Knowledge is Power
Wednesday, 28. February 2007, 10:12:53
Power Shift by Alvin Toffler
We are all in a power shift era. Power deals with knowledge and the role it plays in our lives. Without knowledge you will not win a battle, in war or in market competition. Knowledge is the key to success. Alvin Toffler gives many examples on how knowledge has changed lives in his incredible book PowerShift. With knowledge you can gain power. But the shifting of power has become more fluid; it can shift from one person to another quickly.
Manufacturers were once in control before our digital age. One example Alvin talks about is the Gillette razor company and the power it had. Gillette had all the control of its product in the beginning. Gillette controlled how many razors went in each store. How many different styles/brands of Gillette’s a store would display. The store owner had no control.
Manufacturers kept their competition running because of the information they knew. They knew how to accumulate knowledge about their consumers. From this knowledge power was born. The invention of bar-codes shifted power from the manufacturer to the retailer. Bar-codes reveal a lot of information about the consumer. A retailer now has information about their consumer from these bar-codes. The invention of computers for bar-codes has shifted the power from the manufacture to the retailer.
Today these same manufacturers beg for space in stores. Store owners know what the customer wants from the information it collects through its barcode system. A good example of how power can shift because of technology. Deeper knowledge permits us to reach high speed levels that produce items as a faster and better efficiency.
The invention of networks has opened the world to anyone. LANs and WANs can connect companies across the globe. “Companies daily grow more dependent on their electronic nets for billing, ordering, tracking, and trading; for the exchange of design specifications, engineering drawings and schedules; and for actually controlling production lines remotely. Once regarded as purely administrative tools, networked information systems are increasingly seen as strategic weapons, helping companies protect established markets and attack new ones.” In today’s society we have VANs (Value Added Networks) now. These networks can translate information’s from one form to the other. “VANs merely scramble and rescramble messages to adapt them to different media.” VANs can translate from one language to another. It may not be perfect but it is understandable.
VAN networks are a revolution in today’s business. A network's main function is to share information. Corporations are leading towards electronic interaction network. This interaction allows the buyer to place an order with the seller and have the transaction take place immediately. This leads to intimacy with customers and suppliers. You can become locked into a supplier though. Information sharing could lead to blurring boundaries of information. The information can be used as a weapon for the ‘go-betweens’ and intermediaries. Wholesalers and warehouses are bypassed. There are dangers to new technology. Corporations have to watch out for themselves and their customers. Information boundaries are critical.
Could extra intelligence produce a better way of life? Technology is proving extra intelligence does lead to a better life. The invention of the computer has proven this fact. “Before long the power of computers will leap forward because of parallel processing, artificial intelligence, and other stunning innovations. Speech recognition and automatic translation will, no doubt, come into wide use, along with high definition visual displays and concert-class sound. The same networks will routinely carry voice, data, images, and information in other forms.” Upgrading information leads to intelligence.
Microprocessor revolutionized the mainframe computer. “The next step has come with the introduction of recently of “hyper-media” data bases capable of storing not merely text but also graphics, music, speech and other sounds. More important, hyper-media combine data bases and programs to give the user far greater flexibility than earlier data base systems.” This technology has changed how people in today’s corporate world operate.
Information is freely transformed from one place to the other. Everyone does not have to have the exact same computer and software. “The goal of hyper-media is to “free-form” and “free-flow” information.” Knowledge is power and power is knowledge.
Skills and knowledge are needed for jobs, not quantitative but qualitative. In the near future job descriptions will be based on what knowledge you have in the technological field. Your brain will earn you money not your physical strength. UPS and FedEx drivers use computers, load and unload trucks plus they drive trucks. They have to use their brain to run the computer and their physical strength to load and unload the trucks. Knowledge is inexhaustible. Wealth used to be measured by the possession of goods you had now it is measured by the amount of intelligence you have. The information wars struggle for control of knowledge. Knowledge is a hot commodity.
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