Digital Dinosaurs of 2050?

Digital adaptability is stressing me. I am sitting at my budget Excel, typing in every single bill of the month. It is a hell of a task.

“What a 2010, error-prone, low-efficiency approach to manage my monthly spends. That is ridiculous!”, I think — and feel a bit embarrassed at myself.

Sure, somewhere out there is a digital solution that would assemble an easy analysis of where my money goes, with a dashboard of my accounts and great data protection. I just did not find that tool yet.

Honestly? I did not even make some efforts for research.

This is because I know I would not bring up the energy to install and use it. And that’s how I will be outpaced by technology in the future:

Sticking to old processes.

Ironically, this is exactly what I claim to hate.

Exponential Madness

I wanted to call this chapter “A Short History Of Technological Progress”, but after researching current and past innovation speed, this sounded too rational. Even if I vaguely knew this before, what I have found left me stunned:

In 1903, the Wright brothers made history with the first powered flight, lasting less than a minute. Just 66 years later, we landed on the moon! Many people got to witness both in their lifetimes: the first airplane and the moon landing. What a jump of technology!

One famous representation of the exponential nature of technological advancements is Moore’s law: The thesis by Intel Co-Founder Gordon Moore proposed in 1965 states that the number of transistors on a microchip doubles approximately every two years. The consequence are exponentially increasing computing power and reduced cost.

Today, there are AI systems to find new algorithms that are relevant to building a more powerful AI. Innovation is taking care of itself.

This speeds up change again. And again. And again.

What The Digital Age Demands From Us

Adaptability to that speed is key today. When I was onboarded to my company, I was told that the older people in my department just wanted to keep doing what they always did. Everything else would be blocked. They were the defense wall for change.

And to some degree, I can understand. Those who retire soon were most likely working when the personal computer was introduced. Back then, digital upskilling was none of a companie’s routine processes.

Still, they had to undergo the transition from paper-based to digital work. Coming from that, they now have to cope with AI, social media and ideally also adapt a digital mindset. The colleague who once wrote the annual report with a typewriter now has to check with the SEO department.

Also, the more change speeds up, the bigger becomes the knowledge gap between age groups. I am 30 and already sense a difference between my digital skills and those of the new graduates. They are only few years younger than me, but were taught about AI and the digital age at university — no matter what they have studies.

For older generations, a difference of five years didn’t meant much in terms of technological skills. For Gen Y and Gen Z that means a whole different world of knowledge.

So if we act like I do with my budget book, the younger generation will have the same fate: Being outpaced by technology. We live in exponential times, so it is hard to imagine today how our daily work life might look like in 10 years time (or if our job still exists, but that’s a different story).

We need to welcome rapid change, despite — or more because…

Human Brains Battle Rapid Change

Our brains love the known. The less brain capacity, the better. We like to stick to what we have always done — even if it’s less efficient than newer methods. That’s why in transformative times, we are easy to overwhelm.

We are forced to constantly leave the comfort zone and learn new stuff. Or we are just going to be left behind. This goes for everything, but especially for technology: Constant change is our new normal.

Forget to make yourself comfortable. Those who do will not match the pace of new developments. Just try to buy grandma a smartphone. If she is able to handle it, I am sure she is among the top percent of grandmas (kudos!). At some point, elderly people just gave up keeping pace with exponential change. Whether we have a different fate is the result of our digital efforts.

Four Keys To Remain Digitally Adaptive

There are some promises that I have made to myself today to not become as dramatically outpaced by technology as older generations. I think the starting advantage of younger generations is that we grew up with a digital mindset and the knowledge that we will have to adapt. The disadvantage that exponential advancements speed up merciless.

This is how I will not become a digital dinosaur by 2050:

EMBRACING KNOWLEDGE. I take responsiblity for consistently upskilling myself. This involves blocking dedicated time for updating my digital knowledge (at least 1h/week). I will not exclusively rely on mandatory upskillings by my company. Also, I will find a to-the-point newsletter to cover technological developments (advices welcome!).
EMBRACING PRACTICAL APPLICATION: I proactively use technology. While constantly screening digital news, I also leave my comfort zone and introduce new tools and technologies to my life. As a first step, I will tackle the issue with my spendings book: This means taking one step back and assessing a more efficient, tool-based approach. Of course, this requires time: I will not note down my spendings in September (even if this will feel painful), but instead reasearch and introduce the new approach instead.
UPHOLDING A DIGITAL MINDSET: Am I still open for change? Am I digital-positive and proactively seeking new inputs on the topic? Did I choose a digital-positive company to work for and not lose touch on technologies? I will take stock on these questions regularly and make sure to stay ahead (or at least at pace) of technological developments.
TAKING OTHERS WITH ME: I take care of especially older people and help them if they want. That also means I will not judge if they don’t know the VLOOKUP in Excel or if they do not use LLM for their work at all. Instead, I will kindly offer my support. This is also something, that I will profit by: Knowledge intensifies by explaining things to others, while others will also level up. Win-win!

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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