the web you´ll be a millionaire from night to day. That means, we created the model of "instant tangible success".
5. More and more people are searching for intelectualized jobs, which depend in great deal of abstract and logical-rational reasoning, interacting with machines instead of people, and leaving aside the affective and relational aspects envolved in the work.
The effects of virtuality and digitalization of society are vast. Far way from me to demonize or careless criticize this revolution which i´m part of and almost integraly support: I have a Facebook profile, I share Tweets and constantly use Skype to communicate with friends from abroad. No doubt, we need to observe the balance between the good and harm of using these technologies. A child who doesn´t play with others because she or he has fun only in front of the tv or with the latest games on Playstation, for sure, will have an introspective behaviour and, who knows, a certain amount of discomfort in social interactions.
However, one of the effects that really calls up to me is the professional choice.
I´ve always found great pleasure and a unmatchable feeling of self-realization with manual or handcrafted works. It would give me great satisfaction to see something built from scracthes of ideas and fragments of memory. Dreams had always being a very important part of my life, bringing images and ideas that, still today, I search to discover.
One of these dreams is working on vineyards, where the contact and relation with the Earth and its cycles give me a whole new perspective about time and space.
Today, life passes by fast in the great urban cities, where millions of people gather around pursuing the "dream" of success, of professional and personal achievements. However, they lose contact with their inner time-space and live upon the social rhythm of the companies they work for, trying to accumulate richness at all costs. Even if it means their lives.
We should, therefore, seek the balance between rhythms, between inner and external ambients, between ourselves and others. Intangible balance, unreachable, it´s dream and goal at the same time. To know more about how to find it, it´s simple: talk to to someone, face to face.
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