The moderator of Critical Path is Mary Williams Edgar, a freelance television director and information designer for new media. She lives in a fairly remote rural location in the Scottish Highlands, working mainly from home for a variety of clients in the UK and Europe. She has worked as a freelance on short (and even shorter!) term contracts for some fifteen years and has been active in support of freelance workers rights through the union movement during this time. In the belief and hard won knowledge that information can never be objectively presented she offers the following outline of her experience and her reasons for initiating Critical Path.

'Recent local and global experience has pointed up the lack of practical support for the new breed of digital worker, coupled with a general lack of awareness of the way in which the culture of the information society is going to change the future of work and the workplace.

Drawing on my experience of and contacts in broadcasting, the labour movement and everyday family life I now seek to redress the balance by providing an on-line resource for isolated workers. While there is great practical expertise available in many diverse sectors relating to the isolated worker, from the technological to the social, no-one has yet attempted to pull together this information and set a firm course for the future. We all seem to be aware of the problems, but up to now they have appeared too huge to take on.

Teleworking associations provide support. They focus on where and how to find work, how to set up central resources so the remote communities can participate in this new world of work. They focus on establishing geographical centres of excellence, on establishing a reputation for a country or region so they don't get left behind in the great race into the global information market. The experts who participate in global seminars on the subject will mention that over half the world has never made a telephone call, but they rarely mention the situation of digital workers in Brazil or the Philippines, let along the problems of low wage expectations (and realisations!) among the home-based predominantly female digital workers in the Highlands of Scotland.

While those with doubts (and they are legion!) about the future of the Internet dismiss these concerns as of no importance, digital workers are growing in number and they are at the forefront of the changing nature of work. Their present experiences will inform the futures of those currently in full-time, secure employment.

It is difficult for trades unions to address the problems of the new workers. Full-time employment is unquestioningly a laudable aim but fewer and fewer of us are ever going to enjoy it. To admit this is not defeatist. It is to acknowledge change and take on its challenges. Some unions have already taken on this challenge. The main contributors to this area are naturally those which focus on a membership, or potential membership of digital workers. Contributions from unions, members and officials will occur frequently in the pages of Critical Path. I make no apology for this. Trades unions have generations of expertise in looking after workers' rights behind them. We are all workers, whether we describe ourselves as freelance, self-employed or otherwise. Some of us just happen to be more isolated than others.

Those of us who work from home, in a situation isolated from the traditional community of the workplace may be more aware of our place within a vast global community of small units. To struggle to make a living in a remote community is a global experience. It would be shame to see us learn lessons about the information society, and then keep them to ourselves, for fear of having to share our earnings with workers in low wage economies.'

Mary Williams Edgar - Moderator - Critical Path