THE NEW INFORMATION INDUSTRY

NAME: OZIOKO, STANLEY C.
REG NO.: MIM/EDUC/6670
COURSE: ONLINE INFORMATION INDUSTRIES
SUMMARY OF THE PAPER ON INFORMATION INDUSTRY
There is the prediction that in the next ten to fifteen years, the world would undergo one of the greatest technological transformations as the information ‘mega industry’ undergoes rapid and fundamental transformation. This metamorphosis would trigger a corresponding change in the economic forces underlying the information industry.
Today’s information industry characterized by significant waste of economic and ecological resources inadequate matching of information content with needs of the recipients, severe time and place constraints on information access and availability , cumbersome and expensive physical infrastructure and inefficient information distribution is becoming less tolerable.
The vision of a convergent information industry is simple and unprecedented: there would be a move from creation of national to global electronic communications network that would connect people and organizations to everyone else; there would be no barriers as electronic communication would traverse all forms of information and information handling devices.
The mergers and alliances witnessed among major players in the information industry represent not only a belief in the virtues of scale and vertical integration, but also wagers on how the industry would evolve.
Traditionally, information industry has been viewed to consist of three elements: computing, office technologies and telecommunications. This definition is unduly limited. A broader view of information industry covers the five basic forms to include: voice, text, images, audio / video, and data. Another definition based on information functions includes creation, display, storage, processing, and transport.
Technological change has contributed immensely to the convergence of different forms of information. This is primarily due to the diffusion of digital technology into the ever wider array of information businesses. With digitization, content is virtualized and liberated from most of the shackles of its previous medium. Digital information is essentially distortion free, perfectly and infinitely replicable, instantly transferable, highly translatable, inherently editable, readily amenable to various forms of processing, and compatible with other forms of digital information.
Developments in the computing industry with the advent of microprocessors brought about a paradigm shift that pushed the powers of the computers to the desk top. Further advances have made laptop computers more powerful than mainframes were in the early 80s. Some of the key developments in recent years have been in terms of processing, data storage, miniaturization of component technologies, display and software.
While computing power and affordability are expanding at a dramatic rate, they are doing so in a relatively steady fashion. Advances in telecommunications on the other hand, promises even greater change of a discontinuous nature. Due to the anticipated growth in telecommunication bandwidth, some observers predict a reversal of the recent improvements of computing power. When networks run faster than processors and buses in the PC, the computer will be relegated. The network becomes the bus, and any network of interconnected processors and memories become a computer regardless of their location. In this situation, the companies that learn to use the bandwidth in combination with computer processing and switching succeeds.
This transformation will result in only three industries (not five). The three industries will be digitized content, multimedia devices and convergent networks. Today’s computer industry will largely disappear and will primarily become the provider of processing, memory and storage capabilities to the three main industries. In order to move with the tide of technological change as predicted, companies will have to emphasize the following areas in particular: global orientation, managing geopolitical dynamics, flexibility, speed and productivity, alliance and partnering, quality obsession, mass customization, breakthrough innovation, access to capital, investment in human capital and end user focus. The expectation for a convergence in information industry is high because the technological and business imperatives are compelling.
CRITICISM
The predictions in the paper appear to me to have been overtaken by technological innovations in the information industry. From the content, one tends to believe that publications like this were catalysts to the spread of what we have today as the internet world. The prediction of a world whereby computers would become relegated and replaced with a network of interconnected processors and memories is what we encounter today. You find out that companies now lay more emphasis in the expansion of software and broadband businesses than hardware. As it is now, most contents are in digital format. Organizations now digitize their contents so they can fit into current technology, multimedia companies spring up with their new technological innovations while the internet service providers go a long way in expanding their bandwidth in order to make information available to people not withstanding their location. The internet has grown so wide that it has penetrated every facet of human endeavour, from education to research, entertainment, medicine, socialization, acculturation etc.
It can be said that in the information industry of today, any participant that is not web compliant would be left behind.