What is it to live in a Digital World?

It is said that constant renewal is the need of the hour and thus focusing about  the unique mechanism we are in the era of the latest digital world giving a blend to society and the flora, fauna and the practices that we’ve been following since decades with a  vision to make life easy and us information savvy.

            Today in this digital world or information economy the concept is laid down on the principle of exchanging and selling information. Information is the only commodity which is exchanged which has absolute zero incremental value. The digital world has products known as information products which are being used by us in our day to day lives. The economy working in an information product relies on: -

·         The demand of the information product.

·         The resources used in the production.

·         The development cost of the first unit of production.

·         The reproduction costs inclusive of the material costs.

·         The profit margins. And;

·         The competitiveness in the market as per feasibility, ease of use, pricing and services offered on that information product.

The cost of creation of an information product is very large, but the price which we pay for buying it is very less as compared, because the information companies focus on the quality of their product and target the large quantity of people who are going to use them thus ensuring break even and profit.

For this the organization and the information workers have to undergo some organizational changes which can be reflected as a distinguishing feature between the traditional production unit and the new information firm. The new economy or the information age is embedded on the principles of the old economy or the production age thus organizational changes have taken place in today’s scenario and hence the work culture of the people in the information economy or the digital world have also changed as said “A company comes from the people who do”.

Let us look at some of the prominent things that an organization does:-

·         It organizes

·         Fixes Communication

·         Distribution of Responsibility

·         Input and output feedbacks

The whole nature of an organization changes in an information economy and therefore changing the principles of management today that are as follows:-

·         The companies have become learner and are more agile.

·         They are more focused on identifying values from the customer’s perspective.

·         They are less hierarchical in structure and decision authority.

·         They are less likely to provide careers and lifelong jobs.

·         Companies now are hiring women in their staff.

·         Companies are continually reorganizing to gain the competitive edge.

So, we also have to prepare a person to handle situations in an information economy by:-

·         Continuous Competency Development – information workers keep their technology skills up to date.

·         Different ways of thinking – across cross functional sectors and teams require “kaleidoscope thinking”. The ability to think in every different angle.

·         Team work and collaboration, Relationship Development and networking.

·         Corporate indifference and Flexible work hours.

The idea of “labor is destructive” has gone away from the information companies as it depends on the social group of the IT employees from which they come from and the way they have been schooled. Natures of the social conflicts are better managed in IT companies. Previously “bonuses” were the main crisis point of the production units but now the IT companies have made their employees a stakeholder in their own firms hence there would be no strike and it will result in the success of the company.

When the nature of labor changes the entire sociology changes. The information firms began to hire large number of women which embeds the major turning point in the information sector, the work culture altered, it became more flexible and open to ideas and innovations. We started to think about the community services and CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) drive.

We’ve a possibility that “a machine does not need rest”. No machine can go on, the only machines that can do are information devices. Thus the work 24 hour concept came into existence. You can actually work in different time zones that an information economy allows i.e. the inputs are taken from the different time zones. The people are schooled to work in an information company and are trained in the following aspects:-

·         Deadlines are important

·         Biological Clock has no value

·         Timelines are important.

Pure knowledge economy is very rare so most of the technology companies are working in incremental technology. ICT (Information & Communication Technology) has allowed companies to operate within a core-competence, and hence created outsourcing as each company wants to work on their core-competence. The outsourcing is the management of core competencies which can only be made possible with high integration of ICT. By outsourcing all the non-technical services the efficiency of the organization automatically improves.

ICT has enabled organizations to develop synergies between systems, i.e. if you bring two distinct systems close, then they will begin to depend on one another, hence shifting the work load and balances. Hence, all the systems become efficient. Overall ICT has enabled the companies to:-

·         Create and Maintain Core Competencies.

·         It has given the virtual outsourcing model of data.

·         It has made organization information intensive i.e. lot of common knowledge is shared at all levels within an organization.

·         More and more people in an organization feel involved.

·         It has made information flow more transparent, that makes an organization a more participatory organization. (The Participatory Model)

·         It has made external communication faster and carries more volumes data. And the volume decides the load of communication in a company. Hence you spend less time, effort and money.

Social Impact of Technology

Every technology has a social impact; a technology becomes technology only when it becomes a part of people’s life. Most of the technologies scale within a very confined user group i.e. maximum technology remain in the expert domain and does not leave the production center.

A technology that enters the society becomes a social technology. The people understand the technology in different ways depending upon their relationship to technologies and the nature of penetration of technologies in their lives. Knowledge of the information product is confined to user application. When the technology enters society its nature changes, its use changes and is put to usages not intended, one of the biggest live examples we can see is of Google which was initially only made for finding university documents and files and now the whole world uses it as a major search engine. 

         

The most visible way that ICT has entered our lives is cell phones, earlier it was meant for people with large disposable income but now the tele density of the country has increased drastically. The means of communications now have personalized.  Now, communication is a personal and private thing, this is the social change taking place. And hence:-

·         Nature of Communication Changes – when something becomes private communication becomes personal. Not the speed or act of communication changes.

·         It goes into the hands of the non-literate – hence creating a new form of literacy outside of which they are illiterate, the technology did not intended this.

·         Therefore, the nature of transaction of technology itself changes – we start transacting economic things on the phone thereby altering the client provider relationship.

Technology enters our life in minor and changes our actions.  Our relationship to language itself begins to alter. As a result two new languages are being experimented upon and those are Hinglish and the SMS language. With ICT people began to express their views in the national and international events simply by polling on the web or SMS. The one way communication has become bi-directional, the entire nature of feedback to media allows it to survive.

You need to familiarize people with technology appearing it to be very benign. The tremendous change due to the feedback mechanism is digital. The whole idea is to feel involved in the life of the nation which is possible only when you have access to technology.