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Information Technology Information technology has played a significant role in all societies. Maybe IT is the most important precondition for societies to exist at all. Throughout history, the common consciousness of norms and experiences that constitutes a society has been contained and transmitted by IT. DNA is an organic technology which, for some biologists, is perceived as the fundamental semiosphere of information. Gesture and speech provide for the first time the human race with the ability to transcend immediate sensory perception, to project cultural consciousness into the past or the future, and to formulate myths of creation as well as golden utopias, only limited by the bandwith of rhime and memory. Writing enables more complex skills and societies, commercem and knowledge as an elitary institution. The printing press, the primordial mass producing machine, paves the way for industrial society and modernity, based on the access of the many to standardised knowledge through paper printed IT. The news of digital information technology is that any resource that can be transformed into this medium can be utilized at any point of access to the digital network. Thus any digital resource must be developed only once. It does not have to be copied or shipped with a freight document to make use elsewhere. It is already there. Resources does not only mean static information, they are digital machines that will do things with information, e.g. control a process in the physical world. Futhermore, the price of digital horsepower drops to its half every 18 months:
Information technology plays the role of a wave flooding any country, industry or organisation, an innovation of the highest degree, a 'techno-economic paradigm'. Here it is utilized as an element of innovations that provide specific benefits in each domain in the form of higher productivity, prrofits, wealth. The things that are made easier in society due to IT, become cheaper and are promoted. In this way IT influences and changes our society. Four Digital Changes The digital wave is already changing the everyday of organizations, of society, and of the individual. Below are drafted the four most common changes that are promoted by the use of IT - and the evolution that their benefits catalyze in society:  1. Access - the never closing society Portals - digital solutions of many sources can be made accessible through various different portals or search engines that expose digital resources related to the tasks or situation of users, most often over the internet. Portals improves the access to digital solution but only saves money if solutions do. E-Mail & E-Documents - text, image or sound that is received or elelctronically registered, can always be traced and manipulated at any point of access to the storage solution over the network. The benefits are saved time for internal and external mail delivery and the handling of telephone messages - or even the option for global three-shift organisation. Pervasive - the access to digital resources is no longer limited to machines on tables. The mobile phone develops into a universal network access through which everything that can be identified will be available. Anyything or anyone being on the network can be accessible at all times, for good and evil. 2. Automation - the end of administrative work E-Forms - significant benefits are harvested when information is captured in a structured format. This enables a purely digital processing. Complex formulation or analysis of files is replaced by a few mouse clicks and more people can utilize advanced knowledge resources. Filtering - if information is structured, digital processing may channel app. 80 percent simple cases to automatic processing, while 20 percent complex matter is handled manually by human experts. In the labour market most jobs disappear that contain repetitive and simple information processing. Simplification - if the rules governing the processing of information can be simplified, a purely digital and automatic process can be established. This innovation stimulates the streamlining and simplification of processes and procedures throughout society that they may disappear into digital space. 3. Specialisation - global micro monopolies Business Atoms - digital solutions are to an increasing extent built with service interfaces in the language of business making their business services visible to other IT solutions in a digital service directory, be it local or globally. This stimulates the exchange of services among IT solutions in swarms of business atoms. Outsourcing - if the quality of a process and its deliveries can been specified in detail, it may be outsourced to external vendors. If, however, the process is specific for the customer, the ownership of the digital code can not be outsourced. This innovation promotes the splitting of supply chains. Centralisation - anything digitally processed need only be produced at a single location on the planet. The same trend applies for manuel spacialist tasks to ensure a proper level of competence. This advantage of IT is a main driver behind globalization. 4. Profiling - transparent man Customer profile - if any contact or transaction in regard to a customer is registered, many employees may provide the custome a personalized service. The customer will always be in contact with employees with an updated overview, if the customer accepts this. Niche segments - the registration of customer events ebanles a more targeted sales effort, concentrating sales (and producement) on areas of high and specific relevance to the customer or similar customers. This innovation promotes the voluntary exchange of privacy for public 'profiling'. Customer incentive - if the economic value of previous customer events can be analysed, the most profitable customers can be provided benefits that may increase their profitability and loyalty. This promotes a differentiation smong customers (citizens) providing incentives to become a profitable customer (citizen). Sources - recommended reading Ronald Inglehart & Christian Welzel (2005): Modernization, Cultural Change and Democracy. The Human Development Sequence, Cambridge University Press. Christopher Freeman & Carlota Perez (1988): Structural Crises of Adjustment, Business Cycles and Investment Behaviour, in G.Dosi et al. eds. Technical Change and Economic Theory, Francis Pinter, London, pp. 38-66. Reprinted in H. Hanusch ed. The Economic Legacy of Joseph Schumpeter, Elgar, London, 1998. Marshall McLuhan (1964): Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. McGraw-Hill. Elisabeth Eisenstein (1979): The Printing Press as an Agent of Change. Communications and Cultural Transformations in Early Modern Europe. Vol. 1-2. Cambridge. Walter J .Ong (1982): Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word. Routledge. Karl Marx (1859): A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (Preface). |
