>I think it would be interesting to hear from the people on this list about
>their ideas on how new technology will affect people and the way they
>interact.
IMHO, the new technology is most prominent within compagnies. For example,
consider a manufacturing compagny with a computer-controlled warehouse. As
soon as one of their products reaches a certain minimum limit, the computer
automatically places an order at the supplier via Electronic Data
Interchange. Also, their customers log in to their computers and order
goods. Sales and purchases are becoming more and more a
computer-to-computer kinda thing. Not much human interacting there!
Or think of electronic banking. To consumers this slowly starts to become a
reality, while compagnies are doing this already for more than approx. 10
years. In the beginning they sent discs with payment-orders on it to their
bank, now they simply use EDI (maybe this is different in other countries
where cheques are still heavily used, eg. USA, France). The same computer
which placed an order at a supplier, now creates a payment, logs in to the
bank' computer and pays the bill. Fully automatic.
Of course, some sort of internal control must be set up to manage the
payables. Large amounts will still have to be authorized in detail. The
small amounts however, will be transacted without direct human supervision.
Every day the computer checks which bills have to be paid today and then
proceeds paying them. Not much human interacting here either!
Compagnies are becoming more and more dependent on computer systems.
Research has shown that if confronted with a four weeks breakdown of their
main computer, most (if remembered correctly over 70%) will go bankrupt
within five years.
If you look at impact of the new technology, IMO, compagnies and businesses
are the places to look. They are confronted with the need to keep up, to
not loose their compative advantage. Consumers on the other hand do not
need to worry. Most of them are not inclined to buy a new computer just
because the neighbour did. (Although way too many consumers are letting
themselves getting influenced by the introduction of yet another
pentium/risc/cisc-based computer.)
[ Oops, now we are doing it again: talking about computers :-) ]
Riemer Brouwer
riebro@eh1.mey.nl