Vision

The growing application of IT and the integration of communication networks into one Digital Highway, will have enormous social consequences. The current trends indicate some of the consequences we will have to take into account. These are discussed in this section.

 

1.3.1 New Forms Of Organisation

The Digital Highway will be the foundation for a new IT infrastructure connecting both companies and private individuals. This facilitates the development of new forms of organisation and new ways of working, of which a few examples are given below.

Interorganisations
The Digital Highway facilitates the long-lasting co-operation between companies with respect to the delivery of products or services. The name we have for such a co-operation is an interorganisation. An interorganisation is an organisation consisting of legally independent companies that have entered into agreements to co-operate and sometimes act to the world as one enterprise. Entire networks may emerge, of companies that jointly produce, operate and deliver. Each interorganisation in itself forms what we currently mostly know as one company that independently makes and sells a complete product.

Another form of interorganisation occurs in ad hoc situations. The co-operation is entered into for a limited period of time and with a certain objective. Such a temporary organisation aims at the execution of one particular project, induced by for example a demand for the production of a complex and unique product. This results in a temporary interorganisation in which several existing companies participate. As is currently common practice in project organisation, temporary specialist teams are formed to perform specialist tasks. If necessary, the participating companies enter into temporary work agreements with these freelance specialists.

By means of the Digital Highway, companies will temporarily or permanently participate as partners in interorganisations. Particularly specialist companies will acquire assignments via the Digital Highway. They search the world-wide network for potential customers – organisations or private individuals – who are in need of their expertise.
This results in a strange mixture of co-operative competition, since companies will be competing with each other when forming new interorganisations to get assignments, while at the same time they may be working together in harmony in another interorganisation. Interorganisations make the business world as a whole much more flexible and provide it with a greater capacity to adapt to different circumstances, because of the fact that both the partnerships and the construction of the offered products or services can be better aligned to specific demands of customers and clients.

People as part-time workers
Individuals can also temporarily or permanently participate in all kinds of temporary and permanent organisations or interorganisations. Working part-time in one or more organisations or freelancing in different organisations will become common practice. The current protectionism in the form of competition clauses and restrictive clauses in work contracts will be regarded more and more as an impediment, and will therefore disappear. Moreover, people who work on immaterial products are free to chose when and where they do their jobs.
What is essential in this situation, is that people (and companies, too) see to it that they are known and can be reached in the electronic network. The most important thing, however, is that through co-operation they build up relationships based on mutual trust. Such ‘circles’ in the network are necessary to be able to quickly gather the right people and companies to form a new temporary or permanent organisation.
While many people now depend on a permanent job in a stable company for their social security, in future they will be more and more dependent on their name and fame in the network. This is a form of social security that demands some personal initiative. Somebody looking for a job uses the world-wide network like a spider uses its web, scanning it for job opportunities and assignments. Flexible work agreements combined with good contacts and communication via the network enhance the chances of finding work.
A consequence of this development is the fact that jobs as we know them today, will largely disappear. At present, having a full-time job means being present 40 hours a week to perform a certain function – even though sometimes there is nothing to do. In the future there will be freelance work. People will be paid for the results they yield.
The issue in the economy of tomorrow is not creating jobs but creating work – conceiving of useful products and services for which work must be done.

Working from home
The Digital Highway will facilitate working from home. Many people already work on their PCs at home and have modem and phone connections with their offices. As the possibilities of personal computers at home increase and communication with other people improves, for example by the use of video phone, the number of people working from home will grow rapidly. In practice, people will be working from home part of the time and part of the time at a business location. People who do not have enough working space and peace and quiet at home, have the option of renting space in a ‘shared neighbourhood office’, a place where people can rent space and a workstation, possibly on an hourly or daily basis. Working from home will take some getting used to. Eventually, a kind of ‘homo communicativus’ may emerge, an experienced telecommunicator and telenegotiator .

1.3.2 Businesses Of The Future

New businesses will develop when companies settle along the Digital Highway. These companies will be taking the role of intermediary between other companies and people connected to the network. Such companies also support the creation of the forms of organisation as described above. A few examples of such intermediary companies are given below.

Co-ordinators
Companies and solo workers may distinguish themselves in the network as co-ordinators of partnerships. Such co-ordinators may become the employer of the future. He organises the work and has it done by partnerships of other people and companies. This role can be compared to that of a building contractor. The partnerships can be either temporary or permanent.

Agents and brokers
People and companies will continuously be searching for each other on the Digital Highway. They are constantly asking or offering each other services or products. Inevitably, organisations will emerge in the network who function as brokers, concentrating on bringing together demand and supply for certain products or services in a world-wide electronic market.
Already, real estate agents exchange information on supply and demand in a certain area, thus creating an ‘electronic’ property market. At stock markets, too, a world-wide trade in currency, shares and other financial values is realised by means of telecommunications.

Collectors of information
Besides the above described ‘roles’ concerning new businesses there is a third type of intermediary role: that of collector and keeper of information. Take libraries, for example. In the academic world people are currently in the process of converting paper libraries into electronic libraries and making these accessible to the entire world via the Internet.
That the traditional book will completely disappear because of this development is not likely, though. Books have their own charm. You can hold them and the real bibliophile or antiquarian bookseller will cherish them. You can browse through the pages and you can read them wherever you are and make notes in them. On the other hand, a workstation cannot only render pictures, but also moving images and sound. Moreover, if the documents have been prepared accordingly, the user can ‘play’ with them interactively. Obviously, the workstation conveys the contents of a book in a totally different way. Compared to books, the emotional value for the user will therefore be different.
Besides general libraries, companies will also emerge that specialise in collecting highly specific data, a kind of specialist libraries. These libraries collect data from the network, modify them and then sell them via the network in the form of information in documents.
A highly important but still rare form of business is that of keeping data accessible. There will be companies specialising in that, too. Other companies will specialise in finding certain data by order. All kinds of data in many forms will thus become accessible world-wide.

 

1.3.3 A Shift In Employment

The Information Revolution will create shifts in the nature of employment. The most important of these are mentioned below.

A shift of tasks within existing companies
Mechanisation and automation reduce the number of people who are immediately involved with the primary business processes. This mainly applies to farming and industry and to certain types of services, particularly administrative. Mechanisation and automation will cause an increase in productivity and a reduction in the number of production personnel. At the same time, the number of services around the primary process will grow. This concerns for example the purchasing and selling of products, product components and services. There will be more specialists involved in, for instance, the design of new products and production processes and in the performance management of existing products and processes. In addition, the need will increase for supporting tasks regarding the management and maintenance of resources and for coaching and training of personnel. Since companies connected to the world-wide network will need more flexibility and power to adapt, managers will be focusing increasingly on long-term strategy and policy.

New forms of business
The Information Revolution will create new types of employment. This mainly concerns the production of new immaterial products and making them available via the network. New companies will emerge, in the roles of broker, co-ordinator and collector of information. The number of jobs with companies that provide the business systems, the home systems and the networks for the world-wide IT infrastructure, will also grow.

The increase in the level of employment will therefore be caused mainly by new types of work. IT and telecommunications will support people in these new tasks. This concerns services that focus on creativity, on effectiveness, on specific customer demands or on care, not on the efficient mass production of uniform products or services.

Historic trends
The development of employment described above is a continuation of the trends that have been visible in the western countries since 1865. The employment rate in the agricultural sector strongly decreases, while productivity increases as a result of mechanisation, the use of fertiliser and pesticides and upgrading of crops. And all this when, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, people still feared that the agricultural sector would not be able to provide the growing population with food. The growth of agricultural production will continue over the coming years as a result of the automation of many breeding processes and the use of biotechnology. Nevertheless, more and more people are in favour of spending the billions in EC subsidies for the agricultural sector on the recovery of employment in that sector, and especially to stimulate farming methods that may be more laborious, but that are much kinder to nature.
Until 1945, the number of jobs in industry grows, as a result of the increasing mass production of a growing number of products. After 1945, mechanisation and automation take over and the employment rate decreases, while production still grows.

The important growth of employment rate is found in the professional service industry. Unfortunately, this growth has not been able to compensate for the loss of employment in the agricultural and industry sectors, the past few years. The growth of the service industry already started during the Industrial Revolution. All existing forms of professional services, such as medical care, trade, transport, financial services and government, grew along with the industrial sector. In addition, many new services emerged, in support of the industrial, agricultural and other sectors. This growth continued even more after 1945. Examples of such new services are specialist bureau’s involved with product and process design, business consulting and automation.

Figure 1.8 The development of employment after 1865.

The Information Revolution will reinforce this trend. Less and less people are directly involved with the production of food and material goods. In future, employment will grow mainly because of the aforementioned services and the production of and trade in immaterial products. It is important to stimulate the growth of these new businesses as much as possible, so that the overall employment rate will be able to recover. One way of stimulating this is by investing in the IT infrastructure that facilitates new types of business, rather than investing in IT which only enhances the efficiency of existing production processes.

The fact that there is a shift in employment does not say anything about its size. In the long run, over the past 150 years, there has been work for everybody, while the population increased strongly. Nevertheless, the past has also seen periods of recession and unemployment, for example between 1873 and 1882, and in the thirties. In both cases there was a shift in employment and a necessity for new, large investments. As of 1873, this concerned the large scale industrialisation and the construction of railways. As of 1930, it concerned the development of the consumer industry and road construction.

Future employment
Today, too, investments are required for the development of IT and telecommunications. Governments have already acknowledged this need. This is for instance demonstrated in the White Paper of the European Commission, entitled Growth, Competitiveness, Employment: The Challenge And Way Forward In The 21st Century – better known as the White Paper by Delors, the plans of the Dutch Government for experiments with the Digital Highway and the publication Information Technology, Wings to Human Ability of the Swedish Government. Besides investments, different forms of education are also required. The information age requires different knowledge and skills of people than the present, materialistic economy.

We expect that trade and industry, partly stimulated by the government, will invest more in the further development and application of IT and telecommunications. The resulting economic growth will cause an increase in the overall level of employment. As a result of this growth, and because of the fact that more people will be working part-time, another trend will also continue: since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, people have gradually had to work less hours per week to be able to provide for their basic needs. The Information Revolution will especially lead to shorter working hours. After all, people must have the time to enjoy all the new immaterial products.

 

1.3.4 A Virtual World Emerges

The world-wide network of computers will create a new, virtual world for its users. Current users of telecommunications networks such as the Internet are still well aware of the fact that they are connected to a network of computers. At this stage, it is not that easy to trace the right information, applications, people and organisations in the network. As the network grows, technology and applications will further improve. Users will also become more experienced. As a result, the technology will become more and more transparent to the users. They will no longer feel that their workstations are connected to a network of computers, but they will have the idea that through their workstations at home, while travelling and at work, they are communicating with a world at a distance.

 

Figure 1.9 The virtual world of the Digital Highway.

On the Digital Highway, people travel through an electronic landscape. To them this is a virtual world, in which they telecommunicate with other people and organisations. They can request all kinds of information. They order their groceries from a large chain of storage centres, the virtual supermarket. They are home bankers who use videophone to seek advice from bank employees, who may in turn be working for the bank from home. On the network you can request the schedules of concert halls from all over the world. Tickets to concerts in the neighbourhood can be ordered electronically. Concerts that are given at the other end of the world can be attended by means of a live broadcast or a live recording rendered on the home system by the media supplier.

The virtual company
Working will be completely different in the virtual world. This is particularly true for people who create immaterial products which they transmit via the Digital Highway. At present, we have the industrial labour model. The Industrial Revolution has separated work from living. People have become urban professionals. Most people work eight hours a day, Mondays through Fridays, in the production process at the ‘back-office’ of a company. Others work in ‘front-offices’, such as shops, information desks and counters, selling products and services to people and companies. For the remaining hours of the day people are consumers who buy the products of companies via the front offices. As a result, during normal working hours, many people are producing and only few are consuming. Only on weekends, at late opening hours and during holidays, more people are consuming than producing.

The virtual world along the Digital Highway will permanently change the hours for work and spare time. As a result of the growth towards world-wide networks and partnerships, organisations in the form of virtual companies emerge all over the world. These organisations operate along the Digital Highway 24 hours a day all over the world.

Via the Digital Highway, people who work in the immaterial sectors will be working at workstations everywhere. They will communicate with everybody via the network, supply immaterial products to everybody and receive immaterial products from everywhere. Consumers use their mobile workstations or their home systems as extended offices to buy material and immaterial products. Producers use their mobile workstations or home systems as home offices to produce immaterial products and to sell immaterial and material products. The production of immaterial products is not restricted to a particular area. It can take place anywhere in the world, at a mobile workstation or a home system. All of these activities do not require a workstation at a permanent work place anymore. At the most, people will need offices where they can temporarily rent a working space with a workstation.

 

Figure 1.10 From urban professional to digital nomad.

There will of course always be people who perform their work at a permanent location or along a fixed route. They produce and transport material products, provide services directed at the physical world, such as maintenance, cleaning and repair work. As a result of continuous automation and mechanisation, working at permanent locations and at fixed hours will relatively decrease, while the growth of immaterial production will lead to an increasing freedom to work at any time and at any place.

The digital nomad
In the virtual company the degree of freedom and the working hours are completely different from those in real companies. The virtual company can be available to everybody on the network 24 hours a day all over the world. That does not mean, however, that employees in the virtual company have to be present 24 hours a day to work. To a large extent, they are free to decide for themselves when they will be working. They may even work as freelancers for different virtual companies. Each person on the network can, to a certain extent, always be reached via a personal electronic diary that can take care of a variety of things. As much as possible, the electronic diary keeps up with the whereabouts of its owner (in the real world) and it can determine whether he is available or open to communication. The electronic diary as an instrument can be reached 24 hours a day. All messages and telephone calls can now be routed via the electronic diary. If a person is not immediately available for direct telecommunications by phone or video phone, we can place a message in his electronic diary. In cases of emergency, the diary may try to contact that person at home or page him. It is also possible to reroute a question to a colleague elsewhere in the world, who is available at that particular time. The modern telephone services already provide such services. As a result, there is no longer a need for people to be present at work from nine to five every day, simply to be available for telephone calls. The electronic diary will know where to find them in the network, wherever they are.

The Information Revolution will involve a new, post-industrial labour model for people who can perform their work on and via the network. People become digital nomads. A digital nomad is able to produce and consume simultaneously and is no longer restricted in his activities with respect to time and place. He can live anywhere in the real world. As a teleworker in the virtual world he can have his activities penetrate the Digital Highway all over the world, while as a teleconsumer he can order products and services everywhere. The result is a 24-hour society, in which everybody all over the world can be consumer and producer 24 hours a day. Whether this ideal picture, fed by the possibilities of IT, is really such an ideal picture socially speaking, remains to be seen. In The Netherlands, there is now a discussion concerning the desirability of the 24-hour economy. Many regard it as something enforced by trade and industry. The breaking of life patterns – for example the alternation of waking and sleeping, and Sunday rest – is regarded as a threat to the quality of life and therefore as a threat to our well-being.
The digital nomad must therefore be free to decide how much time he spends on work and how much on other things, such as entertainment and child care. Men and women will thus be better able to share work and home-making. For women in particular, this means that they have better chances of work. It is our expectation that prosperity will grow to such an extent, that the members of the working population will have to work less than eight hours a day.

 

1.3.5 The Influence On Our Well-being

How the Information Revolution will influence our well-being is an important question. Much will depend on ourselves. First, we will have to answer the question how and to what end we want to change society socially, culturally and economically. Without these answers, we run a great risk of threatening our well-being in spite of the growing prosperity. Answering this question is something we have to take very seriously. The necessity of this is often pointed out, but all too soon, people disregard it, driven by haste. Technology in itself has no value. We have to think through how we can apply IT meaningfully, and what meaningful ways there are of configuring our society, our organisations and our companies with IT. Answers will be difficult to find, though, when significant problems are concerned such as unemployment, third-world problems and environmental issues.
Nevertheless, we will mention a number of ways in which IT and telecommunications may influence our well-being.

Environment The Information Revolution will entail improvements for the environment. Firstly, people will grow to attach more value to immaterial products, which means they will attach less value to material products that are harmful to the environment. Computers make it possible to design better material products and production processes that are less harmful to the environment. In production process design the focus is on a minimum of energy and resource consumption and waste. The product design focuses on a long life cycle and, if applicable, on a minimum of energy consumption. It should be possible to disassemble the product. This improves the possibility to replace parts, so that the product life cycle is further extended. At the end of the life cycle, the parts should be reusable in other products as much as possible.
Another improvement is the reduced need for the transport of people. Working from home, videoconferencing and the improved possibilities of conveying highly complex matters via the network, reduce the need for people to travel. When fixed working hours for office staff no longer exist, the current rush hour traffic will also be reduced.

Better medical care
IT and telecommunications may contribute to an improved medical care. Many advanced examination and treatment methods use computers. Computers support the control and monitoring of the process, and help to calculate and present examination results. This contribution of technology may not be a blessing to all, however. It has debatable, sensitive aspects, concerning relevance and ethics.
Doctors also use IT and telecommunications to exchange data. Experiments are going on with tele-assisting with difficult operations via videoconferencing. There are also experiments with tele-operating by means of telematics (robots that are operated from a distance). What is important for patients is that there is one network of care providers such as physicians, pharmacists and hospitals. Patients' medical data are easy to exchange, so that less mistakes will be made at transfers. Appointments can be better planned and monitored, so that long waiting periods in waiting rooms are reduced. As a result, the service towards patients will improve, and physicians will be treating the whole patient instead of his isolated symptoms.

Better education
The use of the Digital Highway combined with multimedia will widen the possibilities for support of education. This does not just apply to regular schools, but even more to professional education, post-graduate courses and adult education. An electronic education market is opened up, in which institutes, companies and individuals can participate as suppliers and buyers of information and (interactive) training courses. Children and adults can do training courses at home or expand their knowledge and education in certain areas. People who have questions about specific areas can look for a specialist in the network with the right background and discuss questions and problems with him via telecommunications. This does not imply, however, that there is no need for direct, personal contact with teachers – especially for children. For a proper development, children still need to work with pen and paper.

A growing significance of data and knowledge
The Digital Highway facilitates data distribution. In the age of agriculture, land ownership was decisive for prosperity and well-being. In the industrial age, this changed to ownership of goods and capital. The most important factor in the information age will be ownership of data and knowledge. For everybody to be able to share in prosperity, everybody must simultaneously have access to the available data. This of course applies to business data, but also to information necessary to expand ones knowledge and understanding.
What we particularly need to have our prosperity grow and maintain our well-being, is a thorough understanding of social developments. It is therefore extremely important to expand the Digital Highway beyond the prosperous companies, people and countries. While in the material world there is a gap between haves and have-nots, in the immaterial world a gap could easily arise between knows and know-nots.