[sociate] Reposting Michael Schrage's great essay

For years, I've been referring people to the crips essay that Michael
Schrage wrote for Merrill Lynch's online Forum back in 2001 titled The
Relationship Revolution. The Forum has since vanished online, but I recently
contacted Michael, who gave me permission to republish the piece. You will
now find it
<http://www.seedwiki.com/page.cfm?doc=The%20Relationship%20Revolution&wikiid
=6717> here, as full of great ideas as before, such as:

To define the printing press or the World Wide Web primarily as technologies
of information is to misinterpret what the real impact of those technologies
has been. Misidentifying the real "revolution" means missing the real
opportunities.

Consider the automobile analogy so popular with "Information Superhighway"
champions. The internal combustion engine was a transforming technology. But
who defines the automobile giants like General Motors, Ford, Toyota and
Volkswagen as leaders of the "gasoline processing" industry? The real
transforming power of the automobile wasn't its ability to process fuel more
effectively; it was the new relationships it created. The car created new
kinds of relationships everywhere from drive-in movie dates to the suburban
shopping mall. 

Certainly it was -- and is -- essential for many tens of thousands of people
to understand the nuts and bolts of automobile and highway technology. 

But billions have had relationships and lifestyles changed by them. For the
overwhelming majority of business leaders and public policy makers, the
genuine impact of the automobile has come from the rise of the suburbs and
new kinds of cities -- relationship changes -- not through greater
understanding of the intricacies of gasoline processing. 

and:


Consider a small thought-experiment: Whenever you see the word "information"
-- as in the strategic importance of managing information, or the importance
of timely information in solving problems, or the need to make substantial
investments in information technology in order to compete in the cutthroat
world of global competition -- substitute the word "relationship."


posted by Jerry Michalski at
<http://www.sociate.com/blog/archives/2004_11_01_archive.html#11013270783951
2612> 12:10 PM

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