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Chapter 1 The Importance of MIS
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Q1-7 2026?

In Q1-1, we said that future businesspeople need to be able to assess, evaluate, and apply emerg-
ing technology. What technology might that be? And how might it pertain to future business?
Let’s take a guess at technology in the year 2026. Of course, we won’t have perfect insight,
and, in fact, these guesses will probably seem ludicrous to the person who finds this book for sale
for a dollar at a Goodwill store in 2026. But let’s exercise our minds in that direction.
One near certainty is that most computers won’t look like computers. Apple’s iPad, for exam-
ple, does not look like a traditional desktop or laptop, but you can use it to watch videos, listen to
music, read books, store photos, surf the Internet, and network online. You can also buy apps for
the iPad that are educational, such as ones designed to aid toddlers in learning their ABCs and oth-
ers focused on helping high school students learn the periodic table.
Consider how your smartphone will change by 2026. Imagine it has a 1Gbps network con-
nection, 1 Exabyte of storage, and over a teraflop in processing power and can connect to any
electrical device that consumes energy. You can store or stream every song and movie ever made
to any device including your tablet, TV, car, refrigerator, windows, mirrors, and walls. Oh… and
its battery life is now over a month on a single charge. Nice. Think about how differently you’ll
use this device.
By 2026, it’s possible that desktop and portable computers as we know them today will have
disappeared. They’ll be replaced by mobile devices of many different types. Your employer might
not even provide you a computer; you may be expected to bring your own computing device to
work, or maybe all workplaces will have computing devices that you make personal by signing in.
We explore these possibilities further in Chapter 4.
Beyond the changes to traditional “computers” and mobile devices, it’s likely that more every-
day things will have similar functionality. Tanita offers a scale that sends an electrical pulse through
your body and then provides not only your weight but also your body fat, bone mass, metabolism,
and level of hydration. You can wear a watch that counts the calories you have burned, the num-
ber of miles you have walked or run, and how well you’ve slept and reports this data back to a
Web site. You could link this data with your doctor’s office so that your physician could actually
prescribe exercise, just like drugs.
Imagine some middle-aged, overweight man sitting at a Pizza Hut when the 911 staff arrives
to carry him away.
“Why are you here?” he’ll say. “I’m fine.”
“Oh, no you’re not. Your pacemaker called us because you’re having a heart attack.”

But let’s apply systems thinking to the social implications of these changes. If everyone in
2026 is wearing Google Glass or Microsoft’s HoloLens, would shoplifters, bank robbers, or mass-
murdering bombers be caught in minutes? Bad behavior by anyone could be instantly streamed
to the whole world. Doing so would require not just the image data but also huge networks of
computers to process the image data in real time. And, if so, what does that mean for privacy? And
where are the business opportunities in all of that? 15
Will people still go to work? Why? Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer required her employees to come
to work and earned the disdain of many. Is she on the wrong side of that trend? She says important
work gets done in informal meetings around the coffee pot, but will this matter when meeting at
the coffee pot is a virtual experience? And what about organizations? What will we need organiza-
tions for? Will talented employees need organizations? Or will they band together in temporary
teams, work together, and then band together in another way?