It Doesn't Matter

According to the article "IT doesn't matter" of Nicholas G. Carr, the main idea of this article was that Information technology was not as special as people's thoughts. However, there are some arguments about his opinions.

Carr believed that information technology was the same thing as the railroads, the telephone and electricity, or in economic terms 'commodity inputs'. Drawing upon historic examples, Carr argued that as technology matured and got cheaper, it lost its power to distinguish one organization from others. As IT became ubiquitous, it would no longer assist business to gain its competitive advantages. Nevertheless, in business, if you don't make the defensive technology investments keep up with the productivity and efficiency gains of your industry peers, you simply lose. Zara, for example, did not upgrade its POS to be as effective as its competitors; therefore Zara's staff could not look up to the inventory while the other stores could. Consequently, Zara lost customer relationship to its rivals because of the inundated technology.

From my standpoint, IT revolution was going to be different than other technological revolutions. The basis of this belief was that information was different from other commodities. One piece of information was not the same as any other pieces of information in terms of value or importance. As information has an infinite and qualitative aspect, the information revolution was very different from the industrial revolution. A byte of data, for example, can carry information ranging from a family picture to a digitally signed million-dollar check.

The important role of information technology is not only how to use it, but also how to apply it with the organization. The company must differentiate itself from the competitors on how to use information technology to gain competitive advantages.