Monday, October 12, 2009
The information – electronic economy is fast rising up. From an industrial society we have shifted to one based on the creation and distribution of information, from the institutional help to more self-reliance, from dependence on hierarchal structures to informal networks (especially in business communities) and from an isolated, self-sufficient national economic system to being part of a global system.
Today’s information technology from computer to cable television is a sophisticated technology that hastens our plunge into the information society. As such, we need to understand and study the new society and the changes it brings.
In an industrial set-up, the strategic resume is capital. A hundred years ago, a lot of people have known how to build a steel plant, but not very many could get the money to build one. Access to the system was limited. But today, “strategic resume is information.” Not only the resource but the most important. The new information society has systematized the production of knowledge and amplified our brain power. To use an industrial metaphor, we now mass-produce knowledge and this knowledge is the driving force of our economy.
According to Peter Drucker, “The productivity of knowledge has only become the key to productivity, competitive strength, and economic achievement. Knowledge has become the primary industry that supplies the economy the essential and central resources of production.”
The Knowledge Theory Value
In an information of economy, value is increased not by labor and by knowledge. Marx’s “labor theory of value,” must have been replaced since about two-thirds of the economic growth came about because of the increased size and education of the workforce and the greater pool of knowledge available to workers.
Now, years after the creation of the first data communication devices, we stand at the threshold of a mammoth communication revolution. The combined technologies of the telephone, computer, and television have merged into an integrated information and communication system that transmit data and permit instantaneous interactions between persons and computers. As our transportation network carried the products of the information society, this new integrated communication system will fuel the information society the way energy kept the industrial society humming and the way natural power and brute force sustained agricultural society.
Stages of Technology
Technological processes will be applied to the old industrial tasks. First, the new technology follows the line of least resistance; second, the technology is used to improve previous technologies; and third, new directions or uses are discovered that grow our of technology itself.
The first stage of technological innovation applies in ways that do not threaten people – reducing the chance that the technology will be abruptly rejected. The way society handled the introduction of microprocessors is a classic example of this first stage. Now, young people entering the labor force have some form of information device – from calculators to computer games to high- tech gadgets and drives.
The second stage is being used to improved what we already have. Computers are improving what exists. We have ready information about anything leading to the third stage of invention and applications that are imagined now.
The potential microprocessors are awesome. The automation of factories and offices, once a futuristic pipe dream, is a reality. It is now a wonder, that computers have inspired fear and mystery in workers ever since their powers were first uncovered.
The Human Side of High Technology
Finally, the transition from an industrial to an information society does not mean manufacturing will cease to exist or become unimportant. Did farming end with the industrial era? Information is as necessary to General Motors as to IBM. In an information age, the focus of manufacturing will shift from the physical to more intellectual functions on which the physical depends.
Information is an economic entity because it costs something to produce and because people are willing to pay for it. Indeed, to survive in an information society, where computers and keyboards are tricks of the trade – we have to become friends with the computer and become computer literate. The whole orientation of computers is getting to expand the brainpower through growth, education, and learning the new information-electronics economy.
/Rosalinda Flores - Martinez
My old article revised
10.12.09
The information – electronic economy is fast rising up. From an industrial society we have shifted to one based on the creation and distribution of information, from the institutional help to more self-reliance, from dependence on hierarchal structures to informal networks (especially in business communities) and from an isolated, self-sufficient national economic system to being part of a global system.
Today’s information technology from computer to cable television is a sophisticated technology that hastens our plunge into the information society. As such, we need to understand and study the new society and the changes it brings.
In an industrial set-up, the strategic resume is capital. A hundred years ago, a lot of people have known how to build a steel plant, but not very many could get the money to build one. Access to the system was limited. But today, “strategic resume is information.” Not only the resource but the most important. The new information society has systematized the production of knowledge and amplified our brain power. To use an industrial metaphor, we now mass-produce knowledge and this knowledge is the driving force of our economy.
According to Peter Drucker, “The productivity of knowledge has only become the key to productivity, competitive strength, and economic achievement. Knowledge has become the primary industry that supplies the economy the essential and central resources of production.”
The Knowledge Theory Value
In an information of economy, value is increased not by labor and by knowledge. Marx’s “labor theory of value,” must have been replaced since about two-thirds of the economic growth came about because of the increased size and education of the workforce and the greater pool of knowledge available to workers.
Now, years after the creation of the first data communication devices, we stand at the threshold of a mammoth communication revolution. The combined technologies of the telephone, computer, and television have merged into an integrated information and communication system that transmit data and permit instantaneous interactions between persons and computers. As our transportation network carried the products of the information society, this new integrated communication system will fuel the information society the way energy kept the industrial society humming and the way natural power and brute force sustained agricultural society.
Stages of Technology
Technological processes will be applied to the old industrial tasks. First, the new technology follows the line of least resistance; second, the technology is used to improve previous technologies; and third, new directions or uses are discovered that grow our of technology itself.
The first stage of technological innovation applies in ways that do not threaten people – reducing the chance that the technology will be abruptly rejected. The way society handled the introduction of microprocessors is a classic example of this first stage. Now, young people entering the labor force have some form of information device – from calculators to computer games to high- tech gadgets and drives.
The second stage is being used to improved what we already have. Computers are improving what exists. We have ready information about anything leading to the third stage of invention and applications that are imagined now.
The potential microprocessors are awesome. The automation of factories and offices, once a futuristic pipe dream, is a reality. It is now a wonder, that computers have inspired fear and mystery in workers ever since their powers were first uncovered.
The Human Side of High Technology
Finally, the transition from an industrial to an information society does not mean manufacturing will cease to exist or become unimportant. Did farming end with the industrial era? Information is as necessary to General Motors as to IBM. In an information age, the focus of manufacturing will shift from the physical to more intellectual functions on which the physical depends.
Information is an economic entity because it costs something to produce and because people are willing to pay for it. Indeed, to survive in an information society, where computers and keyboards are tricks of the trade – we have to become friends with the computer and become computer literate. The whole orientation of computers is getting to expand the brainpower through growth, education, and learning the new information-electronics economy.
/Rosalinda Flores - Martinez
My old article revised
10.12.09
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