| The intensifying process of economic integration and political interdependence that we know as globalization is clearly tearing down barriers and building new networks among nations, peoples, and cultures, at an astonishing and historically unprecedented rate. It has been fueled by an explosion of IT technology that enables information, ideas, money, people, products, and services to move within and across national borders at increasingly greater speeds and volumes. It is important to point out that globalization need not benefit only the advanced nations. Indeed, in developing countries, too, it brings the promise, but not the guarantee of a better future. More people have been lifted out of poverty during the last few decades than at any time in history. Life expectancy in developing countries is up. Infant mortality is down. And, according to the United Nations Human Development Index, which measures a decent standard of living, a good education, and a long and healthy life, the gap between rich and poor countries actually has declined since 1970. However, much remains still to be done. With half the world's people struggling to survive on less than $2 a day, nearly 1 billion people are living in chronic hunger. Almost a billion of the world's adults cannot read. Half the children in the poorest countries still are not in school. So, while many of us walk on the cutting edge of the new global economy, alarming numbers of people still live on the bare razor's edge of survival. The IT industry and its technology are a vital part of this enabling process. We should not lose our sense of responsibility to those who desperately need it. The key conclusion is that today's IT industry is by no means considered to be mature. Those who say that the IT industry is now so large that it can only grow at the rate of the overall economy are mistaken. First, the history of other technologies and media, such as electricity, telephony, and television, suggests that the true capability of any new technology does not become fully evident until societal usage becomes pervasive. The IT industry is still a long way from that, even in the U.S., let alone most of the rest of the world. Other than perhaps email, very few Internet applications are even close to achieving their full potential. The finish line in the IT industry race will never be fully reached. Secondly, and probably more importantly, the IT industry should not be viewed as just another economic sector, such as retail or health care. Instead, IT should be viewed as an ever more important part of just about every industry. From this perspective, for the foreseeable future, growth is, at least theoretically, virtually unbounded as more and more business processes become inseparable from their underlying technology, and many new forms of business value-added have an essential technology component. Internet growth will continue to fuel the IT industry worldwide. About 10 million U.S. adults hooked up to the Internet for the first time in 2002, boosting the overall number to 168.6 million, or 79 percent of the population.[9] It took less than five years for the Internet to reach over 50 million users. When we compare that growth to other technologies it startles the imagination: -
Cable Television took 10 years to reach 50 million. -
Regular Television took 13 years to reach 50 million. -
Telephone took 48 years to reach 50 million. Worldwide, the number of people with home access to the Internet hit over 600 million by the end of 2002. This figure was up 17 million from the previous year. As countries in the Far East, such as China, continue to grow, so does their Internet population. US surfers accounted for 29 percent of users, with Europe accounting for 23 percent. Growth in user numbers the UK, Italy, and Germany outpaced that in the US in 2002 on a percentage basis, with spectacular growth in countries such as Spain and Brazil. The Internet will continue to expand in all countries with some maturity leveling expected in larger countries. Almost 62 percent of Web surfers ages 14 and up—94.9 million people in the United States—will purchase goods and services online in 2005, up from nearly 60 percent, or 81.2 million users in 2002. But can this expansion continue along the lines we have discussed here? Is the rate of expansion part of the future problem? Will complexity of the technology tear down what has been successful so far? This is the key challenge for Autonomic Computing to address. |
