Letter: People might just survive cyberdoom

Sir: I presume Professor Angell is using the royal "we" when he says, "We are entering an age of hopelessness, an age of resentment, an age of rage." For the rage is surely his own; rarely has such spleen been vented in the name of journalism.

As a consultant working in organisations that are "downsizing, delayering and outsourcing" I know better than most how difficult the employment market is. But has he considered that while "productivity is delivered by a technology needing only a few machine-minders" someone has to design, produce, market and service those machines?

The world of work is changing profoundly, but it is not grinding to the cataclysmic halt Professor Angell envisages. I know because I work with people, not theories, and those people are still finding ways to earn a living, whether the ways that Professor Angell deems suitable or not.

His anger is magnificent, but I hope the "huge number of soon-to-be-unemployed" use their own common sense and listen to the voice of reason rather than the rhetoric of an angry man.

MELISSA HAWKER

Wisbech, Cambridgeshire