Internet revolutionizing way designers (and others) work

Professor Spiro Pollalis, who serves as director of the Center for Design Informatics at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, estimates Internet-based project management networks are now being utilized by as many as 10 percent of architectural design firms, and those numbers are expected to mushroom in the years ahead. “We see the Internet as being the unifying part that brings the different organizations together,” he says. What is occurring in the design and construction industries, Pollalis believes, is indicative of the expanding role the Internet will play in all business sectors in the not-so-distant future. “We’re going to see things happening in a very different way than they happen today,” Pollalis explains. “We’re going to see some professions disappearing, new professions evolving. Many things are going to be more efficient. In other aspects they’ll be less efficient, but there’s going to be major restructuring, and we will all be affected.”