Posted by Riva Gianluca on March 04, 2002 at 08:52:16:

In Reply to: Information Systems in Business posted by EFTHYMIOS PEPPAS on February 28, 2002 at 20:29:58:

hI Efthymios,
You should avoid to be trapped by what many call "technological determinism". Changes in societies, economies, cultures and nations are neither wholly nor directly determined by technology, but rather even technology and its usage is determined by the changes in societies, nations, culture and the like. Different technologies can be used and adopted differently, depending on the aspirations, conflicts and contradictions of different social contexts. IT can be used to free employess lowering hierarchy or to control employees more tightly, creating kind of "BIG BROTHERS". HUman decide their fate, not technology. The consequence for the second response it's obvious. It doesn't matter to use a specific technology at its early stage, as long as you use a technology to strenghten the abilities of the employees, to complement them, to create a source of sustainable competitive advantage, for strategical reasons. Newness for its own sake makes no sense. For istance Halifax Building Society in UK has used Assembler (a very old technology) for a long time to leverage on the experience of the programmers and to reduce their turnover rate. It's not very important what kind of technology you use, but the interaction between people and technology, that is, how yopu use technology. I remember a researcher of Bell saying: "It's not so difficult to understand what technology will be the technology of the future. It's difficult to predict what will be people'usage of this technology. That's where we have always been wrong..."
Hope it helps
Kind Regards

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