Speaker: Esther Dyson

The world is changing, and with it the world of IT. In the old days, IT covered mostly human entered data—financials, inventories, HR. Now it includes real-time information from the physical world, and its users are in jobs where IT helps them get their work done, but is not the focus of their attention (except for when it doesn’t work!).

IT now matters intensely—not for itself, but because of what it supports. IT is everywhere and all the time. Clothing lines, rock stars, social movements and high school students have websites to project themselves to the world; cars, soda vending machines and toys use IT to add functionality and personality. There’s hardly a job that doesn’t require someone to clock in electronically; most companies expect employees to enter or use data if not to write e-mail or learn application skills. That means IT matters; it also means the real world—of politics, labor, geography, human nature—matters to IT.