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How Has Technology Changed the Way You Do Your Job?

When schools try to give children information about technology that the children can't use at that time but maybe will use 10 years later, it's as if those children are learning a form of a dead language. You learn something and then store it away. The biggest change in technology is that now children are able to acquire knowledge in relation to an immediate interest and an immediate project. For some children, the computer is beginning to offer the freedom of individual creativity.

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Lisa Mangano Berglund
Cofounder of Ambrosia, in Napa Valley, Calif., a company that sells premium Napa and Sonoma wines by direct mail

We're a small business, and technology lets us appear bigger. We run a mail-order wine business, but we create the ambience of being your neighborhood connoisseur, who can help you navigate through the quagmire of wines that are out there.

We keep very limited inventory on hand. Wine has to be stored under ideal conditions, so we leave it at the winery, where the temperature and humidity are strictly monitored. When we take an order, everything is then put into our computer. We can tell people what's in stock, what's hot, and what's got high ratings, and we can look up a customer's purchasing history and make recommendations.

Our entire system is linked together, so when we enter an order on-line for, say, a case of wine, a purchase order prints out automatically, and we fax that directly to the winery. The wine comes to us in a day, and we fill the order.

We are adding a dimension of technology to an industry in which there has been none. It's an industry that's been hands-on and face-to-face, and we're trying to maintain that personalized feeling, but we're taking it a step further.

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Scott Turow
A Chicago-based criminal-defense lawyer and the author of numerous books, including Presumed Innocent and Burden of Proof

I wear two hats, and technology has had an enormous impact on each one. In my life as a lawyer, it's had tremendous applications, going back to the time I started. I was working on a huge case for the federal government, which had an early computer-research system. I could literally do the research of three or four lawyers because I was doing it by computer, and the other side didn't have that advantage. Obviously, that kind of system is now a staple of everybody's practice.

Computers, fax machines, and E-mail, for better or for worse, are the daily tools of most practicing lawyers. For me technology has a particularly significant application because I divide my time between writing and practicing law. Because I can gain access to the firm's database and documents by modem, I can be at home and still discuss documents and drafts with clients and colleagues. I'm saved from that dreadful "If you don't have it in your briefcase, you're just screwed" phenomenon.

And I don't know if I would be a writer were it not for the computer. Over the past 20 years, the most significant change in my life was the computer. I write in a peculiar kind of "gathering" way; for me the initial drafts of a book just do not go in a straight line. I literally write passages from all over the book all over the place, and then face the sometimes monumental task of stitching them together. I don't think I could have given my books such intricate plots if I hadn't had the liberty to go back over my work again to sort of monkey around, experiment, tinker with small details.

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THE INC. FAXPOLL

How Has Technology Changed the Way You Do Your Job? Or Has It?

People working at every level, from the shop floor to the Oval Office, are heralding the coming of a truly interactive, technologically savvy workforce capable of commuting to and from the workplace via the information superhighway. Is it just the ticket for sustaining economic superiority? Or are we looking at a thoroughfare littered with meaningless data and polluted by information overload? What do you think? Fax us your thoughts.

1. Has technology made you more productive?

Yes

No, about the same

No, less productive

2. Has technology made your job more complex?

Yes

No, about the same

No, less complex

3. Where do you do most of your work?

At the company

In my home

On the road

4. Where did you do most of your work five years ago?

At the company

In my home

On the road

5. What percentage of your employees work at home?

0% 51%-60%

1%-10% 61%-70%

11%-20% 71%-80%

21%-30% 81%-90%

31%-40% 91%-99%

41%-50% 100%

6. Has technology changed the way you think about business? If so, how? If not, why not?

7. Has technology changed the way you do your job? If so, how? If not, why not?

8. Optional:

Name

Company name

Company size

Very small Midsize

Small Big

Small-midsize Very big

Phone

Fax

Internet