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Often, when the newest information technology advancement comes out
in the market there are a lot of “oooohs” and “aaahs” about
the programs, power, memory and tools the new gadget has. Granted
every new technology has something up from the old one, but has
anyone ever asked what kind of human being will be using this
technology?
I recently had the pleasure of chatting with
Naveen Asrani, and Chris Teo, both executives from Sun Microsystems
in Singapore. Their discussions with me about the role of humans in
technology evolution run somewhat parallel with some of my own
principles and resulted in an interesting dialogue.
Their philosophy is that information technology
helps unlock the human potential. This statement of theirs got me
asking, “Potential to do what?” We agreed that what we as humans
do with technology is up to us. The concern in our discussion is
what humans do with technology beneficial or destructive to society
and the environment?
Asrani and Teo foresee an evolution of
technology like we’ve never seen before within the next few years.
Are we as humans evolved enough to handle the responsibility? Will
the planet be a better place when we can access almost anything we
want instantaneously? Do anything at our slightest whim? This, I
see, is the risk we take when we play with something that evolves
faster than our collective human consciousness.
Asrani and Teo are optimists and express faith
in the human being. Humans have to work on finding inner balance in
order to manage using information technology to benefit the world.
My interpretation of this is that humans are going to have to evolve
as fast as the technology. This evolution is not in the Darwinian
sense of evolving from ape to man. It’s evolving from a
“me”-mindset to a “we”-mindset. They see the evolution of
the human consciousness as the key to making I.T. evolution faster.
A “we”-mindset is one where there is no fear
of sharing information and ideas for all. As ideas are shared, it
evolves into something bigger and better. Whatever technology
results from the “we”-mindset will be used in an
“all”-benefit effort. The final question from our discussion
came about: “Are we ready and willing to have a
‘we’-mindset?” Because just like technology, what we do with
our mindsets is entirely up to us.
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