Romanticizing Information Technology
Asoke K. Laha
President & MD, Interra IT
Daydreaming, even while you have competing issues and challenges to attend, always is a nice interlude between reality and fantasy. That helps one to get away from mundane thoughts, repetitive boredom of life and directs one's creative energy towards some positive horizon, however Utopian be the thoughts that one is indulging in.
In one such serene mood, detached from the agonies and ecstasies of running a business, where the only certainty is uncertainty, my thoughts have struck on the genesis of information technology. Here, my dear readers, I am not talking about software development, outsourcing, cutting-edge technology, newer ideations or any such profound or cerebral indulgence. It is a plain and simple thought of the history of information technology, bereft of its technology, its mind-breaking terminologies, awesome business models, ruthless competition, changing paradigms, boardroom wars, etc. A thought process to decipher in my own way how the historical perspective of IT, its romantic appeal, its evolution over the years and how this monster will transform itself in the coming centuries, millennia and beyond.
I read somewhere an interesting discussion among a doctor, an engineer and a lawyer about the origin of their respective professions. The doctor claimed that his profession came first. He argued that God has created Eve out of the rib of Adam. God, according to him, would have performed a surgery to take the rib of Adam to create Eve and therefore, his profession would have come first. This was strongly refuted by the engineer, who said that before creating Adam and Eve, God created the universe, with its earth, ocean, mountains, rivers, forests, etc. This he attributed as an engineering marvel and claimed the earliest origin of his profession. Not to be outwitted by the other two, the lawyer said that God has created everything out of nothing - similar to the work we lawyers do - creating problems out of nothingness. That way, he asserted, his profession came first.
I was just imagining if there were an IT man present there, what would have been his response. Could God create this universe, the original human beings, its beautiful landscape, etc. without any prior information and aesthetic planning, designing and meticulous execution? God definitely would have had information, culled out from His thought process as to what the world should look like, what should be the anatomy of the human being, whom He was creating. Perhaps, this joke must have come to the public domain much before the advent of information technology in its present form.
The students of information technology will vouch that there are four stages of growth and might categorize them as pre-mechanical, mechanical, electromechanical and electronics. Beginnings of telecommunication, telegraph, Morse, telephone, radio, television and invention of International Business Machines (IBM) in 1890, etc. can be termed as electromechanical age. The electronic age can be traced from 1940 onwards, wherein generations of computers and other electronic gadgets are being rolled out. I do not know whether we should demarcate another age, known as chip age, which had revolutionized technological landscape not only by reducing the size of equipment but also enhancing productivity several fold.
These are historical facts and do not come as an integral part of my daydreaming. I am more into the romantic side of the information technology that is focussed on man. I tend to believe that application of human mind could have touched a new landmark, when human being would have started conversing with each other or even during when they had started communicating with symbols and gestures. These were reduced into electrical waves and were stored in the brain. The next breakthrough could have been when vocabulary was developed and each word was assigned a special meaning, connotation and context. The origin of mathematics, arithmetic, alchemy, physics, astronomy, urge to travel, evolution of different transportation systems, medical sciences, proliferation of trade, everyday chorus of human beings, etc. scripted not only a cultural and intellectual élan, but underscored the need for a strong platform to store, compute, analyze, retrieve and apply them in a systematic manner.
In the meantime, the definition of IT had undergone a tectonic change. What will happen in the future? I am not a hardcore technocrat to decipher the future course of growth of IT. But as a practitioner of IT and one who makes a living for myself and for others out of information technology, I feel the rollout of this branch of technology should be significant not only for binding the world together but also for giving gainful employment to the teeming millions in the developed, developing and least-developed countries. I have a few such areas in mind. Could we eliminate poverty and destitution with the aid of IT? Could we eliminate terrorism from the face of this world with the aid of IT? Could we help human beings in addressing climate change? Could we alert the decision-makers and businesses what would be the possible result of a lop-sided and exploitative policy so as to avert future economic contagion? Could we provide proper health care and education to billions of population in Africa and certain parts of Asia? Could we help save the precious raw materials so that these are committed to the future generations? And above all, could we make the planet earth and the universe a livable habitat for our progeny?
Friends, my daydreaming is over and now I am caught up with the chorus of my business life. For those who feel that I have only posed questions and not provided solutions, my answer to them is that it is least expected of a daydreamer to give solutions? Yes, I do provide solutions in my real life. That is my business! n
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