The world is a business, as they say but not many know about the underlying difficulties and issues regarding conducting healthy business in a world plagued by constant competition and rivalry. Even under today’s standards, communication is a primary obstruction to seamless transactions and therefore the life that we claim to be our business definitely benefits from advancements in communication technology. Whether it be encrypted worldwide messaging and sharing networks, superfast online banking procedures, cellphone boosters which connect your call to anywhere around the globe in milliseconds or social media platforms which open up virtual windows into people’s lives and interests, technology has made communication a lot easier and business quite different than what it used to be. The important question to ask at this point becomes, ‘is such change for the better or for worse?’ and answers should be sought and found in individual and corporate experiences with life, business and communication technology.
Greg Satell for Forbes magazine has observed such change within the scope of business models to conclude that faster and more efficient communications have eradicated the strategic element out of the business equation. As time measured in decades flows with more relevant information and utile technologies on the rise, companies’ business models and strategies fail to function quite frequently. On the flip side of such a reality, one cannot help but pay attention to Yuki Noguchi’s report about The Washington Post’s takeover by Amazon.com and how the company’s information and communication infrastructure have shaped a far stronger organizational structure for the newspaper as a brand new business entity. Continuing its superior quality of journalism, the new Washington Post has invested into expanding its IT related personnel network and constructing a far more inclusive and sophisticated IT infrastructure. This strategic move has substituted the newspaper’s falling circulation rates with a significant rise in its online readership and has managed to bring in $100 million in the form of online advertisement for three years between 2014 and 2017. When it comes to business and communication technologies, there really are not that many clear lines determining the possibilities or outcomes and conscious decision making is not possible without empirical input obtained from actual business experiences.
Will and intent are important subjects in this regard and there have been significant concerns regarding the future of the mentioned relationship between communication technology, business and human life. Paul Dickinson for The Guardian reports about the Carbon Disclosure Project which has released a paper titled ‘Building a 21st Century Communications Economy’ within which the development plans for a communications economy in America are discussed. According to the report, the United States still possesses a great chance of generating economic value, decreasing adverse environmental effects of economic production, increasing employment rates and reducing greenhouse gas emissions by decreasing its foreign oil dependency. The numbers for such emissions approximate 13-22% while the expected amounts of energy savings from the new scheme rotate around $140-240 billion which are striking figures to say the least. In a similar vein, Jonathan Rosenthal for The Economist, in a Special Report, has considered the issue in connection with the situation of under-development in Africa to conclude that just the technological progress observed only in the last decade only has significantly changed the façade of the continent. With the introduction of mobile phones and information networks, the African nations pushed corrupt state owned operators out of the game while technologies such as M-Pesa have enabled an integrated African economy to emerge which has re-vitalized consumer markets in the continent. Today, scientists like Dougbeh Chris Nyan can utilize their Western education in the field of medicine to work on the Ebola epidemic while utilizing their battery-powered devices to quickly and cheaply test for six different infections simultaneously in the continent. Without the initial technological reform in information, no such innovation could have been possible.
And then there are the likes of Lisa Kindred, an entrepreneur out of New York City who has utilized her background and experience in meditation to offer relaxation and communication services to people in her city, who have been baffled and battled by the ever dominant and demanding lifestyle of the Big Apple. According to an interview and evaluation by Erin Griffith for Wired magazine, her company Mindful Technology is offering sessions to individuals and groups who have been overloaded and overwhelmed with their social media addiction through Reiki and other forms of meditation at reasonable prices. Thanks to more and more people from the tech industry coming through with their confessions about the evils of social media and a sharp increase in the related scandals haunting the Western world, especially America, the demand for her business is booming. Therefore, it is not impossible to profit from the short-comings of the relationship between communication technologies and human life which has obviously created demand for reasonable and constructive business practices. In the age of disinformation and global mental trickery, there are still people with the capability and desire to help the victims of such mindless games and fortune has thus far favored them in a relative way.
Business will be business and it will have to run in the future as well. Communication however will inevitably change and incline towards the more constructive and constituent approaches which can help businesses of the world if need and will be. The lessons learnt from all around the globe point towards a commonality, a middle ground for all to take notice: sharing is caring or vice a versa, but too much of either is also a dead-end with further complications attached. Privacy and distance are the key issues both the public and the businesses need to factor in when adhering to technological solutions to their communication and business related problems. As the public and the free enterprise enter a league of compromise and mutuality, most of the problems associated with the history of such relations will most likely be avoided before possible damage or harm is dealt to either side of the equation.