There are significant perils for business in the new economy. Some companies that have delayed embracing the new media are already showing signs of falling behind. As Alliance collaborator Araldo Menegon says, When we look back at the end of the centuiy, companies will have fallen into two categories: those that did and those who did not.” But the dark
side extends beyond the business imperatives for change. When Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone, he thought he. Was creating a tool to help deaf people and that’s how he wanted to be remembered. Thomas Edison thought the main use for the phonograph would be as a dictation machine. Johannes Gutenberg had no idea what the impact of his invention would be on society, but movable-type printing Iii the fifteenth century meant that hooks became more widely available. Knowledge was no longer the privilege of a very few. Gutenberg changed culture, science, power, economic structures, and the very fabric of society.
The early pioneers in the automotive business were equally uuaware of the revolutiou they were unleashing. The car was a liberator that provided mobility to the masses and helped to create wealth and jobs, but there was a terrible downside, too: cities cloaked in smog, the alienation of suburbia, carnage on the highways, sprawling metropolitan areas, and streets choked by traffic. In the words of Joni Mitchell’s lament, “They paved Paradise and put up a parking lot.” At the same time, the automotive sector became the dominant force in the U.S. economy for the most part of the twentieth centuiy, employing one worker in six.
At this point, it is unclear how the new media will affect the way society does business, works, learns, and lives. Yes, the I-Way is already evolving to provide the infrastructure for a digital economy. In the digital frontier of this new economy, however, old social norms, laws, regulations, institutions, education, and customs are proving to be inadequate and inappropriate. There appear to be more questions than answers regarding what is to come and how business and societies can successfully manage the transition.
There is widespread concern that life in the settlements of the new digital frontier and in the vast society to follow may not be entirely pleasant. 25 Fear lurks everywhere that technology will bring unemployment, numbing of the mind, and invasion of privacy.
Are we to become captive of the new technologies? Will a new technology imperative or market-driven determinism confound our ability to guide these new tools in responsible directions? Can we devise useful investment criteria, organizational structures, marketplace rules, and government policies to ensure that technology serves people?26
Revolution is usually the midwife of a new age. Violence, war, and social upheaval are all part of the transition from an old economy to a new one. How will the transition to the Age of Networked Intelligence be achieved? So far in the 1990s, the world has seen far too much violence. Nor has suffering remained outside the realm of the developed world. The 1995 bombing in Oklahoma serves as a fearsome reminder that not all is right.
There are far-reaching management and social issues as we make the shift:
• Change will cause dislocations. Employment in agriculture went from 90% of the population at the turn of the century to 3% of the population today. Today, the worker displaced when the foundry Nashville closes can’t get a job in the Northern Telecom plant where the average plant worker has the equivalent of a community college degree. The fact that we’re entering a new economy is of little consolation to that displaced worker and his or her family. How will we manage the transition to new types of work and a new knowledge base for the economy?
The I-Way has the chilling potential to destroy privacy in an unprecedented and irrevocable manner. Most of us believe we have the right to decide what personal information we divulge, to whom, and for what purpose. We accept that we must give government and corporations some details about our lives to qualify for services, loans, and so on. But such information should be used only for the purpose for which it was obtained and not sold to someone else. And if the demand for information seems unreasonable, we can always say “no.” Left unchecked, the I-Way could render such thinking irrelevant. As human communica tion,s, business transactions, working, learning, and playing increasingly come onto the Net unimaginable quantities and types of information become digitized and networked. How can we safeguard privacy in an economy that is digital?
• Recent trends show a severe bipolarization of wealth in which the top 20% of households_those worth $180,000 or more—have 80% of the country’s wealth. This skewing of income and wealth is happening faster in the United States—the leading new economy country_than anywhere else and faster than ever before. Surely this is undesirable, but is this trend reversible? An ill-conceived information highway and transition to the digital economy could foster a two-tiered society, creating a major gulf between information haves and have-nots_those who can communicate with the world and those who can’t. As information technology becomes more important for economic success and social wellbeing, the possibility of “information apartheid” becomes increasingly real. Is there an emerging “revolt of the elites” who wi]l use the new infrastructure to further cocoon themselves children in private schools, paying for their own social services, surrounded by high perimeter fences, identifying closer with friends and business associates in cyberspace, losing any sense of responsibility to others in their physical communities or country? (In 1995, the hottest real estate category was “secure communities” surrounded by walls and security systems and accessible only through guarded gates. However, the Oklahoma bomblug indicates that the perimeters will have to be expanded.)