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The right context is worth 50 IQ points, according to a favorite saying of Alan Kay, one of the founding fathers of the personal computer. And it seems to us that the world of business could use a little context right now. Maybe even, we're hoping, a little CONTEXT. Technology appears to be changing the rules in just about every industry, from the ones you'd expect (finance, telecommunications) to ones you might not. In encyclopedias, for instance, Britannica, and its door-to-door salesmen lost out because the company was too slow to see the importance of CD-Roms. I've even seen computers connected to the Internet via microwave towers in remotest Mexico so local farmers can keep track of world prices and decide what crops to plant. Chances no longer stay within the office walls, either. Our kids or grandkids always seem to have a new game that's a technological marvel or have discovered some wonder on the Internet—which makes me nervous. I saw up close how IBM's 50ish executives lost the personal computer market to Bill Gates, who was just 24 when IBM knocked on his door in 1980 but who had the same sort of naïve faith in technology that shows up in college kids today. John Perry Barlow, who, like Alan Kay, is on our editorial board, say that anyone under 25 may be a native of cyberspace; the rest of us are immigrants. So we have to work harder to figure out what's going on. This magazine is designed to be a conversation that will help all of us, together, figure out what in the world is going on. By "we," I mean senior executives of all stripes. Just because this is a magazine about the effects of technology doesn't mean it's aimed at technical executives. We at CONTEXT believe technology has moved far beyond the point where it can be viewed as just a tool for the I/T organization to use in helping implement strategy. Instead, we see technology primarily as a disrupter of markets—as Larry Downes says in the Technosynthesis column, "Technology isn't the solution; it's the problem." We think that companies need to incorporate technological considerations into every discussion of strategy, so that they can avoid the problems and seize the opportunities that arise when a technological earthquake occurs. The premiere issue of CONTEXT is an attempt at flashing out that point of view, giving us something specific to talk about. As we will in future issues, which will come out quarterly, we include a column (Technosynthesis) on a new idea in management theory and another (Impact) on a management tool you might want to try. A third column (The Great Lie) has a little fun with technology. I get to write that column. Among the Features, we'll have real stories about real people and real companies that are trying to deal with markets being rearranged by technology. We'll sometimes bring you pieces of research, such as a major survey in this issue on executives' attitudes toward information technology, focusing on the Internet. There will also be an interview with a high-profile person with something intriguing to say about the effects of technology. We begin with Bill Gates—not a bad place to start. When I interviewed Christie Hefner, chief executive of Playboy Enterprises, for the survey on senior executives' attitudes, she joked that I should put Marilyn Monroe on the first cover, as her father had done with the first issue of Playboy. I think I followed the spirit of her advice. In Reflections, we'll bring in other voices through a book excerpt and other columns. One of my favorites, Man and Machine, will reflect the sometimes ambivalent attitudes that we have toward what is billed as technological progress. I hope this issue is enough to get us going. I'd love to hear from you about what we should cover next, about who should address some topic, or about almost anything else. CONTEXT I'm easy to find. Cheers, Paul B. Carroll |
