Live Blogging from World Congress on Information Technology 2

The 1st half day of presentation has gone by, and now it is Dr. Robert Atkinson, President of the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation.

He first talked about the Digital economy, where ICT is the major driver of growth in the most developed economy.

Economists have talked about "General Purpose Technologies", and most innovations come incrementally with modest changes over time.

But usually every 50 years or so, there will be major changes of system, that change everything, like how we product, what we product, how we manage production etc.

1890 - Steel that powers the revolution. Then, industrial and then ICT.

Technology system exhausts itself, and since most technology within the old system has been taken advantage of.

Previously, we have the old electro-mechanical technology system from 1930-80, and now is the new ICT system.

GPT have rapid price decline and improve performance. Moore's Law has not slowed down.

Today, free memory is almost everywhere. Microsoft provides 5GB of memory to everyone, and if in 1970s, that would have cost USD100 Million per person.

ICT used to be scarce. Now, 70% of computer chips don't go into computers. Today, it is part into every part of economy and virtually into every economy.

In the next 15 years, there would be self service technology, where it would seem to be customized for each individual, although the cost won't be more than mass production.

Walmart today depends lots on ICT, as well as banking and Amazon etc.

ICT enables innovation in products and services.

ICT does matter to firm and nation, and ICT drives firm profitability. On average, for every dollar a firm in the US invests in ICT, market valuation rises by over $10.

ICT drives nation's productivity and economic growth, and ICT has driven the Total factor productivity growth in US.

In Malaysia, use of ICT had the biggest impact on manufacturing productivity, larger than humna capitals.

On another studies, ICT had significant, positive impacts on productivity, GDP growth and overall stock market values from 1991 to 2002 in various Asian countries.

Major reason for Canada's lagging productivity growth is due to lack of investment in ICT.

Malaysia is ranking no. 1 in ICT contribute to labor productivity. Other nations, like Korea, Ireland and Thailand also fare very well.

ICT capital has 7 times the impact on GDP and productivity than non-ICT capital in nations with lower levels of IT usage and 3 times more in other countries. ICT allows picking up of low hanging fruit of relatively easy to improve efficiencies.

Many nations haven't fully optimized ICT.

The nations should focus on raising productivity across the board through greater use of ICT.

For every 1% drop in ICT price, there is a 1.5% growth in demand. Countries should use tax incentives and tariff reductions to spur ict investment.

Would continue to blog on this later on. Thank you for reading my live blogging from Plenary Hall 1, Kuala Lumpur Convention Center.

This internet speed is definitely by far the best I have used in Malaysia.L


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