This case study looks at one of the most commonly discussed questions in the world of information technology and economics. Is the economy and Information Technology changing at the same pace and which one is influencing the other one to change? Another core aspect of this case study is looking at the change in the ownership of information influencing the global markets and how technology is responsible for the shift in trend. There is also a small scenario focusing on the question; how much interested is public in contributing to help science and are they really equipped to help? Few of the interesting cases of major IT players in the market which rose controversial, debatable and interesting questions are slated down in this case study. And the main question this case study revolves around is; is the economy flexible enough to make room for the changes in Information technology to accommodate it?
[...] Different perceptions on technology in past and present What would have been the reaction of highly skilled technicians and engineers at the end of previous decade if they were asked to create a storage system with most sophisticated requirements such as: Storage capacity of over terabytes Having the most complicated security system which virtually could be indisputable. With virtually zero downtime. Would be accessible to around millions of users. They might have probably said that it is technically possible but would have the consequences of higher cost and time investment. [...]
[...] Britannica is well known for its traditional style of encyclopedia and on the other hand Wikipedia is completely different when it comes to the contribution of information. In Britannica the contribution is owned by full time professionals hired by the company, in Wikipedia it is an open source and Wikipedia has very high recorded numbers of changes to the articles online. One of the points to notice is that an encyclopedia which is much younger than a traditional and well established one, which does not even have a defined ownership of contribution to the articles, is head on with a much older and well established encyclopedia. [...]
[...] One of the scientific journals called Nature has come up with a survey result for accuracy of information on Wikipedia and Britannica [13]. With the sample of 42 random surveys the result there was 162 errors in Wikipedia and 123 errors in Britannica [13]. Britannica reverted stating that 42 samples is not good enough number to validate the accuracy and few of the mistakes identified are mere spelling variations and perception difference [13]. The whole episode of defining the accuracy of the major online encyclopedias had been a big controversy and did not provide any solid definition. [...]
[...] The above two scenarios of SETI@Home and Apache webserver show the evolution of end users' contribution in two different styles; One where end users indirectly contribute to a phenomenal event in Information Technology and the other where end users directly contribute to the development of a major software in the market. This trend is not just in the major events of world of Information Technology where there are surveys and statistics to measure the output and numbers. There are other lots of scenarios where the trend of distributed ownership of producing and developing information is demonstrated. [...]
[...] In this era of Information Economy, with the distributed ownership and contribution of creating and developing the information, not just information at socially sharing level, but information with the center strategic impact on organizations having a major role in the Information Economy. Is there going to be a new economical framework to make room for the organizations? Another debatable question can be: What will be the role of the organizations with the decentralized ownership of key strategic components of information creation on the economy? [...]
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