Much has been said and writ­ten of the trans­for­ma­tive role that in­for­ma­tion and com­mu­ni­ca­tions tech­nol­o­gy (ICT) has played in the mod­ern era. ICT is a foun­da­tion for in­dus­try and com­pet­i­tive­ness and a cat­a­lyst for in­no­va­tion. It is one of the most pow­er­ful fac­tors shap­ing life and defin­ing mod­ern so­ci­ety. In the Caribbean re­gion, there is wide recog­ni­tion of the val­ue of build­ing tech­nol­o­gy-dri­ven, knowl­edge-based economies and of in­vest­ing in com­put­er and In­ter­net-based sys­tems as fun­da­men­tal com­po­nents in com­mer­cial and na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment.

The In­ter­net, mo­bile phones and the ever-mu­tat­ing flood of con­nect­ed de­vices, have com­plete­ly up-end­ed how in­di­vid­u­als, busi­ness­es and gov­ern­ments in­ter­face with in­for­ma­tion and with each oth­er.

With the ben­e­fits of greater pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and ef­fi­cien­cy have come greater threats to se­cu­ri­ty, pri­va­cy, moral­i­ty and ethics. In de­vel­op­ing states, the dual as­pect of the tech­nol­o­gy rev­o­lu­tion as both a bless­ing and a curse has been par­tic­u­lar­ly acute. In the Caribbean, it is test­ing the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem; ex­pos­ing an­ti­quat­ed in­fra­struc­ture and in­sti­tu­tion­al process­es; high­light­ing the im­per­a­tive for new ap­proach­es hu­man re­source man­age­ment and re­ten­tion; and cre­at­ing new, strate­gic chal­lenges for busi­ness and po­lit­i­cal lead­ers alike.

The im­pact and in­flu­ence of ICTs in life, busi­ness, gov­er­nance and so­ci­ety is un­de­ni­able. Yet, there is a para­dox­i­cal dearth of rel­e­vant fo­cused cov­er­age and crit­i­cal analy­sis of these is­sues in Caribbean main­stream me­dia. This is very sig­nif­i­cant and de­mands a re­sponse. There is an ur­gent need in the T&T, as well as the wider Caribbean, for con­sis­tent, thought-pro­vok­ing cov­er­age of the ICT sec­tor.

The Tech­nol­o­gy Mat­ters col­umn seeks to fill pre­cise­ly this need. The con­cept is sim­ple. Tech­nol­o­gy Mat­ters will be a syn­di­cat­ed col­umn in the week­ly Busi­ness Guardian pub­li­ca­tion that fo­cus­es on the role tech­nol­o­gy is play­ing in in­flu­enc­ing busi­ness de­vel­op­ment, in­no­va­tion, com­pet­i­tive­ness, lead­er­ship, hu­man re­source man­age­ment and strate­gic plan­ning.

The col­umn will:

• Ex­am­ine the dis­rup­tive im­pact of tech­nol­o­gy on cor­po­rate and na­tion­al poli­cies and ex­plore the threats, chal­lenges and op­por­tu­ni­ties fac­ing in­di­vid­u­als, or­gan­i­sa­tions and gov­ern­ments in nav­i­gat­ing the com­plex range of is­sues.

• Tack­le the vex­ing tech­nol­o­gy ques­tions fac­ing the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty and present per­spec­tives that high­light trends and de­vel­op­ments in a man­ner rel­e­vant to the lo­cal T&T con­text.

• Raise new ques­tions to chal­lenge the way so­ci­ety con­sid­ers in­vest­ment in tech­nol­o­gy and its im­pact on in­no­va­tion and de­vel­op­ment.

The col­umn will pro­vide pro­fes­sion­al analy­sis and in­sight­ful com­men­tary on a broad range of is­sues un­der the pen of a re­gion­al­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly recog­nised au­thor­i­ty on ICT in de­vel­op­ing na­tions. It will draw from a di­verse pool of re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al in­dus­try ex­perts to bring di­ver­si­ty, per­spec­tive and depth to the sub­ject area. By ex­am­in­ing lo­cal is­sues through a glob­al lens, it is an­tic­i­pat­ed that the unique na­ture and treat­ment of the sub­ject mat­ter will be of great strate­gic in­ter­est to cur­rent read­ers of the Busi­ness Guardian, at­tract­ing busi­ness lead­ers and new read­ers in T&T and be­yond to the pub­li­ca­tion.

Rap­port with Tech­nol­o­gy Mat­ters tar­get au­di­ence will be en­cour­aged through a man­aged on­line fa­cil­i­ty where read­ers will be en­cour­aged to sub­mit ques­tions and com­ments. Ques­tions will be rep­re­sent­ed in a Q&A fea­ture ti­tled, Sec­ond Opin­ion, to com­ple­ment the Tech­nol­o­gy Mat­ters col­umn in the Busi­ness Guardian. Look for­ward to the first in­stal­ment of Bevil Wood­ing's Tech­nol­o­gy Mat­ters in the Oc­to­ber 6 Busi­ness Guardian.

Wood­ing is chief knowl­edge of­fi­cer of Con­gress WBN,

a Trinidad-based non-prof­it or­gan­i­sa­tion fo­cused on so­cial and na­tion­al trans­for­ma­tion.