Alternet's critical review of the PBS series PlanetWork contained a reference to a somewhat frightening global corporate practice that I first learned about from Franklin Becker at Cornell: Multinational companies are farming many tasks, including telephone customer service, to countries like India where wages are much lower. "Visit your doctor and there's a chance your file, dictated over the phone, will be typed up in India and shot back overnight into the physician's computer." But that's not really the scary part. The scary part is that the Indian workers might speak to you with a perfectly practiced Southern accent, just to make you feel comfortable.