Information Technology and People

I read a book called “Information Technology and People, Designing for the Future” written by Frank Blackler and David Oborne. In the book, the authors discuss information technology, its advances, the cycle of this technology, and the future. Information technology (IT for short) is probably one of the biggest forms of technology we see today. Even your phone is considered information technology. We use this on a day to day basis, especially in the business world.

Something very interesting Oborne discussed in the book was how we are constantly adapting to technology, even though we are the ones creating it. For some reason we are creating these things that are too advanced for us, and once we finally catch up to it, we create something new. A quote I found very interesting was “Substantial amounts of time, effort and money are being wasted simply because man and machine are not in harmony” (Oborne, 66). What he is saying is that we need to stop repeating this cycle because we are wasting all this time, effort and money when we could be putting it into something else. We would be very successful if we could find this balance between man and machine.

So all in all, with all the advancements discussed through these thread of posts, what should we prepare for the future? We know now that our jobs are safe, and even if we do get replaced, we have a different job to do. At the beginning of my research, I believed that in the future the only jobs available for humans would be only computer based, and pretty much just fixing the mistakes of the robots. Now I know we can continue what we are doing now, as long as we do what Osborne suggests, which is find a harmony between man and machine.

Blackler, F., & Oborne, D. (1987). Information Technology and People, Designing for the Future. Liecester, UK: The British Psychology Society