Transcending the Familiar in Financial Technology
Taken from Walter B. Wriston's Bits, Bytes, and Balance Sheets: The New Economic Rules of Engagement in a Wireless World.
Technology has demolished time and distance. Instead of validating Orwell's vision of Big Brother watching the citizen, just the reverse has happened: the citizen is watching Big Brother. And the beneficial virus of freedom, for which there is no antidote, is spread to the four corners of the earth by myriad electronic networks.
Nevertheless, some experts do not accept the extent of the rapid and dramatic change this is occurring today. By definition, an expert is a person with great knowledge about a legacy system (as, obviously, there can be no experts on the future). This being so, it is not surprising that despite the overwhelming evidence that we are bearing witness to a real revolution, many experts refuse to acknowledge that revolution's existence. This reaction is grounded in human nature, which has remained unchanged over the years.
When new technology becomes the enabling factor that fundamentally changes the way the world works, the experts' expertise is suddenly in danger of obsolescence. Often they denigrate the importance of change because it may threaten not only their reputation but also their livelihood. Henry Kissinger described this phenomenon more diplomatically: "Most foreign policies that history has marked highly, in whatever country, have been originated by leaders who were opposed by experts. It is, after all, the responsibility of the expert to operate the familiar and that of the leader to transcend it."
Examples abound. In the midst of World War I, an aide-de-camp to British Field Marshall Douglas Haig, after seeing a tank demonstration, opined, "The idea that cavalry will be replaced by these iron coaches is absurd. It is little short of treasonous."
In our country, the ridicule and court martial of Brigadier General Billy Mitchell in the 1920s when he postulated the importance of air power by offering to sink a battleship is instructive. The secretary of war, Newton D. Baker, thought so little of the idea that he said, "I'm willing to stand on the bridge of a battleship while that nitwit [Mitchell] tries to hit it from the air."
It is not hard to find similar statements from legacy experts about everything from oil supplies to school choice.
Walter B. Wriston (1919-2005) was a pioneer in the field of financial technology. He retired as chairman and CEO of Citicorp in 1984 after serving the company for thirty-eight years. Afterwards, he served on the boards of several multinational companies and on government councils.
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