The History of Digital Intelligence - Part Five

The Future 

Looking to the 2020s and beyond, there are many challenges. They are a heavy mix of extrapolation and continuation of issues from the past, plus a few entirely new ones. 

New Technologies — There will continue to be dramatic growth in the processing capacity and storage capacity of chips, software and networks. New IT capabilities will continue to unlock fundamentally different services and allow new applications such as the Cloud, Big Data and the Internet of Things. As this series of blogs notes, new technology has underpinned the emergence of new applications for the last sixty years, and will do so for at least the next decade. Many kinds of new data will be digitised and analysed. The emerging technologies will allow ever greater digitised capacity. We will continue, however, to need the transformative general management and technology leaders to push these applications forward to successful conclusions. 

A vastly more digitised world — The future is hard to see here because so much of it, as in the past, will come in discontinuous leaps. Throughout the industry’s history, new transforming applications have often come much earlier and in very different forms than anticipated. This will continue globally, as technology penetrates to the very base of impoverished economies and ever greater volumes of data become digitised. The performance-improvement increases in IT and communication products will help ensure ever faster and more customised results. 

Not all IT work is electronic — In this new world, IT and dirty operational tasks to make IT work are done in juxtaposition with each other. For example, online Amazon is the front end to some of the world’s largest physical warehouses and distribution networks. Renttherunway.com is an extraordinarily successful online rental dress ordering system. Behind all the glamour of its online applications and network of world-class dress designers, however, is the largest dry cleaning firm in the USA. The physical world and Internet world are inextricably married. 

Security and operational reliability — A major challenge for decades, first noted as a burning issue as early as in a 1969 Harvard Business Review article. The issue has always been there. IT, however, has become more complex today, with lapses in performance creating much greater consequences for both companies and individuals. There is dramatically heightened social vulnerability to hacking and inadvertent errors. Trans-border warfare between nations now takes place though battles in cyberspace. The ability to manage security adequately casts a shadow over IT operations. There is no such thing as perfect security or 100 percent reliability. 

Privacy — A concept much prized in the abstract, it is much harder to protect in reality. What privacy is viable in a post-9/11 world, given security needs? We have an overwhelming need for public safety, which in numerous cases has to be balanced against the desire of individuals for privacy. This public-versus-provider intersection is not easy to manage. 

Dark side of social behaviour — New technologies offer the opportunity for cyber bullying in ways that were not possible ten years ago. This hits all ages and sectors of society. This new set of issues has made possible emerging technology in the last several years. 

Project performance management — this old issue includes a sixty-year history of continuous cost overruns, time delays and performance shortfalls. It was there in Harmony Life in 1961. Forty years later, it was present in Providian Trust. Implementation is always harder than it looks. 

Societal resilience in case of total blackout — A looming issue is how to protect society from the consequences of massive collapse of electronics and telecommunications networks through terrorism or accidents. Society, as a whole, is now so dependent on these interconnected technologies that certain kinds of failures can bring its functions (as a result of accidental or deliberate acts of sabotage) to a complete and total halt. Food, transportation and healthcare can suddenly become totally inaccessible. How to approach these risks and manage them has not been well-thought out. 

Conclusion 

For over six decades, information technology has been moving relentlessly to the very centre of industrial enterprise. IT will surely be even closer to the very centre of industrial enterprise in the future. Great transformational opportunities exist on the one hand; on the other hand, there are very real implantation risks as old business models are superseded. Great management and technical leaders have been and will be needed in the future to transform these opportunities into realities. Both are in short supply. Execution and change management have been the challenge for the past sixty years, and will remain so for the future. Finally, a manager may be promoted for achieving competitive success but will almost surely be fired for massive security breaches or an operational failure. Over the past fifty years, an explosion of new best management practices have emerged since the publication of the 1966 book Management Information Systems. The trick is for managers and entrepreneurs to creatively apply these new practices and new technology to continue to create a capture value.