Control Based Processes
February 12, 2025
Corporate transactions, including mergers, acquisitions, divestitures, joint ventures, and other methods of organizational restructuring and transformations, are strategically important in enhancing competitiveness, economies of scale and growth of an organization. Nevertheless, the human resources or ‘people’ factor of an organization holds the key to success in all such corporate transactions. But, this factor is the […]
In recent months, there has been much coverage in the business press as well as the general press about Trade Wars between the United States and China as well as between the United States and the European Union and Canada and Mexico. The immediate trigger or the event for these trade wars has been the […]
Ecosystem of Services Any business in order to function and grow needs an ecosystem of suppliers, vendors, and infrastructure that supports the operations of the business. For instance, if a certain company wants to setup its operations in a particular place, it needs land, roads, water and power supply, and vendors and suppliers to supply […]
The movement to ensure the legalization of cannabis has been going on in many parts of the globe. Even in the United States, many states have legalized cannabis. This means that it is legal to possess cannabis for the purpose of sale in these states. However, this rule has not been formed on a national […]
Introduction: What is Systemic Risk and How Does it Affect Business Globalization has brought the world together and the rapid spread of Information Technology or IT has made us all interconnected, networked, and always on in a 24/7 paradigm. This means that the convergence of globalization and IT has resulted in businesses being able to […]
The urge to create a perfect world has been there throughout the ages. However, whereas earlier attempts at doing so were guided by people with hands on effort and intimate contact with the on the ground realities, the present move towards using technology is often misplaced as it focuses on using tools like social media without actually getting down to the nuts and bolts of on the ground action.
In other words, the problems being faced by the world need concerted action that is bottom up and which involves action from those working directly with the victims instead of top down approaches using social media that are out of tune with the ground realities. Of course, this does not mean to say that technology cannot solve any problem, as there are many examples of using technology as a means of spreading awareness and knowledge.
The point here is that technology requires human action in concert with each other and not necessarily one without the other.
The other aspect of trying to solve all problems using technology is that the internet can do only that much and not more. This means that while the internet is good for bringing together people and as can be seen in the positive impact that it had on building better lives for many, it is indeed an agent of change. However, the urge to fix everything using the internet alone must be resisted solely because it has its limitations in that geographical considerations and the need to have on the ground presence are factors that the internet cannot solve. Further, there is the added aspect of the digital divide, which means that the majority of the citizens in the world do not have access to the internet, and hence, the limits to what technology can accomplish are made plainly evident here.
The third aspect is that the proponents of the lets fix everything using technology aspire for a utopian situation that resembles absolute perfectionism. What these well meaning advocates forget is that complexity and ambiguity as well as opacity and imperfection are built into the world and hence, aspiring to social good must take into account all these factors.
In other words, the human condition can be improved only through sustained and concerted effort that takes time and not the kind of instant solution based model that is proposed. Apart from this, the fact that technology is value neutral means that it can be used for good as well as for bad. Hence, the temptation to advance technological solutions for all problems might backfire because of the same technology falling into the wrong hands to create havoc.
Finally, we must make it clear that this article is not a pessimistic one which dismisses technology altogether. Just that we would like to make it clear that striving to use technology to solve all problems must be based on realistic assumptions and as the subsequent articles detail, the internet can indeed be used to deliver infinite progress provided some of the conditions discussed here are met.
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