Last night I went to a talk about how the digitised world is changing our lives, not just as individuals but more importantly how it is changing the world around us.

As individuals we are mildly concerned about personal security of ourselves and particularly our children. There are many benefits from having a mobile phone which I personally appreciate knowing that if I am ever in strife I can get help, no matter where I am. This is probably the reasoning parents go through when giving their children a phone, not realising how it can be abused, including by school bullies, causing an enormous amount of distress. Many of those doing the bullying are probably just adopting the culture of other kids without realising how harmful it can be, particularly when they live in a world where bullying is not properly defined and therefore recognisable.

The speaker at the talk mentioned that the school her brother’s children go to (in the USA) use fingerprints for identification. They no longer need to take the role and automatically know which children are at school. If they do multiple checks during the day they also know where each child is. At the most recent school bombing in that country parents were called to the school, unable to be told if their children were involved until they got to the school. There are usually pluses and minuses in new systems.

What last night’s talk was mainly about was digital change in the workplace and the necessity for people from all different areas of expertise to be involved. The value of teams was mentioned, and particularly teams composed of people from different age groups. I hope that this aspect of our new lives will be taken up by others. We not only need experts representing different areas of progress in the digitalised world but also we need to be able to put them in perspective in a time frame.

We cannot avoid this new world we are moving into, which offers us so many benefits, but we need to recognise it as a mixed blessing which we need to make sure we have control of, not an easy task particularly as it attracts talented people who see its potential to harm others without being caught.

One of the main problems with it is that often senior people who are sanctioning its use in their business are not as fully aware that it has drawbacks as well as its benefits. The recent hacking of the Australian Census, which is not universally accepted as a hacking event, shows the difficulties. The fact that it couldn’t be denied as a hacking event even by the top experts in the country shows the degree of difficulty the world faces with the new technology.

No matter how complex the topic is we need to keep ourselves grounded. It amused me that in arranging a discussion on what is probably the major problem facing the world today the organisers hadn’t thought to arrange for the old technology of microphones to be used making it hard for some of us to follow the discussion!