Intelligence Economy Has Arrived, Says Gartner Guru Sondergaard

by Steve O'Keefe on October 21, 2010

Peter Sondergaard, head of research for consulting giant, Gartner, Inc., in his opening remarks at the Gartner Symposium in Orlando, Florida, on October 18, forecast that “we are on our way to an IT-driven intelligence society,” according to Michael J. Miller on PC Magazine‘s Forward Thinking blog.

Miller is the former Chief Content Officer for Ziff Davis Media and the editor of Forward Thinking. His coverage of Sondergaard’s remarks is extensive and compelling. He quotes Gartner guru Sondergaard as saying:

By 2012, the Internet will be 75 times larger than it was in 2002.

Gartner’s Symposium doubles as an Information Technology (IT) expo. Ten days ago, Gartner released its much-hyped Hype Cycle, boosting visibility in advance of the big event. We criticized the “emerging technology” Hype Cycle here for excluding social networking.

According to Miller, Sondergaard included “social computing” in his list of the top four trends driving IT in his opening remarks. The other three are context-aware computing, pattern-based strategy, and cloud computing, which Gartner’s own HypeCycle says is “past its peak.”

Miller quotes Sondergaard:

Information will be the oil of the 21st century.

In their book, MINITRENDS, John H. Vanston and Carrie Vanston cover the Minitrend of  Increasing Use of Electricity in Industrial Processes, where they discuss the concept that the value of goods increases with the amount of information contained in them:

Manufacturing can be defined as the transformation of materials from one form to another more valuable form using energy and information. In general, the greater the information content of the process, the greater the efficiency, the smaller the waste of material and energy, and the smaller the pollution-producing side streams will be. For example, sand can be used as filler for asphalt, as a component of fine china, or as a ingredient in an electronic computer chip. The basic difference between these uses is the amount of information embedded in the silicon (sand) during the production process. Electrical processes can be used to materially increase information content to material.

That mindbending little excerpt comes courtesy of the Edison Electric Institute. It’s one of the interesting trends John and Carrie have uncovered in this book.

If you are looking for a Minitrend Adventure, think about how you can increase the information content in the things around you — before someone else does.

STEVE O’KEEFE
News Editor, Minitrends Blog

Source: “Four Big Trends Changing Computing, Gartner Says,” PCMagazine, Forward Thinking Blog, 10/18/10
Source: Gartner Symposium Live Blog (SymLive), 10/17/10 – 10/21/10.
Image of the Gartner Symposium 2010 logo is used under Fair Use: Reporting.

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