Why you should read my column

As a physicist with a fascination for IT, Dr. Bob Hoekstra will share his views on trends in technology and IT, which help people and organizations to leverage them to have bigger vision and get better prospects

I am not an IT specialist. I am a physicist, with some experience in information technology. And I have a fascination for IT, as it is such a great enabler.

It helps organizations manage whatever they do in a more effective and efficient manner. It helps people enjoy their lives and communicate with each other.

I am fascinated by the incredible learning curve of information technology and the fundamentals underneath. As it is a support technology mostly based on solid state materials for processing and storage and even display, it does not suffer slow progress limited by fundamentals of physics and chemistry.

Though barriers in physics and chemistry are continuously broken to sustain the exponential curves of production and design, they are enabled by the non-material basis of information technology. In general one electron, or maybe even a Higgs particle, is a unit of information. We are far away from that limit.

The main challenge is also in that fast learning curve. How can users adjust themselves to the new functionality offered? How can organization manage such fast technology change? Big investments are often made knowing that obsolescence is a few years away.

Even if we know that information technology is a support technology, it plays such dominant role that new technologies for health, transportation, energy supply etc, can only be introduced with tremendous information technology based systems.

I am very curious to see how car companies manage the marriage between their slow moving technologies for engines, transmissions, models and bodies, and information technology. And have been fascinated by Apple, that introduced total systems, like the i-Pod, with gadgets and music downloads.

And beat the hell out of the consumer electronics companies of the past that only focused on selling boxes. And then along came Google, that did not even touch gadgets at all, till few years back, and through its information technology appears to be the only guys to beat Apple and turn the world upside down, from my past experience.

Hope this gives you a flavor of what to expect from my columns. I will share with you how I see main trends in IT and how those may influence how people and organizations live. I will share my views on technology trends and how to anticipate on them, and how to leverage them.

I will give you the view of a user, of a physicist with interest in underlying technologies. I hope to share my fascination with major breakthroughs and simple breakthroughs. And all of it to create an interest in you and a perspective that would help you do your job better.

(Dr. Bob Hoekstra, former CEO of Philips, is a physicist and has over 40 years experience in research and development and in business.  During his seven-year tenure as CEO of the Philips Innovation Campus, he contributed to the development of the IT industry in Bangalore. He now helps Dutch companies leverage India to their advantage. And has gone back to school to study philosophy.)