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OCR for page 168
168
THEODORE J. GORDON
Comments
RUTH M. DAVIS
President
The Pymatuning Group
In spite of the scope of the papers presented here I still do not have the big
picture of how information technology is going to affect us. In fact, I believe
that I am fortunate in not understanding it; I may embody the discontinuity
that is going to allow technology and people to get along together. Like
everyone else, I need more time to adapt than advancing technology normally
permits. Admission of the need to gradually make the necessary moves to
adapt and to learn how to use this technology is going to be the key to its
success.
Ted Gordon has offered scene superb insights into one of the arenas where
this technology is making the greatest change. It is interesting, though, that
behind this facade of change there are some very subtle inferences. For
example, as we have heard, it is very easy for managers to believe they are
making changes in a company without actually doing anything. They manipulate
the information, talk about it, tell people, simulate it, and generate interaction;
they do this without making a single change in the company. We can all
generate a tremendous number of information activities without any real
activity in the marketplace. The result can be a different version of "much
ado about nothing" that is, `'much ado with nothing." I think we have to
be terribly careful that we do not jump from what we know how to do—to
work where we can see results in real time—to manipulating results faster
than real time in terms of people's abilities to react.
One of the most interesting points that emerges from the combination of
Walter Baer's and Ted Gordon's papers is the blurring of the differentiation,
which I have always been uncomfortable with, between work and leisure.
That differentiation is rapidly disappearing. Many times I would rather sit at
a computer at home and play with a simulator than sit on the patio and smack
mosquitoes. There will be many instances when the kind of work that we did
in the past is going to be replaced by fun because of the manner in which the
result is attained. If we cannot differentiate between leisure and working,
however, we will really have to adjust to a tremendous change in the near
future. From the anticipated confusion will evolve the real world of tomorrow.
I think the papers in this volume give you all the background that you need
to determine your role in the mixed marketplace and the mixed business/
leisure world of the future.
Much has been said here about information technology and business; Ted
Gordon has helped focus this picture. I commend to you his concept that will
lead you through the spectrum of technology in business, from the board of
directors on one side of the marketplace to the consumer on the other side.
You can use it in your own business to see where lies the real power for
OCR for page 169
COMPUTERS AND BUSINESS
169
change. It has been difficult to bring technology to play in the boardroom and
to determine what companies should do to improve their market position and
products. It is also very difficult to simulate a marketplace and the effects of
policy decisions. I can tell when I have crashed my simulated airplane into a
simulated Sears Tower, but I cannot tell when I am making a bad prediction
in the boardroom.
It is also important to consider young consumers, those individuals on the
other side of the marketplace from the boardroom. We really cannot predict
their behavior even though they are already consumers of information tech-
nology. At three or four years of age they use their terminals and watch video,
cutting out commercials and listening only to what they want. As those young
consumers, who are now making the process of learning and buying continuous,
grow older, they are going to be utilizing information technology to lead them
to many decisions immediately, and they are going to grab hold of the
marketplace and swing it around like a child swinging a lion by the tail. For
a long time we have had a more homogeneous consumer group that the selling
side of the marketplace could manipulate: a group that ranged from the age
of 15 to the age of 60. The information technology that you have heard about
is the technology of the individual, and it will result in dramatic changes in
the consumer marketplace that will, in turn, force changes in business.
OCR for page 170
Representative terms from entire chapter:
bring technology
