What's the impact of IT in business?

That was an example of the effect of a software program. By way of an example of hardware, There is now a ?chip? that is effectively a laboratory on a chip. You can feed in a small sample of chemical and the chip will do thousands of tests on it, feeding back the results electronically to a program on a computer automatically recording and analyzing the results. Chemical analysis that took days or weeks in big laboratory complexes with thousands of test tubes experiments carried out by mechanical machines can now be done quickly and cheaply. Look at the effect that will have on the chemical and biological sciences.

Those are just two examples of what I see, but these are just two insignificant examples of what is happening throughout industry. Because of the extra capacity that computers give people, many people are upto four times more efficient at their jobs than they were and this is having a marked effect on gross domestic product in many countries.

The other factor affecting IT, and it is hidden from most of us, but it is discussed in detail in the following book I have mentioned, and that is that the rate of change, in IT, is exponential. What does this mean? It means that we now have the capacity to do what we did in the previous 100 years, within 20 years if we had to do it again. But in 10 years time, we could do the same 100 years in just 7 years. What it means is, every slight, every minimal improvement in IT, speeds the whole process up, and that is what is happening now, and it is hidden from most people.

If this interest you and you want further information then I suggest you read the following interesting book, The Singularity is Near by Ray Kurzweil.

Although it is not particularly easy to read, due to its factual style. I am nearly halfway through it, the best way to read it is an hour here or an hour there! It?s not the sort of thing you can sit down and read cover to cover.

What is the singularity? Well this was a new idea to me, however the way I understand it, and I?m still not sure that I grasp it entirely, but within the next century, by about 2045 according to Ray, computers will vastly exceed human intelligence, they will be able to design a future generations of themselves, almost instantly. How does this affect us? Well within twenty years, Ray predicts that the desktop machine, that you can buy for a thousand pounds would have the equivalent processing power of the human mind. And not many years after that, possibly ten or twenty, would have the processing of power equivalent to the human civilization. Equivalent to every man woman and child on the planet! I didn't believe it either, until I read the book!

Answer

Business as we know it today would, in many cases, be impossible to transact without IT (information technology). One example from the banking industry is check processing. It's been said that without information technology systems, to process all the checks handled in the U.S. manually would take a human staff the size of the entire working population of California.

http://www.itinbusiness.com/itinbusiness.html

First answer by ID1451971703. Last edit by TedlyW. Contributor trust: 201 [recommend contributor]. Question popularity: 79 [recommend question]