This is one of nearly a thousand foresight statements shared by people from around the world. To return to the Voices of the People home page or to refine your search, click here.
Name: Mark Pettigrew
Bio: Immersive Systems Developer
Area of Expertise: Technology Developer/Administrator
Topic: General, Overarching Remarks
Headline: The Silicon Ceiling
Nutshell: A more Internet-connected society will reduce and possibly remove many of the factors that allow people to be singled out.
Vision:So much time has been spent in the past years on doing away with the glass ceiling. Laws and statutes were designed to level the playing field.
The Internet removes many; if not all of the conditions that lead to exclusion – except one: ABILITY.
The Internet will provide us with the opportunity to focus solely on what people can do without worrying about who people are.
While this will invariably lead to problems surrounding motivation, the end result of a person’s work will be the ultimate deciding factor of success.
Tele-commuting will not happen fast or to the degree that many hope, but it will happen. Getting yourself to your virtual workspace and plugging in to this and other immersive environments will necessitate the need for virtual personae.
Who will you be? What will you look like? Our clothes and make-up define our appearance in the physical world and they change daily. Will our suite of avatars do the same in the coming decades?
The glass ceiling of yesterday will be replaced with the silicon ceiling of today.
Date Submitted: January 28, 2005
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