The three revolutions of IT

Don't blink: You may have missed it. The three stories below show how IT is beginning to permeate industries that have staunchly resisted automation - up until now.

Each shows how technology is revolutionizing: the way buildings are designed and erected, how restaurants do business, and how smart buildings could soon replace today's incompatible and costly tangle of proprietary building control systems.

All portend potentially revolutionary changes in those industies. But most of the stories were sleepers. Did you miss them? Here they are:

Virtual building blocks The construction business is one of the least automated. General Motors changed all that when it built its Lansing plant. The auto giant used a 3-D math model of the new building and requried all contractors to build to the plan. The result? No cost overuns. A huge savings in waste on site and a vast improvement in site safety. So what's holding the industry back? In a word, inertia.

The rise of smart buildings Will proprietary bulding control systems give way to today's standards? The use of standarized networks, cabling and Web services is growing and will inevitably cause everything from lighting and HVAC to elevator control systems to converge on a common platform. Just don't hold your breath.

Would you like Wi-Fi with that? With razor-thin margins and limited customer loyalty, the restaurant industry isn't about to automate anything that has a negative impact on customer experience or the bottom line. Some fast food chains are venturing ahead with innovative technologies, such as Wi-Fi and automaed drive through sysetems that improve productivity. But technical glitches can quickly put innovative new technologies on the street. Just a few months after this story ran, one Wendy's did just that, dumping an automated drive-through system that had the potential to improve service quality and speed up drive through operations.