It decentralizes power. As the transistor was being invented, George Orwell, in his book 1984, was making one of the worst predictions in a century filled with them: that technology would be a centralizing, totalitarian influence. Instead, technology became a force for democracy and individual empowerment.
I'm wondering if Andy Grove would now agree with these words. They were written in connection to Grove being named person of the year by Time in 1997.
With privacy concerns all around us and the U.S. federal government pushing the adoption of the Real ID Act by states, it looks like technology could indeed be used to centralize rather than decentralize. It of course depends on whose hands it's in.
States have been resisting the law, with 17 of them having already passed legislation opposing it, and six outright banning it.
For those states already banning it, they will be forced to have people wishing to travel on airplanes be subject to more stringent screening processes to be able to board a commercial flight.
What the writer above didn't take into consideration, was it's not the ability of technology to decentralize that's the problem, it does all of that, rather the problem is in how the technology is used. In the end, what technology gives, technology can also take away. Think of the software developed which China uses to monitor Internet users within the country.
To me what's important is we can never be sure what the future really will be. Many people can take the euphoria of the present and project that euphoria into the future. Just because that is done and it is spread out among a large number of people doesn't mean it's the future that will emerge.
Am I saying we're going to end up like George Orwell predicted in his book? Not really. What I'm saying is technology can be used one way or the other.
Just because something can help with decentralization doesn't mean it can't be reverse engineered. That is already happening. The question becomes how far it will be allowed to go.
Bringing this back to business leadership, we can't assume how technology is used today will be how it will be used tomorrow, or that the benefit it brings to us can't competitively brought back against us.
Technology isn't good or evil, it just is. In the hands of man it can be used for both. No wonder Andy Grove always promoted "only the paranoid survive."
Other Andy Grove Resources:
Andy Grove's Rational Exuberance
The Digital Age . . . driven by the passion of Intel's Andrew Grove
The History and Influence of Andy Grove
Andy Grove enters new post-Intel role as activist capitalist
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