Going Digital!

• Author: Bucy, Betsy

Litan, Robert E. and Niskanen, William A.

Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution and Cato Institute, 1998. (91 pp)

Digitization provides the possibility to store, transmit, and receive vast quantities of data, instantaneously, from anywhere in the world. But rather than a technical discussion, this book is devoted to a discussion of the economic, social, and political issues that arise from the digital revolution and the recommended role for government.

In his novel, 1984, George Orwell predicted that the technological revolution would result in a more powerful state and a greater centralization of power. The opposite effect has occurred as the digital revolution has been a decentralizing force enabling people to change their lives, institutions, and governments. Some changes have been very positive and some have had an unintended negative result. For example, the authors offer that the Berlin Wall came down not by tanks but because Western television, radio, and computer technology prevented communist governments from maintaining information monopolies. The same phenomenon led to a process that most of us have experienced in the organizations for which we work, and that is the reduction of middle management or downsizing.

If we accept that the digital revolution will continue at the momentum at which it has accelerated, then our challenge is to facilitate the development of digital technologies while hopefully avoiding the dangers they pose.

In order to lead their readers into the scope of the challenge they have posed, the authors provide discussions of both digital optimism and digital pessimism. Digital optimism is a philosophy whereby digital technology is promoted for the value it brings to all users, including even nondigital businesses and consumers. It assumes that barriers to electronic commerce and other technological developments will be overcome, though they will not come overnight. Digital pessimism is the philosophy that digitization will not advance as quickly as predicted for a number of reasons. One may be that consumers, concerned about a loss of privacy or security, may not make purchases over the Internet. Another is that businesses may fear the exposure of valuable intellectual property. Digital pessimism goes a step further by saying if digitization does advance, there may be unintended negative outcomes such as the widespread distribution of controversial information (such as pornography, information facilitating...