IBM as a Mirror of the Global IT Evolution and Advent of the Second Information Revolution. Hidden Intellectual Springs, Possible Technological and Humanitarian Brakes, Expected Implications

#4. Window of Opportunities
IBM as a Mirror of the Global IT Evolution and Advent of the Second Information Revolution. Hidden Intellectual Springs, Possible Technological and Humanitarian Brakes, Expected Implications

On the example of IBM strategies it is possible to look at the information revolution and to understand what drives the modern IT and what future these technologies are preparing for us. The article identifies relationships and the impact of the latest military developments on the IT development vector. One of the main conclusions: the information society should be seen metaphorically as an iceberg. First of all, we see only the tip of an iceberg, and the submarine part remains outside our focus area. Secondly, isn’t the modern society a sort of “Titanic” rushing toward the iceberg? But not everything is so bad. In principle there are possibilities to control the development movement and to choose the own course in order not to endure catastrophe from a collision with an underwater part of the iceberg. There is one way out, and it is evident in many respects. It is necessary to use the self-preservation and survival instinct. And our actions should be dominated by strategic thinking and foresight. Otherwise, society will get the shackles of the “digital slavery” from information owners of the world. One must not lose mind, sovereignty and the right to think. One should not go on about the puppeteers and deceivers — who will outwit or replay someone. Now decisive became the factor — who will strongly, elastically and with a margin do a great deal of thinking.

Free Cash or How “Life on the Loan” has Failed in Russia

#5-6. Five Scenarios for a Century
Free Cash or How “Life on the Loan” has Failed in Russia

The present-day crediting is a social technology of fail-free individual involving in the system of imposed consumption. In the basis of technology there is a manipulation based on separation of purchase and payment, which dulls the sense of responsibility and risk perception. Crediting intensifies consumption, contributes to maximize corporate profits, but also simulates the desired social structure. The price of such economic and social upward distortions, sooner or later, is paid in a form of consumer credit crisis and massive social defaults, which happened in Russia in 2015. It’s an illusion to associate these processes only with sanctions and the geopolitical situation in which Russia finds itself today. Persistent symptoms, that the population has gained too much credit and that in the short term it will cause big problems not only for banks but also for the state, appeared in 2013. In 2013 nobody could imagine the sanctions, events in the Ukraine and the Crimea, future attempts of Russia’s geopolitical isolation. But experts were persistently saying that, if crediting continues at the same rate, in 2015 massive defaults on unsecured retail loans may occur.

Smart Networks, Mobile Intelligence and Strategic Foresight

#3. Conceptual viruses

Network, the Internet, artificial intelligence, virtual reality — these are code words, piercing our impetuous era.