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So as you can see, what Zuckerberg and Gates predicted will come true. What we see in Star Wars, Star Trek, Back to the Future, Terminator and the Matrix will happen. We are in the age of total chaos as every minute of denial will make us lost even more by the day - unless we ride the wave and hope to reach the beach in one piece
DIGITAL methods are now invading our lives, our businesses and our culture. During the modernisation of Europe where the imperial measurements were slowly being replaced by the metric system, many hailed it (digitalisation) to be demonic.
It (digitalisation) was said that it will affect our lives to the core of existence. Well, guess what? Digital system has now made its way into many aspects of our lives, which includes, but not limited to: Education, Medical, Manufacturing, Agriculture, Documentation, Communication, Entertainment; Religion and most dangerously, the Military.
Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates recently warned the World to be prepared for the age of robots and Artificial Intelligence (AI). The next disruption wave may be as soon as within 5 to 10 years. Imagine the implications of such revolution to digitally exposed operations.
For example, we have media companies that employ thousands of staff. With the significant, dynamic and inevitable technological advancement, those media companies can easily embark on a pervasive digital strategy and just overnight, those thousands of staff can lose their jobs. In the name of efficiency, that should happen; but with the humanitarian consideration (avoiding people loosing jobs), it may take a delay.
Meanwhile the leaner media companies may just go ahead. The inersia of thousands of staff is too strong for the ship to sail an alternative route. On the flip side, the inersia of a lean staffed structure is agile to adapt changes. In this age of internet of all things, we need to be agile, flexible and not waste any more time.
Hence the digital dilemma. Do we or do we not make sacrifices to embrace digitalisation of everything that we do? We have learned from the past that such changes are inevitable. We should avoid the repeat of the Kodak moment. Kodak invented digital photography. In fact the first photo of the planet Earth was taken by Kodak's digital technology. They, however, were too scared to lose their conventional film sales that contibuted almost 90% of their sales. At last, they went bankrupt as digital cameras swamped the World photography behaviour.
There are many other examples. We have Uber for instance. The traditional taxi drivers are facing a severe threat of obsolescence. Netflix, Apple TV, Amazon TV and iFlix are now major contenders to disrupt the TV and cinema kings across the globe. Online news portals are basically digging the graves of newpaper companies. E-commerce for retailing such as Amazon, Lazada, Zalora and many others are keeping the high streets slow. What more examples do we want?
We can see that the way to do business has gone through so many evolution phases that includes Production Specialisation during the European Industrial Revolution; Diversification of Skills of the post war Germany and Japan; Marketing Intensive Branding as led by the Americans of Madison Avenue; and finally, the Demonic Digitalisation we face today. The fact is, it is happening whether we like it or not.
What we have discussed so far sounds pretty global and we may think that it will take sometime before it will reach our shores (Malaysia). Wrong! It has reached. Long time ago - waiting to devour our conventional and traditional ways of doing things.
Perhaps, in an effort to convince ourselves, we ought to scan for some empirical evidence? Sure, why not? Let us see. Malaysia has 30 million population and the number of mobile devices is 60 million. Malaysia has, on average, 5 debit/credit cards per household that facilitates internet based commerce. Malaysia is ranked as one of the top countries in the World for social media usage. Malaysian Government has made a conscious effort to boost digitalisation via various initatives such as the Multimedia Super Corridor, High Speed Broad Band and most pervasively, computer science education as early as primary school.
So as you can see, what Zuckerberg and Gates predicted will come true. What we see in Star Wars, Star Trek, Back to the Future, Terminator and the Matrix will happen. We are in the age of total chaos as every minute of denial will make us lost even more by the day - unless we ride the wave and hope to reach the beach in one piece.
* kopihangtuah
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