The Digital Future We Already Live In: Meet Carina Lopes, Head of the Digital Future Society Think Tank

@Carina Lopes is Head of the Think Tank: Digital Future Society, an organization supported by the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Digital Transformation of the Government of Spain in collaboration with Mobile World Capital Barcelona that seeks to build an inclusive, equitable and sustainable future in the digital era. focused in action-oriented research and dialogue around ethical, legal and inclusion challenges with the aim of proposing relevant new principles, strategies, and solutions about the increasingly digitized world we live and work in.

Carina's team oversees four areas of research, concerned with the future of work, the design of technology, the climate emergency and data governance. She is a key information source for issues at the nexus of society and technology; leading her to consider important questions like: "Who is designing our technology and to what end? How does it help our society?" She is therefore excellently placed to tell us about the future we already live in: and what that means for our students and how we educate them to make sure their digital futures are positive and reflect their own needs and aspirations.

You can watch a clip of our interview with Carina here or read on for the full version below.

Xperienceships: Thanks for joining us here Carina. Since we are talking about career exploration, we would like to know, what was your first job?

Carina: Well, if I'm very honest, I don't really remember, because I've been working for over 20 years, I was a very active teenager. I started by doing little gig jobs, you know, typical work in cafes, nightclubs, gardening, looking after children, whatever. So by the time I finished my undergrad, I already had quite a few years of experience of being in part time work. It means that by the time you get to your formal job, post-University, you are very aware of hierarchy dynamics, being on time, going beyond what you expected, and things like that; things that go well in the first few years of your career.

X: So if you look at your current role, and the career you've had, we like to ask how well you think your formal education prepared you for what you're doing now. 

C: Well, I think that during your career, there'll be moments where your formal education will come back again. Now, for example, the current position I have as part of my formal training, that really comes back to the previous position, going back to things that I learned at university. But now because I'm doing content and knowledge creation, I go back to a lot of things I did in my PhD and things that I learned later in the formal environment. There's definitely a lot of other things that you don't necessarily learn in class, but within the academic environment: clubs and societies, participating in events, organizing activities at university, all are skills that come back, you have to put them at use when you are at when you are in the in a formal environment or work environment.

X: We know you're doing a lot: but briefly, could you tell us some of the projects you're working on and what your day to day looks like?

C: Yeah, it varies a lot. And I think the biggest challenge is to really understand what is the reality of that form of work now. So my job, it seems like just monitoring and and thinking about things as a think tank, but no, my day is a lot about administration.

We look at a lot of issues at the nexus of society and technology, and we look at the aspects around the design, use of and governance of technology; where Technology and Society meet. We look at four areas of research: most specifically on platform work. We look at Tech and the climate emergency - the risks and opportunities that tech can bring to the battle against climate climate change. We look at data governance as very important when we talk about technology, because it's like the food of our tech system.

So my day to day work, a large part of it is admin/ math, looking at the budget, deadlines, strategy. I also try to either start or finish my day always with 30 minutes dedicated to read a little bit of what's happening in the sector. I think that's really important, because it can get trapped in the day to day tasks of your work. I have quite a few newsletters that I follow that I think can be relevant to understand what's happening at a global level. And I try to read one of them. And it says the minutes that you dedicate to also learning and keeping up to what's happening and, and seeing what's, what's coming your way.

I also do meetings with partners, people and organizations that we want to collaborate with in the future preparing events and reports. It's really hard when you read the job description, truly understand what that requires, in your day to day. I think you have to be prepared to kind of adapt to all these different aspects of your jobs that require very different skills. 

You have to understand what is the heart of your work, and because the heart of my work is that research is not knowledge creation, I always try to block a group of hours to three hours where I really dedicate that to revising work that we are doing, reading about collaborations that we are working on. We really have to keep focused on what are the priorities of your job and the way you can build value in what you are doing.

X: You mention that one of the areas that you concentrate is the future of work. What are the trends that you see throughout your day to day, that could be useful to students, but also to educators to know?

C: I think there are three really important areas for today's students. One is everything that's happening around the future of work - we talked about platform work, and the digitalization that is happening right now.

The pandemic is going to have a huge impact in the next 20 years of work, for remote work, how people keep a tab on what you are doing, your productivity, and we will have digital tools that leave a lot of data traces about what you are doing. That's going to create a lot of challenges for employees and employers to understand where the boundaries are. So regarding the future, working by project, or gig work by task, we're talking about the fragmentation, a precarization of your work. That might have some beneficial aspects, but also is going to create a lot of challenges for us. And the biggest one is that you cannot train someone to do the same work for 20 to 40 years, because most likely, that is not going to happen. We also cannot train someone to assume that they're going to be in a company that they're going to have a job for life because it's going to be very unlikely too. 

We can see that in some markets the full time job is becoming a smaller and smaller percentage. We can see that it's going to create a lot of challenges when it comes to training. And that's one of the areas where technology is going to have a lot of impact. The other one is what we call :”digital divides”. A very large percentage of our population, even in Europe, doesn't have even the basic digital skills. We have a much higher percentage of jobs that are already required, that the population does not have, so that is a huge gap.

The other two to address are diversity, a societal solution to that is needed, and also, that the digital divide happens with our students. It’s not entirely clear what are the skills that are going to be required. You might be told you need the programming skills, or you need to know AI? Well, we don't really know how AI is going to develop. 

We as a society, as human beings, there'll be a moment that if that happens too fast will there'll be a backlash, and governments or companies will have to slow down that process. Most likely you will have jobs where people and machines work side by side so there'll be a lot of transformations in jobs that are very hard to replace by human beings, everything that is about care work, collective work, like group work, and creative thinking. Lastly I want to mention because I think it's very aligned with this current generation; is climate change. I do think about this more and more. People are going to be asking their companies, why are we doing this? Is this sustainable? Is this technology doing everything that is possible to reduce the impact on carbon emissions?

Lots of aspects, remote work, types of technology and data storage centers that we use mobility, how companies offer office spaces, heating systems, you know, I think we'll have a kind of a triggering, and knock-on effect on the different aspects of our lives as we move ahead in the next 10 to 20 years.

X: How can educators contribute to build a more equitable or accessible future of work for everyone, then? 

C: The most important point to keep in mind is that technology just by itself is not good or bad. It's about how we design it. So we have to take full ownership of how that design happens.

We need to have different perspectives at the table. And it's everyone's responsibility to assure that we have the diversity across a team of directors, diversity of programmers, diversity of programmers, of designers, marketing team. That diversity has to be a reflection of the society that you live in. And I think that's the possibility of educators, when we are preparing our next generation of students to go to market. This is a message for teachers, empower your girls. We need girls to understand what is your role within technology: you have the ability to change the world, to change how things are done, and to influence how the world works.

We always say we don't have enough programmers, okay, that's a reality. But we also need great female directors, great marketing teams, working on technology, great philosophers thinking about technology or social scientists. So bring the girls to the technology. Create projects and challenges that can help them to understand that technology is not just about some geeks programming in a dark room or playing fighting games online.

There’s so much more to it; it can really transform lives. Think about all the collaborative work that we've done in the last few months in Universities and Research Centers so we can advance in studies for COVID: that's also about technology, and data analysis, in order to get solutions to the market. My main message to teachers is: you have a role in inspiring young women. And that will bring diversity into the way systems and technologies are developed.

X: Final question. How do you think educators can better support students for these scenarios that are more uncertain, and we don't yet have specific skill sets for?

C: First, prepare your students for uncertainty, and being able to navigate change, because if you're not going to have a job in the same sector for 20 or 30 years, they have to learn how to navigate the job market by networking, presenting themselves, understanding trends, and what industries are growing.

Second, explain to your students about jobs that are really about technical skills, that when we're talking about maths, or physics, you know, you do need technical skills to do the job. That’s one part that we know: we have to have solid skills, but then there's another layer of soft skills, that can really enhance you. 

Regardless of what you know, the level of your student or the career that they are developing, we are now talking about resilience and adaptability, working in teams, and empathy. Also, being creative, thinking outside the box and being resourceful. 

Being resourceful is key in navigating the job market. You know, never, ever sit back and think you're never going to get that dream job. Go out there, expose yourself and try to understand what can make you different, who are the people that can open that door to you, and what might be the two steps back that you have to give, in order for you to go forward into the direction of what you like to do. Don’t be afraid of reinventing yourself and starting again. At the end of the day, if you have to change jobs and change what you are doing, it's great to reinvent yourself during this 30-40 years ?