An insight into how dramatically technology changes our behaviours and the ambiguity of the outcomes.
By Armin Forstner
This year, our fourth annual positive & mindful leader summit focused on Human Change and Technology, and how to use the principles and tools of positive leadership, behavioural science and mindfulness to deal with the increasing prevalence and importance of technology in our lives.
At the start of the summit, I asked the room three simple questions:
- Who looked at their smartphone first thing this morning?
- Who looked at their smartphone last thing last night?
- Who would have done that 10 years ago?
Unsurprisingly, almost every hand went up for all of these questions. Yes, technology has changed you.
Change is a given. In fact, in our personal and professional lives, change is an essential catalyst for positive growth and development. But it’s no longer just the (increasingly breakneck) pace of change that we must contend with, but the nature of technological change impacting our lives, too.
Technology is developing so rapidly that it is incredibly difficult for individuals, societies, and organisations to adapt and flourish. Ignoring the pace of these changes or hoping to stall until they pass us by only leads to increased instability as the gap between coping and flourishing widens.
One very obvious change is the unprecedented level of data that has entered our daily lives. This information stream comes at us from multiple angles such as social media and constant connectivity to work emails, and influences how we eat, how we shop and how we communicate. It is estimated that the average adult processes approximately 34 gigabytes of data (that’s 100,000 words) each day.
