Disclaimer: This
article is a piece of humor/satire on the impact of IT on humanity/society. I have taken some creative liberties to make
it interesting and to highlight some key aspects of our evolution with IT in a
story telling format. Idea is to see
things in retrospect and provide some food for thought as we move ahead to
define the future course. Key point is
that things certainly need to change and change for global good and
sustainability.
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Starring
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H
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Humanity
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Big C
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Capitalism/Capitalists
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Huge M
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Money
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eC
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Electronic Computer
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S
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Software
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W
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Web
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I
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Information
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Social M
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Social Media
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C
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Communication
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oldE
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Entertainment
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New E
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Earn
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K
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Knowledge
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Real M
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Mother Earth
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The story so far
We as Humanity created a big C – Capitalism whose basic premise was to create huge Money($$$). More than half a century back H influenced by the big C created a new type of C – the eC (electronic Computer). In older times computer used to be people who
could compute complex things, as we wanted to compute at the level and scale not
possible by humans, so a small part of H
and decades of research and evolution created the eC, this minority of H were
basically all big Cs.
The eC could not work without
Software, so a lot of H started creating S to use them across industries so that we as humans could do less
work, do new things without thinking about their other effects and create a
world run by machines that gets bigger and bigger. We created many big Ss for the Enterprise (part of big
C themselves) like OS, Office, ERP, CRM, SCM, KM, BI with multiple copies as
open or proprietary and got them implemented in every organization. The rulers
of S in Enterprise are Microsoft and Oracle.
S was just the start we
then created Web(Internet), the mother
platform that was fathered by Tim Berners Lee and it created something called
as “Information/html pages”, in its
first 10 years it started to become a clutter like a haystack due to rapid
growth of I in the form of billions
of webpages across millions of websites.
“The W caught the imagination of H”
Some people started working to bring order and many kept working on
growing the haystack, but eventually Google
mastered how to discover from it and Hotmail created a mass market that gave people the power
to communicate/share with anyone, anywhere and anytime.
In the next 10 years it got influenced primarily by Wikipedia, Blogger, Youtube, Myspace , Linkedin and Twitter which
multiplied the power of H by giving
yoU the power to publish I and connect globally as one Society
and created a revolution called social Media.
W is also powered by some S and is currently ruled by Google , and Facebook is the new
challenger.
In the early stages of W, like
kids we used W mainly for ICE (Information Communication
and Entertainment(old E)) and most players again like kids
went after mainly C&oldE because
that is what motivated most users and could help big C make huge M.
But now it is more like ICE TE
(read iced tea), with added power to Transact and Earn (new E) from it. C &
old E still rule the W while the
C evolved beyond old and grew to be
“Collaboration” and “Collective” as well. It is still largely for the purpose of
and focused on old E but many
started to use it for the new E also.
“The W got enabled with the expression and
participation of its consumers, as Users became prosUmers the W became
Democratic.”
We had already put a lot of silo Ss
in Enterprise but we were still not satisfied and also realized we wish to do
even less as humans because while doing less work manually we created a new
type of work involving eCs and W.
We further started integrating the silo Ss in companies and also use the W to run it and integrate as the power of eC multiplied following Uncle Moore’s law.
W kinda revolutionized H by empowering it to connect and share
I and possibly create meaningful Knowledge and drive global change for
good, but we the H, overwhelmed
ourselves with C & old E by
giving in to big C.
The H is not yet satisfied
with their blind following of the features in Ss and on W, it is
working hard by killing
precious productive time to make them a phenomenon and fad. In last 2
decades, H using the W made and burnt trillions of $$$, the big C grew business which gave us huge
salaries to go and buy what we ourselves produced as a collective, in the
process we screwed up ourselves by forgetting our real Mother (earth) and burning all the $$$ to make real M suffer more for our pleasures
and laziness to work/compute.
Majority of H did it without
knowing that it will change our lifestyle in such a way that our new needs will
make Healthcare, Insurance, Spirituality and Going Green as big industries which
the big C will grab again and use
the W and S to make huger M.
We created healthcare and insurance as big industries but again forgot
that they will never be sufficient to save
real M ever and with no real M
there will be no H, then what will
the big C do with the huge M? when there won’t be any A… left to use it even as a toilet
paper.
----------to
be continued----------
I hope you found it worth a read.
Do share your feedback in comments. Based on your suggestions I’ll
improvise the Part II where I wish to share some thoughts on the future.
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