Today I saw a new commercial for the Kayak travel search portal. In “Lecture,” a self-identified adjunct professor simultaneously lectures to his class and searches the web for hotel deals to attend a conference. When a student asks him why he doesn’t use Kayak, he replies, “it is not my job to know everything,” and that followed earlier comments that he has little time left after preparing and delivering three lectures for that day. The first thing that popped into my head was the growing movement to improve working conditions for adjuncts and other contingent faculty, such as a unionization effort in Minnesota.  Social media have been enlisted in that effort, such as the “We Need Contingent Faculty” tumblr for Macalester College. I won’t be surprised if the “Lecture” commercial ends up on a social media site somewhere in a mashup that amplifies real world issues surrounding the growing use of contingent faculty. If anyone sees such a thing please post  info in the comments!