13 November 2015

Contemplations on 2025

Some thoughts on future scenarios.

Premises

  • information and related technology continue to increase in economic and societal importance
  • existing information technology evolves further down the path towards commoditization
  • connections increase between people and people, people and things, and things and things   
  • artificial intelligence becomes more advanced and significant 
  • disintermediation and democratization continue to disrupt the market place, also stimulating growth of the shared economy 
  • consumers’ dissatisfaction with providers’ uncompromising algorithms and inconsiderate people fuel the experience economy
  • inequality of distribution of income and wealth increases 


Consequences

  • the increasing significance of information results in it being promoted to an item on the financial balance sheet, attracting management attention
  • the increasing significance of artificial intelligence results in more emphasis on digital ethics (e.g. damage mitigation strategies in self-driving cars) 
  • internal centralized IT departments make way for multiple decentralized I&T functions within business divisions/units, with a more fluid division of demand and supply, and with the emphasis on decision-making regarding investments and value realization
  • externally available IT services increase in number and usefulness, resulting in user organizations focusing on differentiating applications of readily available I&T
  • more pervasive artificial intelligence increases the divide between empowered and emasculated citizens/consumers
  • the experience economy stimulates the development of digital enterprises in which the interaction with the enterprise’s digital ‘hologram’ is experientially equivalent with the interaction with the enterprise’s analogue manifestation
  • full time employment is for many people no longer possible and/or desirable, the latter resulting in knowledge continuity challenges for enterprises
  • the increased recognition of the complex adaptive nature of systems (in the broadest sense) drives smaller-scale, multidisciplinary, and experimental/emergent ways of working