THE DEATH OF DISTANCE

The Potential
CONSUMER: The chief beneficiaries of this globalization are
consumers. The communication revolution is introducing new
competition, holding down prices and multiplying choice. The greatest
transformation will be seen in products that can be not just ordered but
delivered on-line. Here is the biggest opportunity, not just cutting costs
and benefiting from global markets, but also for developing entirely new
products and processes.
Consumers can also develop new relations with companies.
Companies can more easily track consumers tastes and behaviour and
will be able to work harder to retain existing customers by studying their
preferences. They can offer customers products tailored to their exact
requirements. Thus, they can involve customers in the development of
products so that they become partners in the creative process of
innovation.
COMMERCE: Companies will make use of the Internet that
individuals. Companies will have access to global markets. The
computers power to search, identify and classify different tastes and
needs will offer many more opportunities to niche businesses. Many
barriers to entry will fall as the declining cost of marketing and
distributing products on-line. Brands will become more important, not
less as consumers struggle to pick the products. In addition, many
businesss that are based on network including hotels and banks already
find that communications amplify a networks value.
The Shape of Companies: On-line trading among companies already exist
and will grow larger and alter more rapidly than retail commerce. The
internet brings a sharp fall in costs of handling and transmitting
information. Almost every business process involves information in some
form. All this information can now be handled and shared more cheaply
and swiftly. Therefore, the paper work task that been handled by
employees will be vanished and require fewer resources.

Electronic communication greatly enhances the ability of corporate

managers to respond quickly. It allows managers to monitor their
employees and work task and increase reliability and trust. In turn, it
increase in efficiency and makes it easier for large companies to provide
a truly local services tailored to specific needs and tastes. In future, every
company will be an internet company.
Employees: may also develop different relationships with companies.
Employees in different countries or regions will frequently cooperate on
the same project. Some companies will become networks of independent
workers, rather than hiring few staffs to monitors other crews or staffs
under him.
Manufacturers will act as service providers. They will discover ways to
retain lasting links with their products. For example, car companies
Honda, will electronically track monitor and learn their vehicles
throughout automobiles life cycles. Opportunities to provide services for
customers will emerge, and some manufacturers may accept more
responsibility for disposing of their products at the end of the cycle like
what Honda did to the Honda City Model, they retrieved back the model
from the customers the entire world to ensure and to achieve the highest
standard of quality.
POLITICS AND GOVERNMENT: It will transform by free
communications, changing the balance of power between governments
and their citizens. People will become better informed even if they lived
under dictatorial regime. Government will be forced to cooperate more
than ever before and with private sector. Tax bases will erode.
ECONOMICS: Economists vigorously debate the size, timing and
extent of those gains. But one effect will be to cut costs. Thus, the
revolution clearly fosters innovation, the introduction of product method,
new products and new kinds of industrial organization. The
communications revolution speeds up the diffusion of innovation and
allow companies to react quickly and individuals to spot opportunities.
Information is essential to make markets work well with more companies

will have access to accurate price information, enhancing competition

and helping to curb inflation.
ISSUES
1. The globalization of communications will make it harder to
enforce national laws to protect children , preserve privacy and
prevent terrorism. Part of the price of freedom will be a greater
need for individuals to take responsibility for their own lives and
those their families.
2. Society will be affected with the disappearance of the old
demarcation between work and home. The office will become a
place not for routine work, but for social aspects of job such as
networking, lunch and catching up gossips. As a result, it will
invert to familiar roles of home and office. Social life will be more
flexible. The evolution of mobile phones, instant messaging will
enable them to locate friends and evolve ever more complicated
personal arrangements.