The digital economy should be digital
A source
"The economy must be economical - this is the requirement of the time"
Leonid Brezhnev (from the report at the XXVI CPSU Congress, 1981)
The requirements for the economy are different for each time, and the informatization that has risen to incredible heights in the 21st century has made serious adjustments to them. The so-called digital economy that has emerged on the world stage is a system of economic, social and cultural relations based on the use of digital information and communication technologies. Let's talk today about the signs of the digital economy, which is lacking in it today, about the involvement of the state and its citizens in the transition to the “figure” and, of course, about the consequences of digital transformation.
Presentations of specific solutions and products belonging to different categories of the ecosystem of the digital economy are made regularly today, and many participants in both the world and domestic markets already have daily experience in creating elements and products of an online economy. Therefore, it is not surprising that, according to the published rating of the most expensive brands in the world, The BrandZ Global Top 100, Google ranked first with a brand value of $ 245.6 billion, followed by four more representatives of Silicon Valley: Apple , Microsoft, Amazon and Facebook. Russian brands in the hundred most expensive, however, was not. These are all Internet giants that are built on powerful and innovative platforms. As for the top five, for the year it has undergone only one change: now, on the fourth line, not the telecommunications giant AT & T, but the world's largest online retailer Amazon. As for the digital business, this is a new business model, covering people / business / things, scalable globally for the whole world through the use of information technologies, the Internet, and all of their properties, suggesting an effective personal service for everyone, everywhere, always.
Signs of the new time
In general, the so-called Data Driven business or, in simple terms, a business whose main driving force is data, is now becoming a common practice for many enterprises of various industries. And data management underlies the increasingly popular digital business transformation. According to experts, by 2020 the amount of data processed annually by data centers (data centers) will reach 15.3 Zb (zetybyte), the number of business users will exceed 325 million, the number of devices connected to the Internet will reach 20 billion, it will significantly increase the range of data types, 92% of data traffic in data centers will be in “cloud computing”, and artificial intelligence will come to the aid of a billion workers.
Last December, the US Transportation Infrastructure Regulatory Authority announced that all new cars in the country, which will start production in 2023, must be equipped with V2V (vehicle-to-vehicle, "car-to-vehicle") data exchange systems, which involves the exchange data on routes and speeds between all cars on the road, which should fundamentally reduce accidents on roads.
Developers from Ohio State University recently received a government grant to create a "smart" highway on the 56-kilometer stretch of highway in the state capital's suburb of Columbus. We are talking about the highway standard V2I (vehicle-to-infrastructure, "vehicle-infrastructure"), which provides for the exchange of data between road infrastructure facilities (road signs, traffic lights and various sensors) and moving cars. A fiber-optic communication line will be laid along the highway, which will connect transceivers located every 600 meters. Thanks to the information received from the road, the car will be able, for example, to warn the driver about a traffic jam, calculate a detour, and predict downtime at a traffic light.
Or, the real “blockchain star”, a favorite of bankers and journalists, Vitaly Buterin, who created Ethereum - a platform for creating decentralized Internet services (dapps) operating on the basis of smart contracts. The platform was launched on July 30, 2015. In March of this year, Ethereum's market capitalization exceeded $ 1 billion, and the Ether cryptocurrency created on its base ranked second after Bitcoin. During the recent St. Petersburg Economic Forum (SPIEF), Russian President Vladimir Putin met with the founder of Ethereum, and First Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian Government, Igor Shuvalov, during a panel session at the SPIEF, said that Russia is currently working on three areas of development technology blockchain. According to him, among the tasks requiring operational solutions are the provision of “digital traceability of goods”, the creation of a common blockchain-based platform for personal identification, and electronic protection of the title of owner.
The Moscow Assistant mobile application, which allows you to send photos of incorrectly parked cars “where you need to”, has been working since mid-2015 and only for the first year of operation allowed to write out about 25 thousand fines. On the scale of Moscow, of course, a little, but the process is running. The use of crowdfunding and various mobile applications for the performance of some public functions is now fashionable around the world. Therefore, violations of the parking rules can be recorded not only by road policemen, whose salaries in each state, by the way, are paid by citizens, but also by citizens themselves armed with a smartphone with a special application. The motivation of conscious citizens can be stimulated by transferring to the bank card interest on paid fines. It is also possible to “gamify” the process so that it becomes interesting for adolescents to record violators from a sporting interest.
In general, there are many similar examples from today's life. The economy, as the process of creating material and spiritual values, undoubtedly receives an additional impetus with the digital transformation, delivering new types of content and software products. The economy, in the literal sense, also receives its impetus, allowing it to receive disproportionately more information about all processes, which is extremely useful in building monitoring and management systems, as well as improving the efficiency of the processes themselves. Information exchange, on which the entire business and all state management is based, is provided through digital data transmission channels, in many ways wireless, as well as electronic document management, which opens up new spaces for further improvement of business models and business processes. Finances are beginning to look closely to digital currencies. The social part "sits" on social networks, sometimes taking up all the free and even non-free time of citizens. Spectacles are represented not only by new types of content, but also by games, the traffic from which already competes with other types of traffic.
Involving citizens in government is also simplified in the digital economy. It is believed that by 2024, digital inequality will be eliminated in the sphere of infrastructure in Russia, and communication will appear in all hard-to-reach areas of the country. By 2024, the basis for the development of the digital economy should be formed in Russia. In the key industries, as a result of the transformation, national leaders in their field should emerge who will become operators of digital platforms. On the basis of these platforms, a certain system of interaction of participants will be formed. Business and government will need to review the rules and formats of online interaction with citizens. Within the framework of the platform, participants will not be limited in creating new ways of interacting with each other, in creating value added. It would seem that the “figure” is everywhere, and here it is, the digital economy.
Spectacles without bread
But no, from the well-known formula of “bread and circuses” in the digital economy, there is not enough bread. That is, it can participate in the acquisition, storage, cultivation, harvesting and processing of grain, as well as in the supply and sale of the finished product. Theoretically, it can even create a digital bread line in an online store, but it’s not yet possible to create bread from the data itself. Figures can not eat, you can not put a figure on yourself and you can not go to a figure. And this leaves chances to all religions of the world, where the Lord is able to create everything, including bread.
That is to deepen and improve business processes, it is - please, but the digital economy cannot create mineral resources, the biosphere, etc., etc. Therefore, according to some experts, it would be advisable to speak not about the digital economy, but about the knowledge economy, kreanomika. And to invest money in science and scientific and technical projects on which, in particular, China has seriously risen. Moreover, high technologies themselves are not a commodity. They still need to be applied in real production, which should still be in the country. From textile to space.
However, it is possible that rapidly developing biotechnologies will eventually allow synthesizing food by request, which Ilya Varshavsky told in the story “Molecular Cafe” half a century ago. Maybe over time it will turn out to be something more advanced, as described, for example, in the Strugatskys It's Hard to Be God:
“Crunching heels on broken glass, Rumata made his way into the far corner and turned on the electric torch. There, under a heap of rubbish, stood a small-sized Midas synthesizer in a strong silicate safe. Rumata scattered trash, scored a combination of numbers on the disk and lifted the lid of the safe. Even in white electric light, the synthesizer looked odd among the torn debris. Rumata threw a few shovels of sawdust into the receiving funnel, and the synthesizer sang softly, automatically turning on the display panel. Rumat with a toed boot pulled a rusty bucket to the exit chute. And now - dzin, dzin, dzin! - golden circles with the aristocratic profile of Pitz Six, the King of Arkanarsky, fell on the crumpled tin floor.
True, the Strugatsky brothers forgot to clarify that Midas was digital, but you and I already understand what the matter is there. Thus, until humanity learns to make gold, at least from sawdust, it is somewhat premature to talk about the complete victory of the digital economy. But it’s worth talking about business models and business processes.
State and citizens
It should not be forgotten that the introduction of “numbers” should comprehensively improve business processes through the speed of delivery, transparency and reliability of data. Actually, this is why the digital economy is designed to be exactly digital. With efficiency, it seems, it is clear, but what about transparency and authenticity? Or rather, how much everyone will like it?
For example, even if the benefits of involving fellow citizens in various processes of control over public order are obvious, this involvement itself largely depends on the trust of citizens in the state. Citizens can be transferred to a significant part of the functions of monitoring compliance with public order, many issues of fire supervision, construction safety control and many other types of control. On the one hand, the extra money does not interfere, and, on the other hand, it is not good to snitch.
Also, the sneaky will be found by IP addresses with unknown for him, but very predictable consequences. Any state that exists by its nature as an institution of coercion is objectively interested in the increasing possession of information about its citizens, but citizens no longer like it, for example, if this information is poorly protected. It is said that only decades of rational and consistent behavior very gradually form in society confidence in the fact that the information obtained will be used by the authorities for the benefit, and not to the detriment. If citizens perceive the state as something established by the citizens themselves to protect their own rights and interests, then it is logical for them to help this state and welcome similar assistance from other members of the community. And if the state performs its functions well, then everyone will benefit except the malicious violators.
Transparency to the "ugliness"
The possibilities of the digital economy are becoming wider, the more honestly the society itself behaves, and this honesty has positive feedback with the digital economy. Thanks to scientific and technical progress, the world will become more and more transparent. If this trend continues, many secrets will be revealed to humanity. In addition, it is expected that in the coming years, mankind will have purely technical possibilities for opening lies and identifying honest behavior, for which today there are many state institutions like lawyers, etc. A hundred years ago, it was much easier to hide the truth. For example, even massive crimes could be silenced or delay the truth about them for years. Therefore, there was practically no opportunity to intervene and oppose. Today, everything is completely different, and the world will know about similar and other events almost instantly. However, this information can now be falsified.
Despite the abundance of real and potential advantages, the digital economy is undermined from within by the equally wide possibilities of digital crime, data falsification and corruption. Theft of financial assets and intellectual property, blackmail, extortion, hacking of informational repositories, obtaining unauthorized access to other people's personal data for violations of the law - this is not a complete list of known crimes from the world of digital economy. For quite objective reasons, any state is unable to protect citizens from all of the above, if only because an attack is always one step ahead of protection.
Ten years ago, politicians and the military could not imagine that thousands of pages of classified material could be made public along with their frank private conversations. Now such leaks have become commonplace. Take, for example, a hysteria in the USA that has long been going on for allegedly hacker hacking of something. Sorry, guys, hasn't it been you who have been proud for decades about having the Echelon system, which "shreds" any information on the planet, later attracted Internet resources for this, created a cyber war, etc.? Greater self-exposure of creators, including the digital economy, is hard to come up with. Either it is a lie to save some of their political goals, because it is not in the tradition of intelligence to declare their failures so publicly, or there is real impotence before a genie released from a bottle. And the one and the other does not inspire optimism about the prospects for the digital economy.
That is why, in particular, among the population is growing popularity of instant messengers. “Confidentiality and security are in our DNA ... - says the official website of the messenger WhatsApp. - End-to-end encryption protects your messages and calls. Thus, only you and the person with whom you communicate can read or listen to the content, and no one else. ” That is why messengers cause a natural concern of the special services, which, by the nature of their activity, need not only to catch criminals, terrorists, etc., but also to prevent such crimes.
Implications of digital transformation
One of the consequences of the new digital transformation will be, in particular, a deeper vision of what people are doing in companies. This is important because people now make up half of the assets of companies. The assets of a typical company now consist of 25% of physical assets, 50% of employees and 25% of brand value and other intangible assets. Experts note that in a digital economy there will definitely be losers among ordinary citizens. Some specialties will become unnecessary, someone will be replaced by artificial intelligence. “The new structure destroys many traditional sectors, negative emotions grow among those who worked there. Digital technology can exacerbate socioeconomic inequality, ”even the World Bank acknowledges.
Now imagine that the coveted “figure” has won, and every member of society, every member of the business, every official, every spouse, every member of the team has full access to any information that may relate to it. However, about the other too. And all the secret will suddenly become apparent. Everyone will know who, where, when, and how much he stole, whom he deceived, what intrigues he made, who he framed, imprisoned or even killed ... It’s hard to imagine what will happen to business, financial relations and, of course, politicians. The art of the possible most often conflicts with honesty. The catastrophic consequences of universal enlightenment will be felt by not only politicians and officials, businessmen and bankers, but also the most ordinary citizens.
Someone believes that such a development of events may become real in the near future and will be akin to what is commonly called the Apocalypse. To the attention of the lovers of the theories of catastrophes in translation from the Greek Apocalypse is “discovery, cover removal, exposure”. Otherwise, universal insight. And what is most funny, humankind pushes the banal development of the digital economy to this insight, and not only the telepathy ability that has suddenly descended from somewhere. This turning point in the history of mankind was predicted not only by Jesus Christ, who, by the way, promised that one day “everything secret would be revealed”, but also by many prophets who saw the coming of the “Golden Age” and the emergence of a new, more honest and just society. The American University of Singularity, created by NASA and Google, recently published “Predictions for Humanity for the Next 20 Years,” where its experts say that by 2020, Internet applications will appear that are capable of recognizing truth and lies with a high probability. And it may even be that within five to seven years, such mini-lie detectors will begin to enter into the standard set of functions of many smartphones.
Today, a lie pervades all spheres of life, from politics to family relationships. In this regard, it is expected that humanity as a whole and each country individually will make a tremendous breakthrough in their development as soon as people stop lying and stealing, which, as we have seen above, can become the “destination station” of the digital economy train. But such a development of the digital economy would have hurt a huge number of rich, powerful, well-behaved people, causing logical opposition from them. I wonder if those who are going to make money on it all suspect this?
Based on: tass.ru, ng.ru, cnews.ru, helionews.ru, pcweek.ru, forum-msk.org, nplus1.ru, dic.academic.ru, mk.ru, arb.ru, 3rm.info
Publication author:
Alexander GOLYSHKO, Systems Analyst, Technoserv Group of Companies
The article was published in the magazine "Radio" .
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Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/335156/
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