Acceleration : managing long-term emergency
Reaction time in cyber-space is very short. Thousands
of copies of a software programme can be distributed within
a few weeks.
Internet experts claim that time goes more quickly on
Internet, that an Internet 'year' is the equivalent of
only two months in reality. The volume of events that
take place within the industry, the rapidity within links
are formed and dissolved, the number of services proposed
each year, would seem to uphold this view. There is a
link between the rapid change in the economic situation
with the immaturity of electronic commerce.
This is partly true.
But if we take into account the fact that the majority
of businesses have not yet really invested in Internet,
that they are not yet working at the pace of Internet,
but that they will get there in the coming years, that
a small company's movements can change the balance of
its field of activity in a few months and have world-wide
repercussions, that software monitoring systems will permit
world-wide observation in real time, that reactions to
a competitor's movements will be effected by partly automated
systems, there is a good chance that once several million
companies are truly active, everyone will have to react
faster.
The acceleration of this environment is part of a general
tendency in the world economy.
next: Americanisation : the law
of the most powerful
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