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She fields his calls, rerouted via Cisco's phone system; arranges meetings; and even can overhear his phone conversations to anticipate his needs. "Marthin and I haven't missed a beat," says Hooshmand, who can see into De Beer's office through her own screen in Texas. As she waves down another San Jose (Calif.) colleague walking by, from 1,600 miles away, it's hard not to believe her.

"The line between our customers and our staff continues to blur."

It's an emerging dynamic variously dubbed mass collaboration, peer production, or crowdsourcing

Seriosity, a startup that's beginning to use game psychology in business applications: "Enterprises will steal sensibilities from games and virtual worlds and embed them into business."

Amazon is creating an on-demand workforce for companies that can't afford to hire staff for such quick or ephemeral jobs.

Turkers

b, "this is a more virtual, self-managed ecosystem.

digital technology will transform work into a global supply chain of talent to carry out carefully programmed tasks on demand.

"A job is a bundle of privileges and obligations,"

"Digital technology has allowed us to break up that bundle" and reassemble it into "mass-customized jobs," he adds, as they fit our skills, the work to be done, and the goals of the companies we're working for.

All that raises a fundamental question about technology's ultimate impact on workers. Will this be a new world of empowered individuals encased in a bubble of time-saving technologies? Or will it be a brave new world of virtual sweatshops, where all but a tech-savvy few are relegated to an always-on world in which keystrokes, contacts, and purchases are tracked and fed into the faceless corporate maw?

it can't change human nature. "A

"aren't going to be a substitute for face-to-face interaction."