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METAFORIX MAIL

ON MY MIND: Back to September
IN THE MEDIA: "The 21st Century Corporation"
INFORMATICON: Poverty in the New Economy
CYBERSPEAK: HTML
SITE OF THE DAY: Race in America

Back to September

In discussions of American public education, it is often pointed out that our schools remain tied to an agrarian calendar, even in this post-industrial age. Few students these days are needed to assist with the tasks of growing and harvesting. Nevertheless, most of us take the summer vacation period for granted -- regardless of our professions, occupations, or status with respect to parenthood.

Our ingrained summer-hiatus mindset brings as a corollary the mixed emotions with which many of us approach September. Whether summer has been a slow or busy season, whether we have vacationed in fact or merely in imagination, many of us experience September as both an ending and a beginning -- fraught simultaneously with the sense that time has passed more quickly than we had anticipated, and with the aura of new possibilities.

A highlight of my own summer has been the launch of the Metaforix Web site, along with the inauguration of this newsletter. In the few weeks since the site has gone live, I have learned a great deal about the practicalities of Web site maintenance. I have received several unexpected business and speaking opportunities. And I have corresponded by e-mail with a number of interesting people.

So, if I were assigned that old chestnut of an essay topic, "How I Spend My Summer Vacation," my submission would mostly center on work. It has been engaging, stimulating work, though, and this September feel filled with promise. I hope that you begin this month with a similar sense of promise, and I am glad that you have chosen to join me on this journey.

Cordially,

Lois C. Ambash, Editor
editor@metaforix.com

"The 21st Century Corporation"
Special double issue of Business Week magazine, August 21-August 28, 2000

In a wide-ranging series of articles, Business Week predicts the "look and feel" of corporations that will thrive in the 21st Century. Drawing on the perspectives of corporate executives, academics, architects, organizational consultants, futurists, and others, the articles explore the new demands of an idea-driven "Creative Economy" and how they will alter the world of work.

To read this special issue, go to: http://www.businessweek.com/datedtoc/2000/0035.htm

"The New Economy is having little impact on poverty among full-time workers, [according to a] fascinating new study by the Conference Board . . . . Rather then being washed away by the recent prosperity, poverty is actually increasing among full-time workers. This, despite fast-paced economic growth from 1996 through 1998. The number of full-time workers living in poverty (defined as earning $13,290 or less for a family of three) has doubled since the late 1970s.

"Why? A radical salary gap between those who are able to turn their knowledge of highly specialized computer technologies into cash and those that can't get access to the knowledge and are relegated to low-skill, low-productivity employment. While computers may allow more new entrants into the low-skill workforce in the form of positions such as data entry clerks, entrance does not necessarily guarantee a living wage."

Source: Business 2.0 "Daily Insight," September 4, 2000

HTML: HTML, or "Hypertext Markup Language," is the standard code that is added to text for posting on the World Wide Web. Introduced in 1991 by Tim Berners-Lee, HTML uses commands known as "tags" to designate text attributes --such as color, size, bolding, and italics. Tags are also used to create "links" or "hyperlinks" -- text or images that can be clicked on with a mouse to take the user to another location, within or outside the the Web page on which they appear. For example, HTML was used to create the link to the Business Week issue discussed in the first section of this e-letter.

References consulted: Bill Barnes, "The XML-Men," Slate.com, August 22, 2000, and NetLingo.com.

This past spring and summer, the New York Times published an ambitious, provocative series, "How Race Is Lived In America." A distinguished team of reporters and editors spent a full year exploring how Americans experience race in their workplaces, neighborhoods, churches, and homes.

Not surprisingly, a Times poll concludes that 35 years of progress have failed to dispel "starkly divergent perceptions of many racial issues" and mutual isolation on the part of blacks and whites. The reports are compelling because they illuminate how race influences our daily actions and interpretations, in all their ordinariness and their complexity.

Published over a six-week period, the series boasts an extensive array of supplementary resources: reporters' and photographers' journals, lesson plans, reader responses, and a Web resource guide. Unlike most other content published by the New York Times on the Web, the entire series will remain available for free on the Times site through the end of the year.

In the final installment of the series, a reporter remarks on the "degree of nakedness" this project demanded of reporters and editors. One hopes that readers are inspired to a similar level of introspection and self-revelation.

To visit this site, go to: http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/race/

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