Does IT Matter?

John Leslie King is visiting ITU Monday, June 27th. John is Dean and Professor of the School of Information at the University of Michigan, and a member of the Foresight Committee of the IT University of Copenhagen. His research is in the relationship between technical change and social change. His new projects are very interesting, include a study of the institutional forces involved the development of global electronic commerce, and an historical analysis of the evolution of the information disciplines.
John will talk about the value of IT in the 21th century. The talk is a critical response to Nicholas Carr’s article in the Harvard Business Review, but the important point is not whether IT matters, but how IT matters. Information technology has a complicated political history, with cycles of boom and bust. Predictions were followed by disappointing letdowns (friendly robots), yet great accomplishments were never predicted (the Internet). The dot.com of the late 1990′s was followed by the dot.bomb right after Y2K (remember that?). In 1999 the pundits were hailing the birth of the information economy; by 2003 the pundits were saying IT doesn’t matter. What should we think of this? Does IT Matter? Off course it does!
You can meet John King Monday, June 27th, 15:00 @ ITU, Rued Langgaardsvej 7, KMD-auditoriet (Aud. 2). The talk is open to the public – don’t miss this opportunity!