-y_
LIFE/STYLE
ble. So you can sing your rugby
songs, you can do your home-
work, you can do anything
here." Firm but fair, that's the
Oasis. Its bartenders are well
known for being the toughest
"carders" around. On the other
hand, when a junior or sen-
ior turns 21, legal drinking age
in California, the O staff is
among the first to offer its con-
gratulations . . . with a free
pitcher of beer.
WILLIAM ELLIS III
mind if customers stretch out
one cup of coffee for three or
four hours, either.) Les Amis's
food runs to the quiche and
cappuccino variety, and some
people have denounced the
place-and its clientele-for
being phony or pretentious.
The regulars like it just the
way it is. "One day when it
was pouring rain I arranged to
meet a friend at Les Amis,"
says Ted Jacobson, who re-
cently finished his doctoral
dissertation in Austin. "We sat
Shades of there all afternoon under the
'A-Bomb Atkinson canopy and talked excitedly
A A sabout our latest ideas in phys-
The Tombs, on Washington's "ics. It was terribly romantic."
36th Street near Georgetown CLAYTON STROMBERGER
University, has something for
everybody. The menu is broad A Small-Town
enough to satisfy both students General Store
(huge cheesy pizzas, cheesebur-00,
gers, pitchers of sangria and Located six blocks south of the
beer) and visiting parents (Veal campus in Colorado Springs,
Oscar, Trout Amandine). Histo- Poor Richard's is more than a
ry buffs can visit the "A-Bomb restaurant for Colorado Col-
Atkinson Memorial Booth," lege students; it's almost like a
where a crusty old history pro- small-town generalstore. Stu-
fessor, now retired, used to down dents gather there seven days a
martinis by the pitcher and re- week to talk about life, love and
gale students with stories about school (although in the recent
World War I (or "The Great past, notes owner Richard
War"). The staff is reliable and Skorman, the talk ran more to
familiar. Most are students or politics). The walls are lined
alumni, and turnover is low: the ageless a Shiner longneck beer. In the spring, pa- with books and games, which customers
night bar manager, Nate, has been at The trons can sit outside, behind a waist-high can use on the premises or buy totake home.
Tombs for 18 years (and in that time has picket fence lined with plants; in the win- They can also make local phone calls free of
never been known to smile or utter a word). ter, manager Newman Stribling squeezes charge, cash out-of-state checks and even
It's a place where romances are kindled, tables inside and lights the big metal fire- get a ride home if they've drunk too much.
friendships are forged and GPA's are saved. place in the center of the room. Stribling, a In exchange for all these comforts, Skorman
One student recalls feeling no panic when 1969 UT grad, calls Les Amis his "living charges prices that some students find too
she lost her notes the night before a mid- room." He says he likes to come home and high ($3.55 for a club sandwich, $2.25 for a
term: "I knew at least one person in my class see his guests enjoying themselves, likes peanut butter and banana sandwich). Skor-
would be taking a study break at The listening to the muted buzz of two dozen man acknowledges that he often has a
Tombs." Finally, The Tombs may be one passionate conversations. (He doesn't "love-hate relationship" with Colorado
reason for Georgetown's win- College students. When the
ning basketball team. Coach o rd'in Colrado Springs: Gaies, books and beers place was torched by an arson-
John Thompson can often beAnthony Suau-PctureGroup ist in the fall of 1982 and dam-
seen leading prospective recruits aged so badly that it had to
and their families into the place, close temporarily, Skorman
where he plies them with steam- was swamped with sympathetic
ing roast-beef sandwiches or letters from CC students and
platters of fried chicken. faculty. Even the president
JULIA REED wrote to lend support, and
many peoplesentmoneytohelp
A 'Living Room' for in the rebuilding. "They were
he and Quiet Talk wonderful," Skorman says. But
Q che athings were back to normal by
Les Amis sits on the corner of last fall. Returning students
24th and San Antonio, a block found a letter from Skorman in
from the University of Texas's the Catalyst. It complained that
western boundary on Austin's ' platesand silverwerestartingto
Guadalupe Street (a.k.a. "The disappear from the restaurant,
Drag"). It's an anomaly among just as they do every fall, and
college hangouts: an intimate, asked that students please quit
quiet place where the loudest swiping them.
sound is likely to be the gurgle of - --DONNA SMITH
edge is increasingly required; Browning-
Ferris, a major mover in the flourishing
field of hazardous-waste disposal, now ex-
pects young chemical engineers to be well
versed in environmental studies, business
management and scientificjournalism, too.
Whatever the job, technology will al-
most certainly make it more enjoyable.
Smaller and smarter computers will allow
more Americans to work at home; IBM
estimates, for example, that up to one-
third of its employees will be home work-
ers by 1990. The new home base should
benefit the disabled, as well as those wom-
en-or men-who want to balance a job
and family. Young entrepreneurs should
also profit as capital and physical plant
become less important than technological
know-how. Computers, unlike bosses, will
be blind to age and sex. "High tech is a
great equalizer," says Marvin Cetron,
coauthor of the forthcoming book, "Jobs
of the Future."
ot only the workplace, but the
work pace will be transformed.
Computers can already dispatch
business letters electronically; soon they
will also take dictation, proofread and send
off a corrected version without the help of
middlemen and -women. The National Se-
curity Agency is testing such a device; its
92 percent accuracy record is spoiled only
when some human coughs, sneezes or
slurs. Still greater efficiency should pare
the workweek from its current 40 or so
hours to an average of 32 hours by 1995,
according to Cetron.
But the biggest change technology will
bring is changeability itself. "High-tech
people will be the migrant workers of the
future," says psychologist Feinberg. Com-
panies will be on the move, constantly
seeking better-and cheaper-sources of
brainpower in the Silicon Valleys of tomor-
row. Employees may be equally restless,
switching from firm to firm to take advan-
tage of the opportunities afforded by the
latest breakthroughs. Those who stay put
will also see their jobs periodically meta-
morphose-or disappear. Retraining will
be essential; AT&T spends $1 billion annu-
ally to reschool its white-collar workers
and estimates that each will perform at
least five different jobs before retiring from
the company. Technological advances will
reverberate. The spread of cable television
and the trend toward "narrowcasting"-
many channels geared to highly specific
interests-are already reforming advertis-
ing, for example, and will continue to do
so. "A multitude of efforts will be neces-
sary to market something," says Allen
Rosenshine, chairman of the BBDO agen-
cy, "and we'll count on people who
are flexible."
The new patterns of employment reflect a
basic shift in the American economy. Two
years ago the number of people who work in
manufacturing jobs was surpassed-for the
llustrations by Arnold Roth
first time-by the number who work in
newer service industries, providing every-
thing from fast foods to financial advice.
The resulting loss of blue-collar factory jobs
is expected to be offset by new service posi-
tions-both skilled and semiskilled--and
white-collar opportunities. Many of the
white-collar jobs will come in high-tech in-
dustries. Some may well be de-professional-
ized; such first-generation computer posi-
tions as that of programmer may soon be
filled by alumni of junior colleges and tech-
nical schools. But computer jobs-like
computers themselves-will grow ever
more complex and should spin off still more
openings for both college graduates and
postgraduates.
Just how many white-collar jobs can be
created remains a matter of some dispute.
Prognosticator Cetron expects high tech to
generate 10.5 million white-collar openings
in the next decade. The more conservative
Bureau of Labor Statistics, using 1980 cen-
sus data and 1982 updates, predicts a total
of only 1.5 million new technical jobs. Ce-
tron blames the discrepancy on BLS reluc-
tance to project entirely new kinds of
jobs; he sees 260,000 openings by 1990, for
example, for information-security manag-
ers-people who protect computers from
the ingenious intrusions of hackers.
Those who chart the further reaches
of the future plainly disagree about
its exact boundaries. Their differ-
ences, however, are usually over timing
and degree, rather than basic direction.
Cetron estimates, for instance, that by
1990 as much as one-fifth of all retail sales
will take place via telemarketing-a sys-
tem in which the customer scans an elec-
tronic catalog on his home video screen
and places an order through his computer.
The telemarketing boom would furnish
new jobs, admen concur-the question is
how soon. A number of people are begin-
ning to suspect that the change will be a lot
more gradual than the futurists have been
forecasting. Rosenshine of BBDO cautions
that "statistics are overblown. Telemarket-
ing won't move nearly as fast as some
people say, because we can't assimilate it
that fast. But it will happen."
Students have been buffeted by over-
blown projections before and bruised by
unforeseen events. Even engineers have
weathered ups and downs; ask those who
chose petroleum engineering two or three
years ago, when it looked like a sure-fire
gusher, only to see their fortunes clogged
by an unexpected oil glut. In just the last
three years, General Motors has shifted its
hiring emphasis from mechanical to elec-
trical engineers, the better to handle the
advanced equipment that is involved in
plant automation. The volatile nature of
technology may mean that everybody's in
for a bumpy ride.
Rough spots aside, high tech can still get
r
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