Digital Literacy

i am fortunate to spend time in many different companies, governmental organizations, and educational entities.  every time that i visit one of these organizations i listen and learn from every person that i meet. every meeting is a free education for me.

however lately i have become quite concerned with the depth and breadth of knowledge with many of the professionals that i meet.  many seem to fall into one of two camps;  deep and extensive knowledge in a single area (e.g. networking, information security) with little breadth of knowledge in any other areas or superficial knowledge across their specific professional responsibilities, but little depth (especially technical depth) anywhere else.

i find that our colleges can be even worse.  students are taught many business and other subjects, but are left to face a thoroughly digital world with few to no digital skills -- computer science classes alone cannot fulfill this need at the intersection of business and applied technology -- the need represents the merging of business capabilities/competencies and functional technology.

every professional in your company must understand that digital and business depth of knowledge is not an option, but a mandatory criteria for promotion and success.  in today's world there is no security except what is in your mind.  any company can go away, any job or role can go away, anyone can be fired.  it is Me Inc.
and your only tool kit to move on is what is in your mind.

i bring this up because of a talk that i am preparing on global trends and the core technologies that will shape our world for the visible future.  those technologies as i see them are the following:

as i see it these are the drivers of our economy over the next five to seven years.  knowledge and expertise in these areas is our survival kit for an uncertain future.

for example take the medical care industry.  wearable small digital devices will monitor our key vital signs while nanotechnology will enable small devices to look and explore within the body.  synthetic biology will enable bacterial (E-Coli and others) and other newly created synthetic lifeforms to assist in delivering cancer treatment and other medications to specific organs or cells within our bodies.  bioinformatics will allow us to better predict up front what protocols might work best for our specific genomes and networks and security will allow us to share the resulting information with our doctors no matter where we and they are in the world.  the results and all other pertinent information will be digitized and stored in our personal information data base.

almost any other industry that you can select will also be impacted in a similar way by the use of these and other emerging technologies.

if you are a professional, set aside time each week to explore technology areas that are out of your normal business domain.  read everything that you can get your hands on and continuously listen and learn from others.  if you are a CEO, insist on ever growing digital literacy within your company and its professionals. digital literacy and the cross pollination of it among professionals is the future of your company.

if you are in an educational institution, develop classes specifically focused upon broad digital/business literacy.  graduate digital citizens of the world, citizens who not only understand technology but have experienced the application of it in multiple countries of the world.