Technology sweeps that changed our lives

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way...

-Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

Future history of human species will mark twentieth and twenty-first century as one of the most crucial period for the collective progress of the species. During the last century, history witnessed worst of the exhibitions of human capabilities as well as a few of the future-defining technology-leaps and breathtaking expansion of human knowledge. While the barbarity of Jewish genocides, massive loss of human lives in world-wars, chilling cruelty and cold-blooded ruthlessness of dropping atom bombs, cluster bombs and napalm on innocent people continue to haunt collective consciousness of humanity, unprecedented progression of science with discovery of fabric of DNA, general theory of relativity, quantum electrodynamics, information theory etc., matched with equal advances in technology, have opened a new chapter of human progression. Space travel by Yuri Gagarin, first human footprint on Moon by Aldrin and his team or massive expansion of telecommunication network, electronic broadcast media and invention of modern day computing systems, each by itself is an astounding feat of human progress. However a sweeping change by definition is one that changes the lives of mass and alters the way they operate or live in an irreversible manner. Using that as benchmark, let me pick few technological breakthroughs that brought in sweeping shift to the human civilization. My conjecture is that each of this technology shift also has brought in permanent shift in human psyche.
Sweep One
First major Shift was brought by the invention of telecommunication network in the beginning of this century by Graham Bell. The first few decades of this century saw massive expansion of telecommunication network, across countries, across continents. Suddenly geographical distance was no more the big barrier for human conversation. Continents got closer, people could talk across timezones, across thousands of kilometers.Humanity got the first taste of getting connected across geographical distance.
Sweep Two
Next technology sweep came with the discovery of radio communication. Although Mr. Jagadish Bose did not get his dues during his lifetime, his discovery in 1894 created the path for further far-reaching technological breakthroughs. Though Radio was dicovered in nineteenth century, it was not so much of technology for people till Marcony popularized it in US and Britain in early twentieth century. Radio communication made it possible to send people in space, learn about galaxies, stars, nebulaes. It changed the way human look at entertainment. Radio channels, Televisions changed the concept of human entertainment and brought up a new set of Industries. It made possible for the army to remain in contact in difficult war-terrain. It made possible for the rescue network to function in a disaster-struck area. It made possible for the rich world and poor world to get connected and share information. It made possible for the mainstream human civilization to reach out to people living in the remotest corner of the earth without ever knowing them. It made possible for the world powers to remain in control and connected.
Indeed, Mr. Jagadish Bose continues to touch the human lives even today in way that he may not have ever imagined.
Sweep Three
After communication technologies, if any technology that has impacted the lives of people in a major way is the invention of computing machines. In last forty years, this technology swept the population across continents and created new possibilities that people could not even imagine fifty years ago. It made possible breakthroughs in medical diagnostics. It made possible complex simulation of weather model hugely improving our ability to forecast weather changes. In fact computing technology impacted almost all branches of  human knowledge and in all cases accelerated the advancement of the fields.
It also started a paradigm shift from analogue domain to digital domain. To understand the full import of this shift, consider that the entire gamut of communication technologies were analogue before the onset of computing industry. Telecommunication technologies were lot costlier and error-prone before computing revolution changed the technologies. Moving to digital domain helped bring down transmission errors, cost of manufacturing, equipment size and thereby made them scale for massive number of users and larger area of coverage. Today, we truly live in digital age. Our telecommunication network, both landline and radio, our electronic media all are digital. Needless to mention, this is just the beginning of computing era.
Sweep Four
Computer network that started with DARPA and ethernet have become the most ubiquitous network for both computing devices and communication devices. Internet is one of the most beautiful inventions that became possible because we had this network. Today, internet is bringing people together in a way that was unimaginable even ten years back. Google, Facebook are examples of the immense impact that internet can potentially bring to human collectiveness. National and geographical barriers of information flow have been demolished albeit with a few exceptions. This freedom of information flow has empowered ordinary people  in a way none envisaged earlier. Governmental regimes are finding compelled to change the way of their functioning to cope with this freedom of information. Information in the internet is global and so are the people who are using it.
Collaboration across different continent is not myth any more. Two persons sitting at different corners of the world can work together now thanks to the ubiquity of the internet. Online education is a new phenomenon that has happened only because internet happened.
Sweep Five
Last technology sweep, that we see happening now, is the digitization of information storage. Storage technology has travelled a long way from stone tablet/papyrus/paper to reach the modern age of digital storage. Entire information of the entire human population and its collective knowledge are now ready to move to digital electronic bits to be stored in magnetic/optical media. Interestingly, this news article from BBC tells us that total information about and of the human world was 295 exabytes as on 2007.  BBC refers to an article in the journal Science that effectively says that the figure above was not a speculation but provided by scientific measurement. With new-found popularity and capability of internet, digital storage is expanding almost exponentially. Ten years from now many industry data centres will have similar capacity of storage. This enormous digital data explosion is propelling many new technologies  and growth of new technology startups. Plummeting cost/MB of storage, continued focus to invent chipsets with lower power consumption and expanding storage capacity mean that civilization will have plenty of cheap online storage capacity which would in turn will incentivize higher online footprints. And that will lead us to a new way of working.
In the next twenty years, information about every single individual, be it from Europe, or USA or from India, Srilanka,Singapore,Hongkong,Malayasia or China, will be available somewhere in the vast hyperspace of digital network. Your digital persona will be equally important, if not more, as your physical persona. Your most trivial social transactions, recorded and memorized by the internet for the eternity, will define your past and influence your future. One way of looking at this would be that one not only will need to perform and excel, he/she will have to remain consistent to his past persona, since one's entire past is captured in the digital storage for others to dig and there is no option to erase/modify/hide that. You got to explain every action that you have committed intentionally, unintentionally, unknowingly, frivolously.
But being human is also about irrational choices, about freedom to break consistency, about the freedom to not want to explain one's action. So may be, we will learn to accept our irrationality rather than running away from it; learn to live freely with full knowledge that the past is not something one can do anything about and stop living burdened of the past.
That perhaps would bring our ultimate freedom, the emotional freedom of being oneself all the time, without fear, without guilt.

IT Industry in India and China

In the backdrop of shrill-chill in US to stop outsourcing of software jobs, I thought it would be interesting to take a look at where the software Industry stands in these two countries. In August this year, China dalily reported, " China's software industry revenue expanded at faster pace to 152.3 billion yuan ($23.8 billion) in July, a year-on-year increase of 31.4 percent, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said Wednesday.
The software industry's growth rate in July was 2.9 percentage points higher than a year earlier."
   Nasscom, the association of software industry in India in a recent press release also said that," The growth in software and services export is expected to be 16-18 per cent and the sector is slated to bring in revenues of $68-70 billion. The growth in the domestic market is estimated to be 15-17 per cent, with revenues of about $19-20 billion. " The projected growth figure of 15-17% is very likely to come down to 11-12% as the year closes, as observed by an Industry leader.
Interestingly, China clocked higher growth compared to last year while India actually clocked slower growth compared to last year with projection following the trend.  The reason of this skew is quite obvious. India's software industry is majorly [almost 90%] export-based while China's software industry so far is mostly driven by domestic demand. As per NASSCOM, US and Europe contribute around 90% of IT/ITES revenue and with slowdown of those two economies, Indian IT industry has suffered the hit in the growth of this sector.
Chinese software export too were hit this year. Reading the same report from China daily:
Regarding the exports of the software industry, the growth rate fell sharply to 3.9 percent in July, the lowest monthly increase in the first seven months of this year amid economic uncertainty in the United States and the European Union.
Exports in the Jan-July period rose 15.7 percent to $15.46 billion, compared to last year's growth rate of 26.2 percent.
Interesting aspect is both the countries are betting big on the IT export. While Chinese Govt has provided some tax holidays, developed zones and offered incentives to the promoters to grow the software parks, India already has established regulations and tax-breaks [STP and now SEZ] to help the software export. Like China, software industry in India is also centred around few big cities.

Some key data from NASSCOM presentation and outsourcing portals:

1.  India's share in global IT and BPO sourtcing: 55% as on 2010.
2.  India's domestic IT market size in 2010 was Rs 659 billion i.e. $14.3 billion roughly
3.  As per NASSCOM, IT-BPO industry in India directly employs 2.54 million with approx. 2 million in IT alone and expects 10% growth Y-to-Y. Some claim that China too has around 2 million software engineers working as on 2010.
4. China's average software engineer's salary is almost double to the average salary of a software engineer in India and when it comes to customer service representatives, Chinese salary is differs in magnitude. In short resources are constlier in China. More details can be found at Sourcingline.
5. Almost all independent commentators rate Indian IT Industry more competitive compared to Chinese counterpart.

<><><>The table below provides a revenue comparison. As it shows, China's IT industry is dominated by domestic demand while India is slowly developing its domestic IT market.<><>

FY11 software revenue comparison	Domestic	Software Export
Indian Industry	$14.3 billion	$59   billion
Chinese Industry	$23.8 billion	$15.5 billion

One aspect that does not come out well, is China's industry has more product-centric. Huawei, ZTE are globally recognized names and they are showing fastest growth in telecom space [while US telecom companies are shrinking]. In fact Govt. regulation and control helped these companies to grow faster and become formidable competitor internationally. Even in the new world of social media, Govt. censor has helped coming up of Chinese counterpart of facebook and twitter. Weibo for example is a twitter equivalent in China and quite popular too. Renren procliams to be Chinese facebook but wetern commentators think renren is too small to be compared with facebook. However, there is distinct trend of product cumture in China just like India predominantly has services culture. One reason could be that the Chinese language and culture have created the necessary barrier for the product development culture to flourish, just like having the English as the link language in India helped Indians to flourish service culture.
The question however is, can India continue to grow its IT services revenue without the support of strong product-base? With the present negative job growth and associated negative sentiment against Outsourcing in US and Europe makes the question all the more important.  However,if we follow what NASSCOM and likes of Infosys, TCS are talking, Indian IT industry decidedly continue to see themselves as pure-play consulting/services vendors. It is to be seen though with continuous downward pressure on IT services rate and rising inflation pressure on IT salary, how long they continue the profitability and competitiveness of their present model of business.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Later Updates: Vivek Kulkarni, erstwhile IT secretary of Karnataka wrote in ToI sometime back on Indian IT industry and its issues. I pulled the link for the curious lot: http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2011-03-22/edit-page/29174251_1_manufacturing-sector-foreign-currency-tax-incentives

What Rising inflation and rising Unemployment in US indicate?

Economists tell us that when Economy grows, employment grows and rising of the inflation is expected in this scenario. It was told that the rise of inflation and rise of deficit budget is good thing for a growing economy. Opposite also is observed for example in 2009 when the US economy shrank, there was negative inflation and sudden rise of unemployment.
So the known pattern is that expanding economy brings reduction of Unemployment and increase in Inflation.
2011 has broken that pattern.
US economy is stagnant [around 1% growth], Inflation is rising [the table from Inflation Data provides 10 years data ] and Unemployment too is rising [in fact it is already close to 2009 figure]

Year	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec	Ave
2011	1.63%	2.11%	2.68%	3.16%	3.57%	3.56%	3.63%	NA	NA	NA	NA	NA	NA
2010	2.63%	2.14%	2.31%	2.24%	2.02%	1.05%	1.24%	1.15%	1.14%	1.17%	1.14%	1.50%	1.64%
2009	0.03%	0.24%	-0.38%	-0.74%	-1.28%	-1.43%	-2.10%	-1.48%	-1.29%	-0.18%	1.84%	2.72%	-0.34%
2008	4.28%	4.03%	3.98%	3.94%	4.18%	5.02%	5.60%	5.37%	4.94%	3.66%	1.07%	0.09%	3.85%
2007	2.08%	2.42%	2.78%	2.57%	2.69%	2.69%	2.36%	1.97%	2.76%	3.54%	4.31%	4.08%	2.85%
2006	3.99%	3.60%	3.36%	3.55%	4.17%	4.32%	4.15%	3.82%	2.06%	1.31%	1.97%	2.54%	3.24%
2005	2.97%	3.01%	3.15%	3.51%	2.80%	2.53%	3.17%	3.64%	4.69%	4.35%	3.46%	3.42%	3.39%
2004	1.93%	1.69%	1.74%	2.29%	3.05%	3.27%	2.99%	2.65%	2.54%	3.19%	3.52%	3.26%	2.68%
2003	2.60%	2.98%	3.02%	2.22%	2.06%	2.11%	2.11%	2.16%	2.32%	2.04%	1.77%	1.88%	2.27%
2002	1.14%	1.14%	1.48%	1.64%	1.18%	1.07%	1.46%	1.80%	1.51%	2.03%	2.20%	2.38%	1.59%
2001	3.73%	3.53%	2.92%	3.27%	3.62%	3.25%	2.72%	2.72%	2.65%	2.13%	1.90%	1.55%	2.83%
2000	2.74%	3.22%	3.76%	3.07%	3.19%	3.73%	3.66%	3.41%	3.45%	3.45%	3.45%	3.39%	3.38%
Note: Red indicates Deflation, NA indicates data not yet released.

US Unemployment Rate [source: http://www.forecasts.org/unemploy.htm]

 So what do all these indicate?
Experts warn that these data mean higher taxes, cut in entitlement and welfare schemes and erosion of value of US dollar and treasury bonds. Taxes did not increase yet, but cuts are coming in. Downgrade of S&P credit rating to AA+ already impacted dollar price in international market. Another effect that people are wary of is rise of Fed interest rate. If the economy and inflation continue the same trajectory, to retain investor's interest, Govt. may be forced to increase Fed interest rate.
Now question is this: will you trust these prediction from experts and worry to high BP, sleeplessness, stress, more visits to your therapist and finally reduced life-span? Or will you leave everything to your fate and enjoy your morning coffee and newspaper?
For those who belong to first category, Scientific American has an interesting story to tell. They cite a 'study in the journal Economics and Portfolio Strategy that tracked 452 managed funds from 1990 to 2009, finding that only 13 beat the market average.' They argue that Financial prediction always fails and no one can make a realistic prediction. Economics Nobel laureate Paul Samuelson​ long ago noted in a 1966 Newsweek column: “Commentators quote economic studies alleging that market downturns predicted four out of the last five recessions. That is an understatement. Wall Street indexes predicted nine out of the last five recessions!” Quoting the article, "The world is a messy, complex and contingent place with countless intervening variables and confounding factors, which our brains are not equipped to evaluate." and therefore expert predictions fare 'little better than “a dart-throwing chimpanzee.” '
Dan Gardner's recent book, named Future Babble where he argued why prediction about future disastrously fails and why experts still make predictions and why we still believe in those prediction, could be a good stress buster if you are still worried.