Digitally Curious

CHAPTER 2WHY BEING DIGITALLY CURIOUS IS GOOD FOR YOUR CAREER AND YOUR BUSINESS

In the promotion for this book, I coined a phrase that sums up what I hope you can achieve from reading it:

“Digitally Curious: A self-help book for the technically overwhelmed.”

When I shared this with friends and colleagues, they agreed that they too seemed “technically overwhelmed”. While I grew up playing with technology, studied it, and made it a career, I am sensitive to the fact that as technologists, we tend to overwhelm people. When friends receive a new piece of technology, such as a Wi-Fi router, and struggle to set it up, they end up turning to me for help. I often wonder why companies assume that everyone has the same level of technical proficiency.

Recently, I read an interesting quote in an IBM report¹ about AI and the impact it might have on jobs:

“AI won’t replace people – but people who use AI will replace people who don’t.”

Rewriting this to be more generic:

“New technologies won’t replace people. People who regularly use and are comfortable with technology will replace people who don’t.”

In my technology career spanning over 30 years, I’ve been in more boardroom presentations than I care to remember, and the common theme is that senior leaders seem reluctant to get “hands-on” experience and play with new technologies. They feel that they have IT teams to worry about the technology and don’t want to touch the tech themselves, possibly because of a fear of the unknown or their ...