To move forward, enterprises must first acknowledge
the essential role technology plays in people’s lives
today, and how that relationship is changing.
The reason that the increasingly strong and symbiotic connection between people and technology is meeting resistance is not because technology has ceased to be valuable. It’s because enterprises have not yet re-oriented to just how meaningfully people treat technology today.
In retrospect, this isn’t surprising
Just 20 years ago, digital access was limited by dial-up connections and desktop PCs, and individuals remained predominantly anonymous online. Tools like e-mail, forums and e-commerce were more efficient or far-reaching than analog counterparts, but hardly vital to people’s existence. Companies didn’t need to closely consider the impact of technology in their customers’ lives; our digital lives were distinctly separate from our “real” ones.
It’s hard to find that kind of separation today as technology has become an inextricable part of the human experience. More than half the world’s population a whopping 4.5 billion people have access to the internet. People are ever connected on every type of device, globally spending an average of 6.4 hours online daily. Even distinctions about “screen-time” are becoming an obsolete way to look at reality as technology permeates the physical world. Daimler is integrating intelligent voice control into its Mercedes-Benz vehicles, letting drivers ask their car questions about traffic, weather and more. Samsung’s digital assistant Bixby is interacting with people in their homes via the company’s FamilyHub line of refrigerators. And the last mile is becoming a thing of the past as companies like FedEx, Amazon and Postmates use robots and drones for delivery right to customers’ doorsteps.
Not only is technology a symbiotic part of people’s lives, it’s also being embedded in the building blocks of society. Take the evolution underway in education: China is investing $30 billion in edtech by 2020 to ensure its 230 million K-12 students have access to individualized learning platforms. In Indonesia, non-profit group Room to Read is closing the country’s illiteracy gap by building an open-source platform that provides access to children’s stories, literacy education videos and training videos for teachers. And technology isn’t just transforming how people learn, but also what they learn: boot camps that teach coding and web development skills have grown 10 x in the last six years.
Given the starring role, technology has in people’s lives, it makes sense that we take technology personally—and why we expect so much more from it going forward. Just as many current models fail to account for the growing impact of technology, our unconditional love for unlimited technology is fading. Some are labelling today’s environment a “tech-lash,” or backlash against technology. But that description fails to account for the fact that we’re using technology more than ever. Rather, it’s a tech-clash—a collision between old models that are incongruous with people’s current expectations.
52% of consumers say that technology plays a prominent role or is ingrained into almost all aspects of their day-to-day lives. An additional 19% report that technology is so intertwined with all aspects of their day-to-day lives that they view it as an extension of themselves.