When I first started in Information Systems, more years ago than I care to admit, there were only a few technologies we had to worry about. There were operating systems, teleprocessing monitors, databases, applications and programming languages. Everybody knew how to program and everybody specialized in one of the preceding other four. It was still daunting, but nothing like it is today.
Since then we have had to adjust to personal computers, networks, artificial intelligence, web technologies, social interaction technologies, mobile devices, and more new programming and scripting languages than I even want to think about. But, as if that were not enough to worry about, we now have analytics, and big data to contend with. And on the horizon we have virtual worlds, video games, drones, a resurgence of artificial intelligence. A bit further off we have complexity theory and agent based modelling threatening to change a game that has already changed so many times that it can hardly even be considered the same game. This list, by the way, is by no means comprehensive. I am doing this off the top of my head. So I apologize if I have left out your pet emerging technology.
How does one keep up with all this stuff? How does one know what to be concerned about and what to ignore? I routinely hear people confusing Big Data with Analytics or Relational Databases with Data Warehousing. Most people know that Facebook is a Social Interaction Technology but what about YouTube and Wikipedia? And what is the difference between a Wiki and Wikipedia. While we are at it, what is the difference between a wiki, a blog and a forum? What is the difference between a web server and a web service? If your business had $10,000 to play around with an emerging information technology which one would it be? What about $100,000 or a million?
My biggest challenge since those salad days of mainframes has been to keep up with emerging technologies. And, in the process, I have learned a few things and learned a few tricks. I routinely explain things like this in my classes. So, I thought I would create a blog to reach a wider audience. This is not my first blog. In fact I have many. But I love to write and I love to figure things out. When I can figure things out and write about them, that is as good as it gets.
I should warn you, upfront, about my eratic blogging habits based on the other blogs that I have created. I write when and where I feel like it because I do my best work that way. Often, I will post a flurry of pieces to a blog and then ignore it for a while while I use other outlets for my writing. Eventually, I will come back and write some more. My goal with this blog will be to post something of interest every week or two on the average. So, if this look interesting, please book mark it or follow it. I also have a twitter account @DrJohnArtz which you can follow. The only thing I post to the twitter account is when there are new postings to a blog that has been fallow for a while. So, I won't fill your inbox with tweets about what I had for breakfast.
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