Technology decentralizes power and dumps it onto the keyboads of individuals at all socio-economic levels. Corporate bureaucracy and middle management are increasingly being cut out of the deal and made irrelevant despite the short-term camouflage of outsourcing because the arts of outsourcing themselves are being outsourced.
Here’s The New York Times noting the obvious about “the democratization of information technology:”
The second-generation Internet technologies — combined with earlier tools like the Web itself and e-mail — are drastically reducing the cost of communicating, finding things and distributing and receiving services online. That means a cost leveling that puts small companies on equal footing with big ones, making it easier for upstarts to innovate, disrupt industries and even get big fast.
If the The New York Times finds this news, then what has been pretty obvious for some time now is getting, well, really obvious — especially on a slow news day.
Some people will judge a trend in light of their own self-interest and time frame, then operate accordingly. “That’s true,” they will say of technology, ” but not in my lifetime.”
Hey, the Internet kicked in just 15 years ago. We are in hyperdrive, Scotty. Gordon Moore’s law still applies in spirit, if not specifically: Computing power will double every 18 months with no increase in price.
The strength of big corporations continues to be their mass marketing muscle, their dominance in branding products and their knack for persuading politicians to do their bidding in regulatory matters (remember the telecom bill?). Big corporations still have the capital to leverage and swipe the innovations of the smaller guys or stamp them out.
If that doesn’t work then the big corporations just buy up the little ones — and frequently ruin the product or service by doing so.
But big corporations are based on pyramids of power. It works in some sectors — financial services, of course. But other corporate sectors face rapid decline as workers and small business decentralize with tech.
