I see a room filled with young people sitting in rows focused intently on their work. There is no sound bar the whir of machines. They look around pensively at their unknown co-workers. Occasionally the distant, incoherent bark of the foreman is heard.

Attentively they listen for the production line to be reversed, revised or deconstructed once again. The daily influx of new fodder to aid in the great endeavour, is adding to the workers' feelings of despair and frustration. Is this a Victorian factory or the offices of a red-hot dot.com?

While comparing today's high-tech company cultures to slavery might be seen as being a little too strong, how many times have you heard the phrase "we'll tie the staff in with stock options"?

The new media industry brings a new and yet slightly disturbing meaning to the phrase "sweat equity". It seems to me that the modern version of slavery is having equity in a company which you neither believe in nor have any affinity with. We talk about offering carrots to the employees while forgetting that carrots are meant for donkeys.

Looking back, we could have adopted the more noble craftsman-and-apprentice model from the last century. Do we need a new renaissance? Social accountability is at an all time high and many existing business models have been following suit. The so called new media seem to have been left behind, unless of course you are launching a "green" dot com.

But wait! Look at all those young millionaires that have been created in the past five years, you say. How many cotton barons were created from that period, on the backs of how many people? Dot cotton anyone? I can appreciate the desire for the one stop shop within the agency world: we'll have every penny you are willing to spend. But acting this way would be the same as trying to buy a Rolex, a Picasso and a loaf of bread from the local supermarket. Can you expect to get the best work across so many different fields - and have any level of passion?

Probably I was one of the very few people who laughed out loud during the most recent "black Friday", while at the same time wondering what it meant to all the cotton workers out there. Economically, socially and spiritually we need to start practising what we preach. So how do we move forward?

Smaller de-centralised groups, flatter management structures, internal empowerment and a good deal more respect. Remember to nurture - not neuter - those who bring the talent. You may have more experience of marketing, but they understand the marketplace. Things would be very different if people remembered the first meaning of the word equity: "The state, ideal or quality of being just, impartial and fair".

• Jon Bains is chairman of Lateral, an internet design and advertising agency. See www.lateral.net