Digital Disruption talk - a personal review and the future opportunities of youth
I wonder did it feel like this as electricity was being deployed, or the combustion engine, not fully appreciating the impacts it would bring to society? How will we look back on the time?
more and more of these stories, articles are only building fear in technology at a time when we should be really promoting the opportunities that come with it!
Have you seen the documentary, Icarus, on Netflix? In the movie, it starts off with on the basis of a high-end amateur who’s been trying out doping to understand whether amateurs are actually doping. For the first half of the movie, we’re given an insight into the apparently-trivial process to acquire performance-enhancing drugs and its usage. During this sequence, the participants are introduced to a Doping Scientist in Russia, and the movie suddenly morphs into the major Russian doping scandal that flared up prior to the Brazilian Olympics along with helping the same Russian scientist escape Russia to survive a possible assassination. The movie starts off on one topic, finishes on another with an overlapping layer.
This talk I attended on 'Digital Disruption and the Human Cost' was similar to 'Icarus'. The true objective of the day was to promote DIT Aungier Street's courses in Project Management and Leadership and Innovation, however so while the talk started on the topic of "disruption trends", it ended up on the topic of "Project Management". A story of two halves!
On the latter topic, I personally found it very interesting. John McGrath, the speaker has fantastic credentials in the topic of Transformation and Project Management. On this topic, the talk really delivered with a lot of interesting and intriguing ideas throughout. The reminder that the discipline of Project Management in IT has only really existed since the Y2K challenge hit the technology industry puts some context on Project Management and theories and practice.
Additionally, anything that describes a project “like raising a child” is off to a great start and a fantastic analogy of the challenges in Project Management, in particular, large projects! Throughout the speaker, John gave great honest, frank insights into project management as a whole: openly reminding everyone of the relative newness of the discipline as well as also highlighting the (in my eyes) low success rate of projects. The one interesting piece that came from this and I relate to insights from my own teaching/tutoring practices, was the lack of commentary on learning from those failures. There’s a lot to be said for failing fast but also learning fast. I’m still surprised that there rarely seems to be a feedback loop to wider audiences from projects…..
On the former topic of ‘disruption and the human cost’, I did personally find some parts a little dis-interesting, falling into the trap of a game of ‘buzzword bingo’: “AI”, “self-driving”, “robots taking our jobs!”, etc. Yes, there is a massive upheaval ongoing with the advent of the Internet and the accelerating curve of technology deployment - however, I've come around the to the idea recently that more and more of these stories, articles are only building fear in technology at a time when we should be really promoting the opportunities that come with it! Thankfully my thoughts have already been formulated in much more clarity by Patrick Collision of Stripe:
““People are scared of tech because we’re telling them to be scared……Unemployment is close to all-time lows, and even if we look at middle-aged males, sort of this demographic that’s been reportedly kind of hurt by technology, employment is rising there, as well.””
Another way of thinking about Where We Are Going, is by looking backwards and as analyst Benedict Evans likes to remind frequently when you look at everyone’s job in the picture. Below, they were absorbed by a single person on a spreadsheet, but yet we’ve still continued to create more and more jobs and fill those office floors (and countless others) with various newly created roles.
In short, telling us that robotics and automation and artificial intelligence will remove some jobs is absolutely true, however, we should be taking opportunities to motivate people to look at the new opportunities being created by these tools.
Take education as an example: right now, with Internet access, the world’s knowledge is at your fingertips and much of it for free. Want to learn computer science and ones that are recognised by major telecoms companies such as AT&T? Easy – check out the Udacity courses (granted, they are paid courses, however sometimes a payment focuses the mind – this is the approach I took. You can even find my project work here). Or how about computer science or……..data and statistics, business and management, language, economics and finance, engineering, humanities or biology and life sciences? Also, no problem and for free, at Khan Academy and MIT’s OpenCourseWare and most of Harvard’s courses. Internally in many businesses, you’ve also got access to all of Pluralsight and various other online providers. And I’m only scratching the surface here....
I've also been heavily influenced by my current reading material, Enlightenment Now (right) based on:
If you follow the headlines, the world in the 21st century appears to be sinking into chaos, hatred, and irrationality. Yet…….this is an illusion - a symptom of historical amnesia and statistical fallacies. If you follow the trend lines rather than the headlines, you discover that our lives have become longer, healthier, safer, happier, more peaceful, more stimulating and more prosperous - not just in the West, but worldwide. Such progress is no accident: it's the gift of a coherent and inspiring value system that many of us embrace without even realizing it.
Most recently, my week with the Code Like A Girl in Skibbereen showed me that the youth of today are completely cloud-native, intuitively understanding that everything is online and the benefits of online. If they’re given the correct support and guidance, as well as awareness of the possible courses available (see above), their capabilities will more than prepare them for any future adjustments that may occur. What do you think?