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What's Next in the Information Age?
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10606 |
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Section : |
NATURAL SCIENCE
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| Issue
Date : |
2 / 1986 |
7,513 Words |
| Author
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John S. Mayo
John S. Mayo is Executive Vice President of AT&T Bell
Laboratories. |
The long, complex evolution up to this stage is about to blossom into technologies with profound social implications.
Humans were given capable and inquisitive minds, so they endlessly seek better ways of doing things. This drive, coupled with an innate curiosity and a strong drive to unlock the secrets of nature, has created a steady stream of technical innovations over the ages.
These innovative efforts have focused on the means of survival, comfort, and accumulation of wealth--with the hierarchy of needs extending from physical basics of existence to higher-level wants associated with self-actualization. A principal thrust of innovation continues towards technological advances that enhance the productivity of labor and free humans of tasks done more economically by machines. An insatiable appetite for convenience, comfort, and entertainment products and services, as well as for means to overcome natural barriers like geography and travel time, creates a constant pull on technology. The pull is especially strong in areas relating to the quality of life, and there have been many technical innovations to meet that need. But the opportunities are far from exhausted. Among society's newest demands on technology is the means to handle the vast amount of information generated by modern life. This information explosion stems from sophisticated business practices, new residential services, substantially increased record keeping through extensive data bases, and the globalization of our advanced society.
The information technologies have evolved over many years to assist a growing portion of the work force devoted to the generation, processing, transmission, storage, retrieval and general use of information. Bureaucracies generated during the major wars and the rapid growth of social services in recent decades helped increase the number of information workers in the U.S. work force, and this became a permanent change in our way of life. Stimulated by these and other spurts of rapid growth, the percentage of information workers in the U.S. work force has grown from about 10 in 1900, to about 30 in 1940, to about 50 in 1970. Since 1970 the fraction has held at roughly 50, probably as a result of the new electronic information technologies that augment human efforts. The computer, along with telecommunications, is making today's information work force more efficient, much as the engine raised productivity during the Industrial Revolution. In both cases, society's thirst for technology to reduce labor was met in striking ways by a wide range of innovations of varying
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