I just finished reading Limbo: Blue-Collar Roots, White Collar Dreams, Alfred Lubrano's excellent first-person account of the divide in values separating blue-collar and professional classes in America. Lubrano, an award-winning journalist and NPR commentator, grew up in the working-class Bensonhurst neighborhood of Brooklyn before attending Columbia University and joining the ranks of the information workforce.

Limbo mostly focuses on the conflicts faced by individuals making the transition from blue collar families to the very different set of assumptions that governs the middle-class world of professional work. Though there is often a gap in material conditions, Lubrano makes clear that the greatest distance is one of culture. Early on, he talks candidly about the distrust of learning prevalent in some working-class cultures - rooted in the fear that educated children will become embarassed of their humble origins and ashamed of their parents, or will move far away from the central family unit.

During the post-war industrial boom in the US, these attitudes did not have severe economic consequences. Dignified, well-paid work was available in factories, in construction, and in other industries that did not require education beyond high-school, if that. Sons could follow their fathers into trades; women could stay home to raise kids in the time-honored tradition.

Today, global competition, de-unionization, and other economic forces have made that lifestyle far less economically secure. Skilled trades still pay well, but manufacturing jobs have given way to low-level service and unskilled labor that is subject to commodity pricing and enjoys little protection from either unions or government regulation.

The good jobs of the 21st century are knowledge-work jobs, requiring a very specific orientation toward information and a very specific set of workplace values that involve embracing diversity of thought, questioning received wisdom, proving assertions with hard data, and collaborating with peers in a consensus-driven environment. According to Lubrano, these requirements run against the grain of blue-collar culture and may pose hidden challenges to information workers with blue collar backgrounds who are in all other ways at least as talented and driven as their middle-class colleagues. In Generation Blend, I discuss how differences in generational outlook affect the way people participate in the connected workplace. Lubrano makes the point, by implication, that differences in outlook stemming from economic class and background, can be just as important.

Society is well aware of the economic digital divide and the problems facing the most economically disadvantaged segments of America (and the world). But the working class are not among the very poor, and they seldom benefit from public or non-profit investment in their communities. I wonder how much data is available around the penetration and uptake of connected IT within the blue collar workforce, either as workers or consumers, and how it breaks down across generational lines.

As the information workforce begins to shrink over the next 10-15 years as Boomers age and retire, retrained blue collar workers offer a new source of talent for employers, with compelling advantages in their outlook and work ethic. Integrating them in to the middle-class professional culture of organizations may require some of the same adaptation as for older workers, to bridge both knowledge and cultural gaps.