Introduction Letters to the Editor Managing Ubiquity: Developing Effective Employee Guidelines to Cope with Pervasive Technology Experienced Drivers Wanted: IT Innovation and Organizational Maturity E-mail: Friend or Foe? Tempus Edax Rerum Faster: The Acceleration of Just About Everything by James Gleick The telephone has now been widely available for nearly a century, and our culture has assimilated it reasonably well. To all of this vintage-1990s technology, we've added e-mail, the Internet, the Web, and multiple combinations and permutations thereof. The business world refers to all of this as e-business, but perhaps we should generalize and describe ourselves as living in an e-world -- which, in turn, is leading to an e-culture that is noticeably different than the culture of the 1980s and before. Many of our organizations appear to be nervous about the cultural upheaval caused by the introduction of these e-business technologies. While the Cutter IT Journal does not normally view itself as a commentator on social and cultural issues, the impact of technology on culture, and vice versa, is a relevant topic for all of us. And thus we've decided to explore it in the final issue of 1999. |
12 | 1999