linguistic structures - Professor Binkert's Webpage - Oakland ...

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the average number sent will be 39 (Email Statistics Report, 2010, Sara Radicati, The Radicati
Group, Inc., April, 2010). Adding instant messaging and social networking, it becomes clear that
workers must handle a massive amount of data.
Again, different sources provide different statistics; yet, an undeniable fact is that the internet has
fostered an explosion in the amount of information that is available virtually instantaneously. “Each
year the world produces 800 MB of data per person. It would take approximately 30 feet of shelf
space to hold that amount of information in books. The amount of data produced each year would
fill 37,000 libraries the size of the Library of Congress” (How Much Information Is There? Mark
Shead, 2007; www.productivity501.com). Recent lapses from agencies like Homeland Security, the
CIA, and the FBI have shown alarmingly how easy it is for important communiques to get lost in
the avalanche of data even though such agencies employ experts in surveillance. While national
security is rarely at stake in office emails, the point is clear: to be successful, modern workers need
to be able to digest, sort, organize, and prioritize massive amounts of information efficiently and
expertly.
The Problems Facing Today’s Workers
Another factor that students should consider in selecting a program of study involves the nature of
the problems that workers face on a routine basis in the 21st century. Today’s problems are
invariably complex, multi-faceted, and subtle. It used to be the case that one could formulate a
problem into a relatively well-defined and stable statement, that one would know when a satisfactory
solution was reached, and that one could clearly evaluate the solution objectively as being good or
bad, or right or wrong. That is no longer the case for many problems facing society, government,
and businesses such as the following:
(3) a. Should colleagues be disciplined if they are caught using drugs?
b. How should we deal with crime and violence in our schools?
c. How can we make air travel safe from terrorism?
d. Should people be fired if it is discovered that they are illegal aliens?
e. How can we improve the gas mileage of family cars?
f. Should same sex partners have medical benefits like married couples?
g. How should we improve the language programs in US schools?
As these examples indicate, today’s problems are frequently ill-defined and ambiguous. For
example, in (3a), the question raises other questions like the following: How much drugs, What
kinds of drugs, Are they prescription drugs, Is alcohol included, Is it a first offense, and so on.
Often, today’s problems are associated with strong moral, social, political and professional issues.
For example, it is not possible to talk about preventing violence in schools (3b) or about making air
travel safer (3c) without also considering whether increased surveillance will destroy individual
freedoms or whether certain policies will lead to stereotyping groups on the basis of color or
ethnicity. In some instances such as (3d), there is little consensus about what the problem is, let
alone how to resolve it. Overall, today’s problems are rarely fixed and stable; they involve sets of