A Critical Discussion of Some Current and Future Developments of IT

Abstract

In this paper we discuss briefly a few aspects of some of the exciting new developments in information technology. We argue that most of ongoing activities and visions (if they become reality) are quite ambivalent: With positive and negative effects, with nobody really able to make credible forecasts. In Sect. 1, we first mention five issues. Three involve ongoing activities which are suffering from drawbacks that one could improve and that are totally overlooked by the community. The other two issues are major topics of IT today: Artificial intelligence and big data and analysis of big data. Those 5 issues will be discussed more thoroughly in Sect. 2. In the remainder of Sect. 1 we look at a plethora of other IT issues that we do not follow up in depth. We conclude this paper in a very short Sect. 3 by warning IT specialists no to overestimate the importance of IT vs. other subject areas: They may influence mankind as much or even more than IT.