Why the Question?

The Digital Era is characterized by intense socio-economic transformation on a scale similar to that of the Industrial Revolution (Drucker, 2002). Everyday life involves socio-economic interactivity which is more varied than before, causing faster turnover of socio-economic knowledge. The knowledge base of the Digital Era is more abstract and theoretical than in the past (Tsoukas, 2003), but is often also more trivial (e.g., the increase in 'reality TV') and more fickle (e.g., the dot.com boom and bust). The era is ever more associated with information and communication technology (ICT), the functionality of which is increasingly able to mobilize knowledge, at faster speeds, and in ways that can be addictive (e.g., chat rooms) or out of control (e.g., computer viruses), as well as productive (e.g., across distances). Innovative and analytical knowledge workers, as well as celebrities, move the Digital Era forward faster in time. Knowledge workers have access to, and also interact with, more and more knowledge. Everyday people become celebrities through communication technology such as the Internet and photo messaging, as well as traditional media.

The Digital Era has transformed the way many of us live and work by creating a society and economy that is ever more attuned to knowledge, whether that knowledge is content-laden and therefore scientifically factual, or instead is content-free and therefore reliant on emotions, or indeed any combination in between. The structure of the era means people, especially those in developed countries, increasingly belong to social and economic communities, geographic or virtual, which are both more dynamic and complex than in the past. Over time, the Digital Era will have the same effect on all members of society and all economies. Already countries such as India, China, and the Philippines compete very successfully for 'knowledge work'. India, for example, increasingly competes at an economic level, not on the basis of cost, but on the basis of innovation; on the social front, mobile phones are more popular than land-lines.

The need for this book lies in the quandary of how to manage these trends, or alternatively, how to manage as these trends unfold. The combination of very complex, impossible-to-control social networks; a rapidly changing, increasingly global, but also unpredictable knowledge-base; an ICT that moves knowledge faster yet operates differently in different cultures and contexts; and an ever heavier reliance on expensive and scarce knowledge workers whose productivity is difficult to measure and improve, make management more of a challenge than in the past. On the one hand there seems more to control but, on the other hand, control seems harder to come by. The remaining chapters of this book delve deeply into these socio-economic and organizational phenomena, which make up the Digital Era, in terms of the practice of management.

In particular, despite the detail the other chapters in this book provide, an overarching question remains—"Why the Digital Era?" Or, put in other words, why are these trends continuing and why do they produce these, rather than any other socio-economic transformations? Why is socio-knowledge turnover speeding up, often aided by ICT? Why is the Digital Era characterized by very content-based knowledge in some circumstances, and very trivial, fickle, or emotional and hence content-free knowledge in others? Why are organizations seen as competing in an ever more knowledge-based system in which the pace of change is rising? Why do we feel we are losing control?

This chapter provides an explanation, rather than purely a description, of the Digital Era based on evolutionary theory, specifically the branch of evolution called memetics, which claims to explain 'social evolution'. Evolutionary theory is a theory of the transformation of knowledge, which explains how the system we live in remains in perpetual existence through dynamic equilibrium, albeit the average speed of transformation of knowledge increases over time. The Digital Era is conceived as being called such, as ICT aids that increase in pace of transformation of knowledge, in the form of memes (Dawkins, 1976), which, like genes, are self-contained units of transferable knowledge that show both variation and consistent transmission. The average speed increases because greater speed brings faster adaptation, and hence advantage, to those or that which possesses it within evolutionary hot-spots where the equilibrium is disturbed. Change is favored by disequilibrium in order to recreate equilibrium. The theory provides an explanation of why the Digital Era exists. Even with this proviso, the explanation provides a good way of introducing the book by giving an answer to the broadest, most explanatory question that can be asked of the Digital Era, namely: Why does the era exist?

The chapter is structured as follows. Firstly, the nature of the Digital Era is described in economic and social terms. It is proposed that differential distributions of knowledge are responsible for different types and rates of socio-techno-economic transformation across the globe. Secondly, the reader is led through an overview of how the branch of evolutionary theory, memetics, explains the nature of the social system we live in, in terms of differential knowledge distributions. The theory claims that life is sustainable because it exists in dynamic equilibrium, an equilibrium that is maintained as the result of equally dynamic differential distributions of knowledge. Thirdly, two case studies of socioeconomic transformation are presented to illustrate the ideas raised and to clarify the thrust of the explanation. Fourthly the policy, managerial, and research implications of the application of evolutionary theory to the Digital Era are explored. The chapter draws to a close with a conclusion and an introduction to the remainder of the book.