Today, bloggers hold their breath. Because tomorrow, it's coming for them.

Word on the blogosphere is we're all supposed to take a break from writing Monday, to honor the Hollywood writers trying to get their fair piece of the American pie. Which brings us to unions. Unions. A politicized word. Depending on whom you talk to, unions are either a collective force for good insuring workers' fair pay, or a fragmentatious force for evil gumming up the machinery of commerce. On one hand, unions have helped end child labor, given us the 40-hour work week and minimum wage, and made middle-class life a noble calling. On the other, unions are hated by business leaders as an unnecessary force of friction, slowing profits, competition, efficiency and growth.

Whatever your point of view, unions are merely collaborations of people seeking rights: We the people, no longer reporting to the other, say, the Union Jack. America was founded by iconoclasts saying yes to us and no to them. If it weren't for unions, we Yanks would be speaking with British accents and driving on the left side of the road. The spirit of unions is the same spirit of country clubs or a military group or a baseball team or the executive suite. Whether you're in or out just depends on (a) your location and (b) your current point of view.

Unions were created in the Middle Ages to protect trade secrets of masons crafting stones for cathedrals. Early in the 20th century, unions grew in power to protect blue-collar workers for fair wages, and then expanded to teachers, nurses, and air traffic controllers. Now, creative types with laptops are using unions to protect themselves from the power of outsourcing. The beloved Internet continues to turn every service into a commodity. Today as the world becomes flat, it is no longer steelworkers who have jobs at risk ... it's scriptwriters and accountants and lawyers and perhaps you at home, with your laptop and proposals and business communications.

The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 was a start. But who will protect today's knowledge workers from artificial intelligence when it emerges in 2028, when Google Autobusiness makes MBAs obsolete? Whatever one's politics, the choice of success as the world becomes completely efficient is twofold: Either band together and fight, or go into the fight alone.