Process: Some aspects of the prevailing culture in the IT industry

[swaraj]

Process: Some aspects of the prevailing culture in the IT industry
Contribution from Swaraj Jeyasingh
Taking my starting point that any Christian business owner should do more than just stand their
ground. They should be proactive in defeating the enemy, to win back the marketplace - in effect to
seek to transform not just their own business practices but also the marketplace in which they operate;
to go against the worldliness prevailing in contemporary business culture.
The IT industry is characterised by a few big wealthy and powerful payers such as Microsoft, IBM and
Google host of much smaller ones. IT affects all aspects of life - finance, media, manufacturing,
transport, and increasingly security Apart from creating jobs and wealth it also affects how we see
ourselves - by providing instant and near-ubiquitous communications. Allows everyone to be
connected via a global communications network, the Internet. it therefore cannot be left to secular
forces alone.
But it also has some negative influences:
• Fuels consumerism - more gadgets, more choice, quick obsolescence, etc.
• Has helped create and maintain the concentration of powers and money flows (by
governments and corporates); encourages mass production and outsourcing to the detriment
of local small scale production and ecosystems.
• Increases autonomy and fosters the break down of physical relationships and community; the
technological subversion of all that is human.
• Creates waste - energy and other raw materials used in production, energy consumption of
numerous gadgets - even more in disposal
• Encourages speed, 24 hr society, personal and social fragmentation and over activity. Tends
to attract big projects that are no longer on a human scale
• Excessive technical specialisation leading to disempowerment; the passive consumer fed by
the technology experts - unseen and remote.
IT Consultants should therefore seek to mitigate the above by:
• Working with local and small scale industries and helping them prosper - keep people close
to what they make ad buy, reduce waste due to excessive commuting. Keep wealth and
decision making more local and thereby improve work/life balance
• Activities that create and stretch us as humans (do something that makes us take risks)
rather than merely entertain/amuse or consume.
• Encourage actions/patterns of industry that help builds/strengthen local community rather
than encourage more autonomy where technology supplants human relationships and caring
or disconnects us from natural world and natural rhythms.
• Combat over-specialisation; educate rather than create technology dependency and
disempowerment. Emphasis wholeness and relationships by projects which inevitably work
against the human scale.
• A gift economy rather than contractual exchange of goods, eg, open source s/w rather than
the closed corporate solutions