The Growing Influence of Technology and the Internet

The purpose of BTM is to empower the Canadian workforce by educating entering members of the workforce, and integrating information and communications technology with the business world, as outlined by the CCICT.

Remember these guys?

As noted before, they are an organization of corporate and academic partners trying to ensure the two aspects of IT and business come together. Here are the members of CCICT:

Corporate Partners

Academic Partners (Find Laurier's logo!)

But why are all these institutions concerned about technology integrating into business? The fact of the matter is that technology has a large role in our lives. Technology quickens how fast we can accomplish tasks, and allows us to become more effective workers in general. And it continues to expand its influence right this instance. For instance, network through social media permeates North American human interaction. Facebook, the popular social networking site, boasts enough users that if it was its users would be considered its population, it would be the third largest country behind China and India.

Speaking of China, if you need more convincing on how networks, in particular the Internet is becoming more vital, let's look at the world's most populous nation and its connectivity to the rest of the world through the internet.

The People's Republic of China began the turn of the century with virtually not one member of it's vast population connected to the Internet. By 2010, the country has 384 million internet users, and since then the number has been on the rise. Domestic sites have become extremely popular, such as Tencent QQ, a social network that has 711.7 million users, making the site the largest online community on the planet. At a single instance, there are over 100 million accounts online simultaneously. The Internet and other networks proves to be an unprecedented phenomenon, which is why some countries decided to protect their citizen's rights to Internet connection.

The Republic of Estonia is a small Baltic nation located in northwestern Europe. In 2007, after a very controversial disagreement with the Russian Kremlin over a commemorative war memorial dedicated to Soviet soldiers who served in World War II, vigilante hackers against the Estonian government's stance in this incident launched a series of distributed denial-of-service attacks against the nation's infrastructure, effectively taking out the country for 32 days. Estonia's largest national bank, one of the prime targets in the attack, suffered a loss totaling in $USD 1 million within that time period. In the year 2000, Estonia had declared Internet access as a human right, highlighting the dependence the country's populace has on the network. At the same time, this incident shows the dangerous influence that hackers wield, being able to put a nation's public security at risk from their computers.

Internet Usage around the World

From examining the above cases from around the world, we can see that technology and information systems are vital today. As we progress into the future, this technology will assuredly become even more prominent. For this reason is exactly why the CCICT recognized that it is vital for the new generation of the Canadian workforce to be able to function in this digitized age. CCICT will ensure this by introducing BTM as a way to teach potential business leaders of ICTs.