In State of Crisis

The Earth, year 2009. Almost 7 billion people are living on the planet that can upkeep only around 500 millions. Resources are strained, ecology, energy, weather, society, religion, almost everything is in state of crisis. As all of the civilizations in the history, we must adapt or get devastated by our complex interweave society. With the development of our technology in last 200 years, we have conquered elements, but at the price of rising complexity around us. We need numbers to get in line; we need numbers to manage people. Names are just too long. We have become numbers for the sake of the civilization survival. As an every civilization in recorded history, there are critical turn points for our civilization. Present moment in history is one of those turning points. We have too much inefficiency in our systems; we have too much mismanagement, too much greed, too much malevolence, and too much human factor interfering in smooth working of vital societal systems.

As a society we have to choose, will we evolve and embrace change, or we will degrade to a state of the constant warfare for diminishing resources. Mayor source of change are a corporations, and also its greatest enemy. This is paradox, but after some consideration, paradox is going to be resolved. Corporations pour huge money into R&D which is source of positive change, on the other side we have CEOs with their greed and "after me, the fall" attitude. Old timers in CEOs position are greedy dinosaurs that are wandering, what is that fireball in the sky. They are burdened by their religion, their history, their nation, their race. And more than anything, they must go. They are destroying our Planet, the one and only Earth. For now we have no other planet to go. We need to change how we make our decisions. We have to stop relying on our gut feeling, and find relevant information if we can. In our complex society, every company that grows beyond certain point, have to develop some kind of the information system. Without proper IS, company is doomed to stagnation, or slow death at the hand of its competitors. So we have come to the possible savior of the civilization that is not a man, which is not an idea but, some kind of ancient genie in the form of information system. In some sense, information system has become nervous system of the organization. Each and every organization that has incorporated an IS into its business has seen increase in their revenues. There is no more running away from the idea that a company is an organism, and that it needs its brain. We can close our eyes, we can pretend not to hear, but we need more information systems around us. We need to increase efficiency. As we live in Serbia, we can say few things that can show what are the possibilities of IT. There are waiting lines before every governmental institution; every line means, more then 10 people are wasting their useful work time for standing and waiting. Instead we can digitalize every piece of information of every citizen. Using that information, we can print birth certificate everywhere, instead of waiting few hours. Also healthcare is in chaos, there is no central database, now every doctor keeps records about every patient. We can create nationwide central database with appropriate information system, which can track each patient, have its history available at the tip of the finger from anywhere over the internet. And over time our information systems will rise in complexity from simple data storage and presentation, to almost living thing, to the digital nervous system. Information system can keep any information, but if we add functionality to analyze situation, plan, respond, etc. over time with expansions we will get behavior that is almost life like. With incremental development, first small business will develop IS, then governmental institutions, and finally government itself. Benefits of using digital nervous system are huge. All the paper will become redundant, so we will save the trees. Human resources can be diverted to the more creative tasks. I will provide examples in benefits to healthcare, small business, education and government.

As I have mentioned, health care needs central database of every patient. Google and Microsoft already have developed products for patients' health documents keeping. But most of the doctors are self-centered egomaniacs with grandiosity illusion. So we will have to rely on small minority of people with the open mind for the new developments. First problem is waiting for the doctor examination.