Fifty years ago, computers that filled huge rooms were the stuff of science fiction and the boffins in the company basement. Less than twenty years ago, we first started to see PCs starting to take their places on desks in homes and offices. Today, using computers, cell-phones, printers and other intelligent technology is taken for granted.
The Internet first loomed in the mid 1990s. Like computers, they were viewed with skepticism initially, particularly by the business community concerned about the impact of porn and viruses on employee productivity. Then came the years of euphoria as companies rushed to set up websites and investors piled into Internet stocks. Last year was the start of the dot.bomb. As we look ahead, we already see business executives and investors looking at Internet investments in the same way as they view other investments. Internet users are starting understand that they are going to have to pay for quality content and convenience. The next stage is the integration stage where the Internet, along with the PC and all the other technology gadgets, simply becomes another tool used in the office and the home.
There are many places to read about the bits and bytes of technology. The scenario presented on these pages attempts to present a vision of the future without constant reference to bits and bytes. We have not tried to craft an internally consistent story about the future: this is, rather, a collection of thoughts about where the Internet might take individuals, nations, industries, and companies. It is eclectic, being drawn from the ideas of many people we have encountered, in one-on-one encounters, in small group discussions and in larger work-shops.
As you read the following scenario and one of our thoughts strikes you as outrageous, we ask you to stop and think through what you have read in the press or seen being implemented using today's technology that supports the forecast we have made. We hope you find some of the ideas thought-provoking.
Each company should dream its own wildest dreams. If you want to create Internet scenarios for your company, please feel free to copy and paste from our scenario into your own word processing document. All we ask, as you do so, is that you acknowledge MBendi's Internet Strategy site as one of the sources of your scenarios.
One of our own interests is Africa and the role that technology is playing in transforming a technology backwater into an unlikely pace-setter on many fronts. African Telecoms and IT Decisions has been developed in partnership with leading African Telecoms and IT research company, BMI-Techknowledge, to highlight the developments taking place across the continent and inform key executive decision makers.
Revised behaviour patterns of individuals are key to changes that will take place elsewhere in this scenario. The world population will be divided into those that have access to the Internet and those that do not. The former will thrive.
Where people live will no longer be dictated by the availability of jobs and educational facilities for children. The place where work is carried out will become increasingly irrelevant since portable computer workstations will be able to exchange information via the Internet from anywhere in the world. Initially, it will be the knowledge workers who will start to work from home, thereby cutting out unproductive commuting time.
However for a host of reasons, not least of which will be tax and quality of life related, workers will increasingly spend time telecommuting from other locations. Why endure the winter blizzards of the US Eastern Seaboard in February, when one can just as easily be enjoying the views and the wildlife of East Africa? Why not escape from the crowded pollution of Tokyo for the tranquility of a houseboat moored alongside a verdant golf course in an exotic country?
Consumer habits will shift. The malls of today will be supplemented by electronic malls where shoppers are able to view, sample and compare goods in the comfort of their homes.
The Internet will provide business opportunities for small businesses on a scale that is not presently possible and will enable small companies to compete with multinationals on a more equal footing. Thus, for instance, sophisticated videocameras will allow film directors to make digital films which can be distributed directly to end viewers around the world through the Internet.
Education
The schools and universities of today have not changed significantly since the Victorian era. Students are still brought together in classes where they are taught by a teacher, who is assumed to be the fount of all knowledge, and move from one level to the next in a uniform way.
The Internet allows the education process to be re-invented. From an early age, children will be able to use home workstations to access educational games and research material. As one game is mastered, so the child can move on to more advanced games at a pace dictated by the child. The Internet will provide a rich catalogue of educational resources with schools and individuals in all countries able to access the full range of educational materials through the Internet. Flexibility will be created for children to spend part of their time in a structured educational environment in the company of other children and under the tutelage of professional educators, and part of the time reliant on the Internet while their parents telecommute from the other side of the globe. Schools will, however, continue to play an important role as a place where children can learn social skills and where the role of the educator will increasingly become one of fine-tuning the individual learning processes.
The emphasis will be on learning to research and to think rather than on absorbing a mass of facts. At the same time, the basic facts students need will be absorbed as a by-product of the research process. Students will be able to progress as individuals rather than at the pace of the slowest learner in the class. Education will be portable. Students in all parts of the world will be able to access the same material, attend classes by videoconference and communicate with their educational mentors. This will free parents from the necessity to live close to schools.
The Internet is going to bring significant changes to government in all parts of the world. The citizenry will expect their leaders to store details of legislation, debates, speeches, votes and national statistics in a central electronic registry where they can be accessed by the natives of all nations. This will make for greater transparency and accountability on the part of politicians. In addition, it will be possible for referendums to be conducted electronically giving voters greater participation in the legislative process.
Details of births, deaths and marriages will be entered at the hospital, mortuary or church, eliminating the need for paper certificates to be sent to government clerks for entry into government databases. Tax returns will be prepared electronically by the taxpayer and submitted to the government computer without the intervention of tax clerks. The size of government bureaucracies will be significantly reduced. Law makers around the world are going to be challenged to introduce legislation which facilitates electronic trading, protection of electronic copyright and the use of electronic documentation as evidence in law courts.
Countries with foreign exchange controls are increasingly going to be forced to lift them in the interests of free-flowing world trade. There is going to be increasing competition between countries to create fiscal regimes which promotes telecommuting and electronic trading. Tax bases are going to be eroded and virtual companies will base themselves in countries with favourable tax regimes. Computer-based fraud is going to emerge as the pre-eminent crime around the world, providing a huge challenge to law enforcement agencies everywhere.
Over the next five years, the media are going to undergo a revolution. The cost of storing and distributing the digital version of a book, newspaper, magazine, piece of music, software or film on the Internet is already orders of magnitude lower than the traditional methods of publishing and distribution using physical media. As a result, it will become possible for anyone with access to a file server to make his/her product available to a worldwide clientele, much as we are doing with this primer. Users of the Internet are going to be able to exercise far greater discretion in choosing what they wish to read or view than ever before. In addition the choices open to them will be much greater than at present because of the ease of electronic publishing.
Businessmen are already suffering from information overload, and desperately need their information delivered in easily assimilated format. Intelligent search agents will be able to access relevant information in a variety of formats from across the Internet and deliver it in tailored form unique to the requirements of each information seeker. This will reduce the demand for newspapers, magazines and TV programmes which merely collect the creative work of individual contributors into a unified whole. Instead a mechanism will be created for individual information users to pay individual contributors directly for using their materials. By the time that the next are held, it is quite possible that both TV viewers and Internet users will be able to pick and choose what sports events they wish to watch on their "small screen" rather than have the TV studios decide. Maybe by then a way will have been created for watchers to pay for "entry" to each arena.
Companies are already starting to use the Internet to advertise job vacancies, thereby significantly reducing the cost of recruiting. Companies are also starting to advertise products on the Internet. This is going to erode the advertising revenue base of TV stations and newspapers and they will increasingly struggle to remain profitable. Instead, advertisers will place their adverts on the Internet integrated with material delivered to the audience that they want to reach. Adverts can be tuned to individual users rather than being beamed to a much wider audience. This is going to pose a major challenge to companies, advertising agencies and the traditional media and will result in the development of new revenue models.
The key impact of the Internet is that companies and individuals will be joined together electronically. For the first time it will truly be possible for data to be entered once at source, a concept pursued by the information systems industry for more than a decade. As a result, existing job positions which involve intermediate data entry will increasingly become redundant.
Companies will have to change their organisational structures significantly to cope with the advent of telecommuting, global markets and electronic product distribution. In turn, the need for heavily staffed branch offices, overseas affiliates and agents will diminish .
Business processes will also have to be re-examined. The past few years have seen a wave of company restructurings based on the concept of business process re-engineering. The widespread use of the Internet will require these business processes to be re-invented and, in some cases, will make certain processes redundant.
Information Systems Departments will not be exempt from the changes. More and more companies will use standard operating support software run from a mainframe server. Management of these servers will increasingly be outsourced to data processing utilities which run systems on behalf of a number of companies. This in turn provides opportunities to optimise the electronic links between one organisation and another. Improved user friendliness of software allied with greater computer literacy on the part of Internet users is going to diminish the role for traditional systems analysts, programmers and computer support staff.
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