The networked world

The world is currently experiencing a period of major change and transition. As it transforms, virtually every aspect of our lives is being reshaped. We are moving from physical space to cyberspace ; from products and processes to information and networks; from paper and postage to e-commerce and the Internet; from mass production to mass customisation. At the same time, the foundation of corporations is shifting from material assets to intellectual capital.

In the networked world information is instantaneous, interactive, individual, international, inexhaustible, interconnected and inexpensive; and the world is now the marketplace and source of supply for all goods and services, for all enterprises , regardless of size or geographical location. This has opened up a Pandoras box of new opportunities.

To successfully plan for our future in the new economy, however, it is important to take a step back to examine and understand what led to the creation of the networked world.

The start of the new world

In the last decades of the twentieth century, events occurred that were not thought possible just a few months previously. The Berlin Wall, the symbol of the Cold War, had divided the world for nearly 30 years . It disintegrated overnight without a shot being fired . This contributed to the demise of communism throughout the world, and the establishment of a completely new global geopolitical and economic environment that has few ideological impediments to international trade and investment.

The end of communism removed the major threat of war that existed for many decades, and allowed the United States to release for commercial use previously classified information on new technologies. Decentralised networks had been developed to guard against the destruction of information and communications systems during times of war. This technology was released for general use and quickly evolved into what we now know as the Internet.

From small commercial beginnings in the early 1990s, and aided by the rapid development of even newer technologies, the Internet quickly reached critical mass, became available to millions of people around the world, and erupted into our lives. It has given us easy access to unlimited amounts of information, together with totally new systems and strategies for processing and communicating this information on a global basis. This has greatly enhanced the capabilities of the human mind to develop new insights and generate new ideasleading to an explosion of knowledge in all fields of endeavour.

The combination of the removal of ideological impediments to trade and investment, together with a vastly improved interactive, multimedia and global communications infrastructure, has led to an economic metamorphosis and the emergence of a new dominant economic orderglobal open -market capitalism . Nations and corporations now compete with each other in a totally new economic environment to carve out their share of world trade and commerce.

In this unpredictable environment, governments and private enterprise both struggle with constantly changing economic, social and political concepts. New emerging forms of competition have led to radical restructuring in most organisations, with major consequences to the career and employment prospects of millions of people. The very nature of work is being questioned, and old notions of job security through functional efficiency, long service and corporate loyalty mean nothing. In order to survive, companies are forced constantly to adjust to new circumstances, often through radical and ruthless restructuring and rationalisation.

Gone are the old concepts of mass production and economies of scale, as we enter a new era of mass customisation and one-toone personal relationships. Customers now wantand can get better products, greater choice, shorter lead times, lower prices, and they can get them more often, at lower risk and supported by faster service . . . and from anywhere in the world!

The new paradigms

Today we are experiencing the confusion, chaos and complexity of transition and transformation, as we create the new economic, social, cultural, and political environments of the Cyber Age. In the new networked world we are now part of a network society , operate in an information economy ,work in a cyber metropolis ,live in a global village , trade in a borderless world , and have an address in cyburbia .

1.The network society

The network society, of which we are now part, is a virtual society in cyberspace, where interactive multimedia communications allow us to experience instantaneous personal interaction at levels we would have thought impossible just a few years ago. However, we are just at the start of a period of major transformation, and what we are presently experiencing in our cyber relationships is nothing compared with what is yet to come.

As communications become more mobile, cheaper, faster and easier to use, more and more people are joining the network society. The cost continues to drop dramatically and the speed and capacity continue to escalate exponentially. Just a few years ago, only those of us with computers could be members of the network society and thereby interconnected to all of its people and with instantaneous multimedia access to all its information. Today, broadband wireless technology means that access is available not only to those with computers, but also to anyone with an appropriate fixed or mobile communications device.

The growth spurt in new wireless applications and multimedia mobile devices has greatly accelerated the spread of interactive multimedia connectivity, which is rapidly becoming the most common form of communications.

There is little doubt that as more and more people join the network society of cyberspace, our lives will continue to change in fascinating ways.

2.The information economy

We now have easy access to unlimited amounts of information. As more and more people both use and generate even more information at exponential rates, the information economy in which we operate will become larger and larger, and our opportunity for innovation will become greater and greater:

• information is the building block of knowledge

• knowledge forms our foundation for thinking

• creative thinking is the source of imagination

• imagination is the source of innovation

• innovation is the practical application of imagination

• innovation creates change, which in turn generates even more information.

Thus the exploding information economy of the networked world is an ever-expanding universe of knowledge that is becoming readily accessible to billions of people.

3.The cyber metropolis

The networked world is a gigantic global metropolis, where the transaction and delivery of goods and services involving relationships, information, knowledge and ideas can be carried out without regard to geographical location. In many professions , the physical location of people is now of much less importance, and organisations are outsourcing more and more of their requirements to service providers located anywhere in the world.

In cyberspace there is no night and day, and services are continuously supported by networked global service providers, working normal eight- hour shifts that are continuously cycling through three time zonesEurope, Asia and America. In the cyber metropolis we are all shift workers, and our employers or employees can reside anywhere in the world.

4.The borderless world

National borders are losing their significance as more and more information that was previously delivered in physical form is now delivered electronically . E-commerce is the most rapidly growing sector of cyberspace, and every day new e-ideas are emerging in e-banking, e-tailing, e-purchasing, e-payments, e-sharetrading, e-education, e-realestate, e-health, e-medicine and, of course, email.

The fastest growth in e-commerce is in the business-to-business (B2B) sector, where conversion from people-based to electronic transactions can produce huge cost savings and totally transform the way of doing business. B2B commerce has special significance for global businesses, where e-systems easily handle the crossing of cultural borders, language translation, and transactions in different currencies.

In cyberspace the whole world is the marketplace and a source of supply for all goods, services and enterprises, regardless of size or geographical location. This is particularly significant for many of the worlds smaller businesses. In the past they could not consider trading in global markets because they lacked the large amount of money, time and people needed for export. Global trading in the borderless world is entirely different. Many small enterprises now sell directly to other small enterprises all over the world, bypassing many of the old links in the supply chain.

Another sector that has contributed greatly to the formation of the borderless world is the business-to-consumer (B2C) sector. Individual on-line orders, delivered in small parcels by mail or courier, now pass unimpeded across national boundaries.

5.The global village

The effect of the networked world on the development of our emerging economic environment is also mirrored in the development of our emerging social and political environments. In the virtual world of cyberspace we now live in a global village, where our virtual neighbours are just seconds away from us, regardless of their physical location. With interactive multimedia we can see and speak to them in real time, and within the foreseeable future we will be able to virtually smell and touch them.

In the political environment, protest groups with special agendas (or people from any country who share common concerns) pop up simultaneously in all parts of the global village, planning their strategies and coordinating their resources through virtual meetings in cyberspace. Thus, what is of concern in one part of the world can immediately be of concern in another part, and can instantaneously affect societies and politics all around the globe.

6. Cyburbia

Cyburbia is where we ˜live in cyberspace and where we are found and identified through our email address and mobile telephone number. These cyber contacts stay the same regardless of where we are located. If we are uncontactable, e-messages, graphics and voicemail are left for us in our mailboxes in cyburbia. Cyburbia exists in a virtual world of identification, not in a physical world of location, and our address in cyburbia is our point of instantaneous multimedia contact with each other, at any time and in any place.

Life in cyburbia gives us much greater individual choice of products and personalised services, and allows for the development of innovative marketing strategies, of which variety will be subject only to the limits of our imagination.