Published on the 24/11/2015 | Written by Beverley Head
Casting off once and for all any suggestion that it had become a moribund professional organisation, the Australian Computer Society is increasingly leading the debate on technology innovation in Australia…
The ACS last week hosted hundreds of ICT professionals and students at its inaugural Reimagination conference, boasting a strong line up of local and international speakers including Professor Tom Davenport, distinguished professor of IT and management from the US’s Babson College; NSW chief scientist and engineer Mary O’Kane; Telstra chief scientist Dr. Hugh Bradlow; and Craig Dunn, chair of fintech incubator Stone & Chalk.
With the stated intent of “reshaping Australia to prosper in the digital future,” the event showcased some of the nation’s leading digital disruptors; and also encouraged keynote presenters and panelists to share their insights and experience about technology fuelled innovation.
Keynote speaker Kevin Ashton, inventor of the term “internet of things” and serial entrepreneur, predicted that the IoT would deliver some of the most significant changes for the economy as a whole, and would be harnessed globally to tackle the challenge of increasingly scarce resources.
“As the human race grows to 7 billion, 10 billion people we need to consume fewer resources.” He said effective deployment of IoT platforms would help generate outputs without increasing the input of raw materials by reducing waste and boosting efficiency.
He said that Koomey’s law, which states that the energy taken per computation halves every 18 months, meant that the energy budget for computing would continue to fall – allowing more widespread deployment of sensors, and also a richer platform with which to analyse the resultant data and harness the insights.
Davenport however noted that much of this would be automated, requiring today’s knowledge professionals and ICT workers to refresh and rethink their skills base in order to avoid being replaced by robots.
While Davenport called out as “hogwash” Oxford University forecasts that as many as 47 percent of US jobs could be shortly automated he did acknowledge that there would be employment disruption ahead.
And while “Programming is safe for now. I’m suggesting it might not be safe a bit down the road,” said Davenport.
“I always thought it was no problem there is always higher ground to which we humans can move…but I think there is a fair amount of evidence that knowledge work jobs are going to be next and the big bad machines are coming for our jobs.”
Davenport warned that knowledge workers “Can’t afford to be complacent about this or we will be in big trouble, but I’m not jumping off the Sydney Harbour Bridge, not yet.”
It was up to knowledge workers to find the roles that weren’t going to be easily overtaken by automation and hone their skills in that area – or take on a role developing the robots themselves.
