Managing the information technology behind the ultra-responsiveness of real time is not a job that can be delegated to a chief information officer or to any other kind of specialist. It requires total management engagement. Every aspect of organization activity must be interconnected. Key tools for making connections and building relationships include the Internet, intranets, and extranets. The book notes that to compete in the real time world, management must create a sensing organization that constantly monitors, feeds, queries, verifies, adjusts, tries, and initiates.
Mass media reflect the technology-induced fragmentation of mass markets.
The very essence of the new technological capabilities is to permit business to cater to far narrower segments of society than was ever economically possible. When everything we encounter is, in some form, interactive information, communication, or entertainment, the role of fixed and static forms of media in our lives will steadily diminish. In three very different ways, entertainment, more than anything else, is driving the dissemination of the technologies behind the new media, even as it lends them the power to stir and play on human feelings and emotions. Finally entertainment is engagement. It attracts and holds attention.