Tech For Human ‘T4H’ symbiotic revolution or simply ‘new methods, old values’...

Tech #innovation, #digitalization, #connectivity, #big data, the Internet of Everything, #robotization and #automatization are proceeding at full strength and speed: do we know which programming languages we will be using in 10 years? How the work place will look like in 2030? Will we all work from home from a personalized Oculus AR/VR/MR/XR capsule with a 10G connection to the Internet of Everything and the Internet of Everyone? Who is up for an RFID implant? :)

21st century gave us 3D-printers, multicopters (mainly in the form of quadrocopters) and drones, deep neural networks (although the history of deep learning started half a century before), unmanned vehicles, CRISPR/Cas9 and targeted genome editing, YouTube (first launched in 2005) and much more. Technological solutions are being developed and repurposed, advanced and enhanced. Millions of dollars are being spent. Microsoft is investing/invested $1 billion in OpenAI, a start-up co-founded by Elon Musk, with the intent to develop artificial intelligence supercomputing technology on Microsoft’s #Azure, a form of AI that rivals the human brain. It is up to each one of us to decide whether or not we believe that such AI can be created, or whether we are too complex to be recreated :)

No #business is a stranger to technology nowadays, especially due to changes in the regulatory environment and an increasing focus on #data and reporting worldwide, regardless of the industry. The world is slowly leaning towards having no grey areas in #information related processes: we need to know how it is being submitted and collected, what it is collected and used for, where it came from and who is responsible for it, and technological solutions are expected to be able to provide an answer. 

It is necessary to understand clearly the likely side effects of the widespread adoption of technologies: the effects this has on our #privacy or #confidentiality, on our work and education, such as a lack of skills or redundant skills, on our safety, such as computer offenses and cybercrime, on our wellbeing, such as technostress and other.

It is also worth remembering when solving tasks, technologies play the role not of an original source of information, as humans input the information into the technologies, but only a provider of information, despite the appearance that it might be the other way around. As one of my colleagues said, the data is only as good as the input. Even technologies that are used for selection and profiling purposes and that can be perceived as making decisions are simply following an algorithm and a set of criteria that were input by a human being. 

The ten most widely used technologies and innovations are:

1. Portable computing and communication devices;
2. #Robotics and intelligent systems;
3. Mass personalization of products and services;
4. Geo-targeted ads in the e-space;
5. E-spaces for “online” lifestyle: study, work, shop, chat, date, etc;
6. The emergence of a #virtual assistant, also called an AI assistant or a digital assistant, which is an application program that understands natural language voice commands and completes tasks for the user;
7. Personalized and computerized medical care;
8. Smart farming and precision agriculture; 
9. Clean technology and energy saving;
10. Hybrid transportation.

We, as human beings, are complex creatures. Most of us play multiple roles every day of our lives: as a manager, employee, father, mother, wife, husband, daughter, son, friend. Given our own complexity, we are naturally subconsciously inclined to think that technological solutions should definitely be able to cope with a list of ‘not too complex’ demands placed on them. Here comes the paradox though: most statistics state that, on average, about 80% of accidents are caused wholly or partly by human actions, not by technologies. 

Gradually, throughout the course of a centuries, mankind has mastered stones, commodities, energy, manufacturing and publicity and now it’s in the process of mastering the use of information, technologies and what comes with it. Modern, data driven society is a world of people who are learning how to process multiple streams and volumes of information on an everyday basis for personal and professional reasons. Humanity is taking a learning walk to figure out how to work purposefully with information and use technology at its full capacity in the most efficient, cyber safe and healthy for humankind manner possible. There are no analogues to this process in terms of intensity and globality of it in the history of mankind. 

Our habits also adjusted to the new world order. We are used now to checking our phones before we get out of bed in the morning and go to sleep at night, used to look at two screens and glance at third one while listening a podcast in parallel, used to express thoughts and feelings in e-space, used to talk to others on social media when sitting together with someone. We also, whether we realise it or not, used to feeling overwhelmed by information, sometimes without realising it (feeling stressed, feeling low, headaches, sleep deprivation, nightmares).

Yanush Vishnevsky said that “the Internet is a place of lonely people. It's a false feeling of communication, an illusion of friendship, an illusion of life.” Regardless of how smart our smartphones will be, how far our unmanned vehicle will drive before realising that it forgot us at the bus stop, how precisely our personalized ads will be reading our minds and offering us a third pair of shoes, and how much extra comfort this will give us, we will still be looking for real communication, for real friendships, partnerships and relationships which are essential for our wellbeing. 

What has not changed? Our emotional needs. The emergence of new technologies has not destroyed classical core values, it just offered new pathways, sometimes more efficient and helpful, sometimes the opposite, to reach valued results: to save someone’s life, to improve health, to get new knowledge, to talk to someone, to find business partners, to run a company successfully. Emotional triggers might have changed, and a lack of ‘likes’ might put someone into a depression, but essentially those ‘likes’ are about being valued, being noticed, being accepted, being an integrated part of the society.

None of the above undermines the fact that there is a need to understand these technologies, there is a need to learn new skills in order to stay in the trend, to be competitive, to be able to get the best out of what the tech world can offer, to be safe and secure. With the advent of new information technologies, new specialities will appear, and several job profiles will either be repurposed or will be advanced to include various technical skills which were not there before.

In the 21st century, it is almost an automatic expectation that a person will be well versed in information technology. After all, all human activity depends entirely on the degree of people’s #awareness, their ability to effectively use information, which leads to personal effectiveness and good #decision making. With an appropriate use of information, as well as technologies, higher degree of success can be achieved. 

Awareness and decision making, as well as empathy, tact, communication, active listening, networking, teamwork, #leadership, problem solving, and storytelling are examples of non-technical skills whose importance are intact by techno progress. Non-technical skills are social, cognitive and personal skills that help people to deal with a range of different situations, and they are far more complex sometimes than learning new tech skills, developing new procedural memory when learning to operate new technology or using technology by following SOPs or manuals. 

Demands for technical skills are changing rapidly, but non-technical skills take a much longer time to master. We master non-technical skills from our very early childhood onwards and sometimes this takes years and years.

Very popular question is, it’s a bit like the chicken and the egg to be honest: which comes first, technical or non-technical skills? Back in earlier times, non-technical skills were more important. Although most of the inventions are usually made by people with tech skills.

Nowadays, technical skills and non-technical skills complement each other, none are more or less important than the others. Both sets of skills are being used by us in order to reach the same results which are valued by us at a human level, such as acceptance, love, success, staying happy and healthy, and so forth, so is this a tech for human symbiotic revolution or is it simply ‘new methods, old values’? :)

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