Impacts of Information Technology on Society

Before current technology came to the forefront, we had about seven basic modes of communication: telephone, telegraph wire, television, radio, mail, fax machines, eventually the pager (or beeper) and the grapevine---over the fence. Many of those technologies were barely old enough to be fully retired when telephonic mobility, the Internet and intranets came into play. Radio signals and wires, plus telephonic cabling, gave us the ability to transport and transfer tons of information faster than the Pony Express, the wiretaps or even physical travel could take it; now those tons of information have been broken into bytes of information that move even faster.

As what we can see in our surroundings nowadays, Information Technology is being applied in our daily lives. Information technology has significantly advanced the way businesses do business and the way people do their jobs all over the world. Data, information and research are available at the speed of light, and workers everywhere have access to it. Be it on the Internet, on a company intranet or on a mobile phone or some other type of electronic device, the technology is farther along now from than ever before, with new advances progressing daily.

The following will focus on the impacts of information technology and electronic

commerce on business models, commerce, market structure, workplace, labor market, and education.

Business Models, Commerce and Market Structure

One important way in which information technology functions is by reducing the importance of distance. In many industries, the geographic distribution of work is changing significantly. For instance, some software terms have found that they can overcome the tight local market for software engineers by sending projects to India or other nations where the wages are much lower. Furthermore, such arrangements can take advantage of the time differences so that critical projects can be worked on nearly around the clock. Firms can