About “IT doesn’t matter”
In a world connecting to the Internet these days, Nicholas Carr, who is famous for the book, The Shallows, said a long time ago, “IT (Information technology) doesn’t matter.” Do you agree with what he said?
To summarize his point, “Having a car doesn’t make a difference if everyone has one.” Therefore, since IT became an infrastructure used in daily life, IT itself can’t make a difference. To clarify, IT as an infrastructure and the commoditization of IT in our daily lives means that utilizing IT is now nothing new or attractive, and is not a field of significant importance.
Yet, most people use IT devices to share information, engage in social networking, and search for new information. People don’t need to study anything special to use IT. However, they don’t have any problems using a new IT device or understanding new technology, and even regenerate IT upon using them. IT has become a part of our daily lives. In the time of scarcity, knowing how to utilize IT increased its value, and in the time of abundance where everyone has access to IT, it has lost its special value.
However, did you know that in the abundance of IT, IT is also becoming more important? Initially, IT was more valuable due to hardware scarcity. Then, it became abundant, and people are moving to create software scarcity. Below is one simple example.
First, we save Big Data from the abundant commodity of IT, classify, analyze, and extract meaningful data, create new business, and establish a point of difference. Second, we use AI (Artificial Intelligence) to search for new data and introduce a new service. Third, most of these works are done unmanned, and are processed from IT software. What makes IT different from past products is that IT consists of both software and hardware.
IT is evolving from the development of software. Software is embedded in cars, speakers, coffee machines, refrigerators, vending machines, digital mirrors, drones, etc. As IT becomes abundant, the differentiation of IT is gaining more importance. New products based on IT hardware are newly serviced through upgraded software. These types of information and services are interlocked real-time. This distinguishes IT from other products in the industrial age.
(This year, South Korea made coding education mandatory for students from elementary to high school. It proves that an understanding of IT and utilizing IT is becoming necessary in our daily lives.) Which software do you want to load in IT? Culture, history, society, chemistry, math, fiber, engineering, management... the field from which you can choose is very broad. Until you have choices, IT is still going to be important in the future. IT still matters.
Dept. of IT D&L Hyung Kwang Choi
