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For a long time I have been suggesting to anyone who will listen, or read, that the current world economic situation is due as much to technology impacts on the various industrial sectors as it is on bad bankers and bad banking. As if to prove this, several surveys have recently been published in coincidental proximity to the release of financial performance of companies supplying the infrastructure for technological change.

Companies such as Cisco, IBM, Tanberg, AT&T, to name a few, have recently reported banner results. All have changed future forecasts to reflect the dramatically improved commercial environment they occupy. Other companies, those that use rather than make the technology infrastructure products, are, in many cases, also reporting improved financial conditions. However, these user companies are not doing anywhere near as well as the provider companies and the users are also reporting dramatic investments in technology to improve production productivity.

For example, many user companies are expanding their capacity for teleconferencing so that travel costs are curtailed. In a survey conducted by Research Now companies all over the world had recently expanded their capabilities in the video conferencing area or were actively planning to do so within the next eighteen to twenty-four months.

While that is happening, companies like Amazon, Apple, RIM, Google, Sony and a host of smaller players are revolutionizing the delivery of traditional forms of print, voice and video communications. The impact of these companies has ceased to be merely device and/or consumer electronics oriented. Devices such as the Kindle, iPhone, Blackberry, Android systems, E-reader series, iPad and so forth are working profound changes on the way commercial and personal communications take place. These changes in communications are, in turn, working profound changes on the production, distribution, marketing, sales and management of a wide variety of industries, whether these industries are communications businesses or something else. These changes are so far reaching, ongoing and evolutionary that possession and use of these devices is as much part of the technology infrastructure for current and future business operations as the massive switches, servers and transmission pipelines are.

What was once believed to be the “latest craze,” a mere gimmick, has now become an integral component part of a company’s operational infrastructure. Companies such as Itekka are offering products that result in true paperless billing for professional services, such as legal services, through the use of smart phone platforms. Once multi purpose tablets such as iPad are ubiquitous in the market such billing apps will be combined with library and research apps, video conferencing apps, logistical management apps, and on and on until business operations will be impossible without immediate, pervasive access to such tablets.

In much the same way that calculators drove out slide rules for complex mathematical calculations and then drove away the need to memorize multiplication tables, tablets will drive away the need to memorize much of the minutia of knowledge” related to a wide variety of professional as well as commercial business. In fact, professionals who focus more on how to use the technology in the furtherance of their professional service will be far better providers of these services than those who adhere to the old ways of memorization. By whom would you prefer to be treated, a doctor who has the entire medical knowledge of mankind at his or her finger tips and knows how to access, evaluate and apply that knowledge or a doctor who only knows whatever it is he or she has memorized?

It has been said that all professions have in common the following four components: 1) a body of knowledge, 2) a procedure for recovering and using that knowledge, 3) a social service imperative and 4) professional judgment governing the use of that knowledge. Knowledge, procedure, service and judgment, these are the four foundations of any profession.

In the medical profession the body of knowledge is extensive understanding of the human body and mind and the various maladies that befall us, and what can be done about these maladies. The procedure is the diagnostic procedure, the vow to do no harm and attempt always to alleviate human suffering without playing God is the service creed and judgment is the wisdom to know how to do all that. In the legal profession knowledge relates to what the law says and how it has been applied in the past and is likely to be applied in the future, the right of every person to competent advocacy as a pillar of justice is the service creed, precedent, rules of evidence and so on is the procedure and wisdom to govern all that, wisdom born of practice and experience, is the judgment component.

Every profession, science, engineering, social work, you name it, excepting, of course, politics and journalism, complies with these standards. (Politics and journalism, having no standards, are exempt.) As each is built upon a foundation of knowledge and knowledge, and the access to it, is the very thing technology offers in the most abundant array, every profession will be dependent upon the new emergent technological infrastructure. (Again, since neither politicians nor journalists ever need or use actual knowledge, these “professions” are exempt.)

In our medical example, there already exist diagnostic engines that take input in the form of symptoms and release as output possible maladies that might be the cause. Likewise, there are already transmission systems that allow doctors specializing in a given disease or other to remotely consult with medical personnel on the scene.  When 3G and 4G and/or WiMax systems are ubiquitous, dedicated infrastructure will no longer be required to allow medical personnel “on the ground” to consult with the best practitioners in the field, wherever they may be. This will not eliminate the requirement for specialized knowledge, judgment or a sense of service but it will change the set of skills and knowledge required for competence.

Similar arguments can be made for every other profession that, if those arguments are accurate, will change the skill set and knowledge base required of every profession.

1. Alycia Hostetler says:

   February 16, 2010 at 6:41 pm

   The processor is labeled as a little newer model amount however it and the GPU are most likely the same speed since the 3GS. The old Contact with the similar Processor and GPU since the 3G was quicker. Besides having the clock speed turned up higher the Touch has less software to run since it

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