The Digital Revolution –
The most exciting time for a generation, within the most exciting generation of all time.
Saturday 1st January 2000, although I was only 10 years old I clearly remember being amazed at how lucky I was to be one of the few people (in relative terms) to see in a new millennium; to see the first integer of the date tick over from a 1 to a 2, something that will never happen again, unless we’re still here in the year 19999 I guess!
I was also very lucky last week when I had the opportunity to attend the GITEX Exhibition in Dubai, and walk around in awe of the amazing technology that is available to us today, in the year 2016. I sat on a Virtual Reality rollercoaster, charged my phone wirelessly on a mobile electronic billboard and learned how I could one day travel from Dubai to Abu Dhabi in under 15 minutes’ courtesy of Hyperloop.
How are these two events related?
It occurred to me that I lived during a moment-in-time that will never happen again, the move from Millennium 1 to Millennium 2; and today I’m living during a period-in-time that I don’t believe will ever happen again in terms of bringing such a paradigm shift in life as we know it, of course I’m talking about the Digital Revolution.
In the last 10-15 years, we’ve had some amazing advancements in technology no doubt, but I honestly feel that we are on the verge of something on a completely different scale to what we’ve seen before, these new innovations will have a huge tangible impact on people’s lives. How amazing is it that Virtual Reality could enable us to walk with Dinosaurs or enable disabled people to enjoy experiences that they could never get close to before? How amazing is it that Hyperloop could one day make national and international travel a daily possibility?
I feel privileged that at Salt, a top Digital Recruitment Agency I have the opportunity to be at the forefront of the Digital Revolution and as such am able to experience these innovations first hand, and have a tangible impact on them through my candidates that I introduce to my clients who are delivering these amazing technologies. It could certainly be argued that recruitment has had negative press over the years, but it shouldn’t be forgotten that the sole reason the innovations that I’ve spoken about above are here on this planet today is because people have put them there, and we are in the business of people. We talk all the time about technology and what it can do, I feel we should talk more about the people behind it, and what they can do.
Douglas Engelbart said ‘The Digital Revolution is far more significant than the invention of writing or even of printing’. How thought provoking is that? Something as fundamental to the existence of everything around us as writing is a lower level of significance than the Digital Revolution.
So, there we have it, we are living in the most exciting generation of all time… or am I being short sighted? How do I know what mankind will be achieving in 50, 100 or 1000 years? Perhaps we finally will have flying cars, (real) hover boards or time travel machines. I truly hope that the generations of the future get to enjoy a time as exciting as this, but for now, I’m going to make the most of the present and enjoy this incredible part of history that I’m part of.
Author: Lloyd Cremer, Practice Lead (Technology), Salt MENA
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