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THE FUTURE OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY IN ECONOMY 
 
M.B.Akbarova (Tashkent State Institute of Oriental Studies) 
 
According to Don Tapscott, author of several visionary books on information technology 
and digital commerce
1
, IT is and will continue to change authority patterns within companies and 
shift organizations from "work environments" to lifelong learning environments (Finchem). With 
the rate of change of technology increasing, it will become increasingly important for workers to 
learn how to adapt to these continuous changes. Telecommunications, electronic commerce, and 
publishing are going to change dramatically in the years to come. For example in 
telecommunication system we can see.
That information technology, of which telecommunications is a principal part, is going to 
be the biggest technological driver of economic and business change over the next decade. 
Understanding the nature and breadth of that change is critical for those who use business 
economics in their jobs. The impacts of information technology will be spread across all sectors 
of the economy. It will enable business to improve customer service as well as reduce costs. The 
growth of electronic commerce will lead us toward a virtual market in retail and distribution.
2
Electronic commerce is one of the new applications of IT is electronic commerce. A 
broad definition of electronic commerce is any commercial interaction between individuals, or an 
1
Antonelli, Cristiano and Lamberton D. McL. The Economics of Information Networks. Amsterdam: Elsevier 
Science, 1992. 
2
Dadd, C Mark, and Guynn, Jack. "The outlook for the telecommunications industry and the implications for the 
economy and for business." Business Economics Jan. 1998: 14-17. 

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individual and a business, or between businesses, that is wholly or partly processed electronically. 
That broad definition includes transactions using the traditional telephone and Internet networks. 
Using this definition, electronic commerce includes purchasing goods by telephone from a 
catalogue and paying by credit card. In the future, electronic commerce will involve not just 
payments processing but end-to-end processing, including ordering, fulfillment, customer service, 
and reporting.
The full realization of that electronic commerce vision requires simpler electronic 
interfaces between companies, increased integration of the packet and circuit switched 
telecommunications networks, and continued integration of voice, data and video when customers 
are online. Imagine that you are online on your PC looking at a possible purchase in a consumer 
Internet catalog, and you decide you want some questions answered before you order, so you click 
on an 800 icon on your screen and get to speak to an account executive over your telephone, i.e., 
you are talking over the same telephone line that is connected to the Internet.This technology is 
now available.
3
Publishing here is how digital production is evolving. Publishers and other information 
providers will increasingly establish centralized digital repositories to store all of the content 
owned by the organization, including text, images, audio and video. A few large organizations will 
build their own digital repositories, but many will rent space from major printers or digital 
production service bureaus. The digital information will be carefully indexed and archived in basic 
formats that can be easily retrieved and quickly converted for use in whatever print or electronic 
media is selected for distribution. The digital repository may be located on premises or at a remote 
site. It will be transparent to system users, once transmission will be nearly instantaneous through 
wide band access lines.
4
(Liebly). First we must confront the question of what happened during 
the late 1990s. Viewed from 2003, such an exercise is undoubtedly premature, and must be 
regarded as somewhat speculative. No doubt a clearer view will emerge as we gain more 
perspective on the period. But at least I will offer one approach to understanding what went on.
I interpret the Internet boom of the late 1990s as an instance of what one might call 
``combinatorial innovation.''
Every now and then a technology, or set of technologies, comes along that offers a rich set 
of components that can be combined and recombined to create new products. The arrival of these 
components then sets off a technology boom as innovators work through the possibilities.
This is, of course, an old idea in economic history. 
Schumpeter [1934]
, p. 66 refers to ``new 
combinations of productive means.'' More recently, 
Weitzman [1998]
 used the term ``recombinant 
growth.'' 
Gilfillan [1935]
, 
Usher [1954]
, 
Kauffman [1995]
 and many others describe variations on 
essentially the same idea.
The attempts to develop interchangeable parts during the early nineteenth century are a 
good example of a technology revolution driven by combinatorial innovation. The standardization 
of design (at least in principle) of gears, pullies, chains, cams, and other mechanical devices led to 
the development of the so-called ``American system of manufacture'' which started in the weapons 
manufacturing plants of New England but eventually led to a thriving industry in domestic 
appliances. A century later the development of the gasoline engine led to another wave of 
combinatorial innovation as it was incorporated into a variety of devices from motorcycles to 
automobiles to airplanes.
As Schumpeter points out in several of his writings, combinatorial innovation is one of 
the important reasons why inventions appear in waves, or ``clusters,'' as he calls them. As soon as 
the various kinds of social resistance to something that is fundamentally new and untried have 
3
Dadd, C Mark, and Guynn, Jack. "The outlook for the telecommunications industry and the implications for the 
economy and for business." Business Economics Jan. 1998: 14-17. 
4
Liebly, Frank. "The role of content management in a digital production environment." Direct Marketing Dec. 
1997: 30-33+.

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been overcome, it is much easier not only to do the same thing again but also to do 
similar 
things 
in different directions, so that a first success will always produce a cluster. (p 142)
Schumpeter emphasizes a ``demand-side'' explanation of cluster of innovation; one might 
also consider a complementary ``supply-side'' explanation: since innovators are, in many cases, 
working with the same components, it is not surprising to see simultaneous innovation, with 
several innovators coming up with essentially the same invention at almost the same time. There 
are many well-known examples, including the electric light, the airplane, the automobile, and the 
telephone.
Better information for incumbents, lock-in, and demand- and supply-side economies of 
scale suggest that industry structure in high-technology industries will tend to be rather 
concentrated. On the other hand, information technology can also reduce minimum efficient scale 
thereby relaxing barriers to entry. People value diversity in some areas, such as entertainment, and 
IT makes it easier to provide such diversity.
Standards are a key policy variable. Under a proprietary standard, an industry may be 
dominated by a single firm. With an open standard, many firms can interconnect. Consider, for 
example, the PC industry. The PC itself is a standardized device: there are many motherboard 
makers, memory chip makers and card providers. There are even several CPU providers, despite 
the large economies of scale in this industry.