The Changing World of Technology

THE CHANGING WORLD OF TECHNOLOGY

Realization is growing that organizations stagnant and bound by tradition are increasingly fading from the limelight. Why? Because one of today's biggest problems in an organizationis failing to adapt to the changing world. Economies throughout the world are going through turbulent change. To better understand the current change, let's look back on the road we've taken.

It's easy to forget that just 25 years ago, no one had a fax machine, a cellular phone, or a notebook computer. Terms we now use in our everyday vocabulary, like e-mail and Internet, were known to maybe, at best, a few hundred people. Computers often took up considerable space, quite unlike today's 4-pound laptops. Moreover, if you were to talk about networks 25 years ago, people would have assumed you were talking about ABC, CBS,or NBC - the major television networks.

The silicon chip and other advances in technology have permanently altered would economies and, as we'll show momentarily, the way people work. Digital electronics, optical data storage, more powerful and portable computers, and computers ability to communicate with each other are changing the way information is created, stored, used, and shared. One individual who has studied these changes and predicted some of their implications is futurist Alvin Toffler. Toffler has written extensively about social change. Classifying each period of social history, Toffler has argued that modern civilization has evolved over three "waves." With each wave came a new way of doing things. Some groups of people gained from the new way; others lost.

The first wave was driven by agriculture. Until the late 19th century, all economies were agrarian. For instance, in the 1890s, approximately 90 percent of people were emplyed in agriculture-related jobs. These individuals were typically their own bosses and were responsible for performing a variety of tasks. their success, or failure, was contingent on how well they produced. Since the 1890s, the proportion of the population engaged in farming has consistantly dropped. Now less than 5 percent of the global workforce is needed to provide our food; in the United States, it's under 3 percent.

The second wave was industrialization. From the late 1800s until the 1960s, most developed countries moved from agrarian societies to industrial societies. In doing so, work left the fields and moved into formal organizations. The industrial wave forever changed the live of skilled craftsmen. No longer did they grow something or produce a product in its entirety.

Instead, workers were hired into tightly structured and formal workplaces. Mass production, specialized jobs, and authority relationships became the mode of operation. It gave rise to a new group of workers - the blue-collar industrial workers-individuals paid to perform routine work that relied almost exclusively on physical stamina. By the 1950s, industrial workers had become the largest single goup in every developed country.

They made products such as steel, automobiles, rubber, and industrial equippment. Ironically, no class in history has ever risen faster than the blue-collar industrial workers account for less than 30 percent of the U.S. workforce and will be less than half that in just a few years.

The shift since World War II has been away from manufacturing work and toward service jobs. Manufacturing jobs, as a proportion of the total civilian workforce, today are highest in Japan at just over 20 percent. In the United States, manufacturing jobs make up about 15 percent of the civilian workforce. In contrast, services make up about half of the jobs in Italy (the lowest percentage of any industrialized country) and more than three-fourths in the United States and Canada.
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