Structuring the Information Age

Structuring the Information Age PDF Author: JoAnne Yates
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 9780801880865
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 380

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Book Description
Structuring the Information Age provides insight into the largely unexplored evolution of information processing in the commercial sector and the underrated influence of corporate users in shaping the history of modern technology. JoAnne Yates examines how life insurance firms—where good record-keeping and repeated use of massive amounts of data were crucial—adopted and shaped information processing technology through most of the twentieth century. The book analyzes this process beginning with tabulating technology, the most immediate predecessor of the computer, and continuing through the 1970s with early computers. Yates elaborates two major themes: the reciprocal influence of information technology and its use, and the influence of past practices on the adoption and use of new technologies. In the 1950s, insurance industry leaders recognized that computers would enable them to integrate processes previously handled separately, but they also understood that they would have to change their ways of working profoundly to achieve this integration. When it came to choosing equipment and applications, most companies ultimately preferred a gradual, incremental migration to an immediate and radical transformation. In tracing this process, Yates shows that IBM's successful transition from tabulators to computers in part reflected that vendor's ability to provide large customers such as insurance companies with the necessary products to allow gradual change. In addition, this detailed industry case study helps explain information technology's so-called productivity paradox, showing that firms took roughly two decades to achieve the initial computerization and process integration that the industry set as objectives in the 1950s.

Structuring the Information Age

Structuring the Information Age PDF Author: JoAnne Yates
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 9780801880865
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 380

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Book Description
Structuring the Information Age provides insight into the largely unexplored evolution of information processing in the commercial sector and the underrated influence of corporate users in shaping the history of modern technology. JoAnne Yates examines how life insurance firms—where good record-keeping and repeated use of massive amounts of data were crucial—adopted and shaped information processing technology through most of the twentieth century. The book analyzes this process beginning with tabulating technology, the most immediate predecessor of the computer, and continuing through the 1970s with early computers. Yates elaborates two major themes: the reciprocal influence of information technology and its use, and the influence of past practices on the adoption and use of new technologies. In the 1950s, insurance industry leaders recognized that computers would enable them to integrate processes previously handled separately, but they also understood that they would have to change their ways of working profoundly to achieve this integration. When it came to choosing equipment and applications, most companies ultimately preferred a gradual, incremental migration to an immediate and radical transformation. In tracing this process, Yates shows that IBM's successful transition from tabulators to computers in part reflected that vendor's ability to provide large customers such as insurance companies with the necessary products to allow gradual change. In addition, this detailed industry case study helps explain information technology's so-called productivity paradox, showing that firms took roughly two decades to achieve the initial computerization and process integration that the industry set as objectives in the 1950s.

Building Information for Age Organization

Building Information for Age Organization PDF Author: James I. Cash (Jr.)
Publisher: Irwin Professional Publishing
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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Book Description


Building the Information-age Organization

Building the Information-age Organization PDF Author: James I. Cash
Publisher: Irwin Professional Publishing
ISBN: 9780256124583
Category : Electronic data processing
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description


Competing in the Information Age

Competing in the Information Age PDF Author: Jerry N. Luftman
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0195090160
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 437

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Book Description
Synthesizes a body of research and theories relating to the way firms can undergo transformation in order to remain competitive in a changing business environment. This book includes the coordination and alignment of a firm's business strategy.

Public Administration in an Information Age

Public Administration in an Information Age PDF Author: I. Th. M. Snellen
Publisher: IOS Press
ISBN: 9789051993950
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 606

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Book Description
This book is a joint effort of researchers who have been involved in research-projects and programmes that have been trying to chart and reflect upon the implications of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) for Public Administration (Tilburg/Rotterdam, Kassel, Irvine, Nottingham/Glasgow). Since the fifties, computers had largely facilitated and the transformation of the minimal 'Night-Watch-state' into the modern 'Welfare-state', through their contribution to their effectivity, productivity and efficiency. In most Handbooks of Public Administration, computers are seen as neutral instruments and, most of the time, the role of computer technologies in the transformation of public administration is completely neglected. This 'deafening silence' is a great contrast with the way ICT's are actually changing public administration. The faster the developments in a field of study are, the more difficult it is to let the theories, related to that field of study, mature. In such circumstances, most statements will remain provisial and context-dependent. 25 years of research in Irvine (California) and Kassel (Germany) and more than 10 years of research in Tilburg/Rotterdam (The Netherlands) and about seven years of research in Glasgow/Nottingham (the United Kingdom) nonetheless enables the presentation of a modest image of public administration as it is entering the information age. Researchers in each of these groups have, nevertheless, not stopped trying to phrase theories about the implications of informatization for public administration with a more or less larges scope, that are robust in different contexts and over longer periods of time. These results and theories, covering a broad set of elements of the body of knowledge of public administration, are presented in this volume. As the authors try to demonstrate in this book, informatization developments in public administration do not only challenge the existing body of knowledge of the public administration discipline, but they are also opening up new perspectives and paradigms for the study of public administration.

The Nature of War in the Information Age

The Nature of War in the Information Age PDF Author: David J. Lonsdale
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135757208
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 294

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Book Description
There has been a great deal of speculation recently concerning the likely impact of the 'Information Age' on warfare. In this vein, much of the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) literature subscribes to the idea that the Information Age will witness a transformation in the very nature of war. In this book, David Lonsdale puts that notion to the test. Using a range of contexts, the book sets out to look at whether the classical Clausewitzian theory of the nature of war will retain its validity in this new age. The analysis covers the character of the future battlespace, the function of command, and the much-hyped concept of Strategic Information Warfare. Finally, the book broadens its perspective to examine the nature of 'Information Power' and its implications for geopolitics. Through an assessment of both historical and contemporary case studies (including the events following September 11 and the recent war in Iraq), the author concludes that although the future will see many changes to the conduct of warfare, the nature of war, as given theoretical form by Clausewitz, will remain essentially unchanged.

Grace Hopper and the Invention of the Information Age

Grace Hopper and the Invention of the Information Age PDF Author: Kurt W. Beyer
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262517264
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 405

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Book Description
The career of computer visionary Grace Murray Hopper, whose innovative work in programming laid the foundations for the user-friendliness of today's personal computers that sparked the information age. A Hollywood biopic about the life of computer pioneer Grace Murray Hopper (1906–1992) would go like this: a young professor abandons the ivy-covered walls of academia to serve her country in the Navy after Pearl Harbor and finds herself on the front lines of the computer revolution. She works hard to succeed in the all-male computer industry, is almost brought down by personal problems but survives them, and ends her career as a celebrated elder stateswoman of computing, a heroine to thousands, hailed as the inventor of computer programming. Throughout Hopper's later years, the popular media told this simplified version of her life story. In Grace Hopper and the Invention of the Information Age, Kurt Beyer reveals a more authentic Hopper, a vibrant and complex woman whose career paralleled the meteoric trajectory of the postwar computer industry. Both rebellious and collaborative, Hopper was influential in male-dominated military and business organizations at a time when women were encouraged to devote themselves to housework and childbearing. Hopper's greatest technical achievement was to create the tools that would allow humans to communicate with computers in terms other than ones and zeroes. This advance influenced all future programming and software design and laid the foundation for the development of user-friendly personal computers.

The Information Age

The Information Age PDF Author: David Stephen Alberts
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 756

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Book Description
The Information Age: An Anthology on Its Impacts and Consequences was originally prepared by The Center for Advanced Concepts, Technologies, and Information Strategies of the Institute for National Strategic Studies, National Defense University. The original four volumes have been combined into one volume for this printing. They are: Part One: The Information and Communication Revolution Part Two: Business, Commerce, and Services Part Three: Government and the Military Part Four: International Affairs

Business in the Information Age

Business in the Information Age PDF Author: Hubert Österle
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 3662030861
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 402

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Book Description
The industrial society is fast becoming an information society. As a result, many companies are experiencing serious difficulties in developing the new internal structures required. The increasing use of information technology has a profound effect on markets, products, and processes, as well as the management of and co-operation between companies. Recognising the possibilities and grasping the emerging potential is an important challenge for todays management, if the organisations and systems are to develop over the next twenty years. Business in the Information Age offers models and techniques for transforming company structures to help face this challenge. Viewing the business process as a new model to describe the organisation forms the link between company strategy and information systems. The book points out advantages accessible through IT, together with ways of integrating this knowledge in effective and efficient processes.

Best Truth

Best Truth PDF Author: Bruce D. Berkowitz
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 9780300093971
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 222

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Book Description
Confronted by the new challenges of the information age and the post-Soviet world, the US intelligence community must adapt and change, say the authors of this provocative text. They examine recent intelligence failures, show why traditional approaches now fall short, and call for fundamental reform in the organization and approach of America's intelligence agencies.