Strategy and Luddites

It's been a while since I posted on the thread of technology strategy for Tulsa....I've been otherwise occupied, and somewhat lazy, with the holidays.

So, let's recap a bit. As the basis for our strategy, we need to decent vision and a good understanding of our current situation. Some will say I'm fond of pointing out the obvious (and I am), but when it comes to comprehending current reality it is actually not as straightforward as it may seem. Not only are facts and accurate quantitative information hard to come by, but we each view things through our own filters and beliefs.

Think back to the days before smartphones, cellphones, and the Internet -- it's harder than you think to recall how you'd go about arranging a trip out of state, to find a reputable dealer of some unusual item, or to check up on kinfolk. Once, not so long ago, all of these items were novel and exciting inventions that stretched our minds and challenged our habits, but now that we've adapted it's not easy to think the way we once did.

This is exactly the point I made early on about a shared lexicon -- the terms, concepts, and though patterns -- upon which to consider innovations. With too much common experience we could fall into group-think and a like-minded echo chamber. With too little, we will struggle to communicate accurately and efficiently. More importantly, though, without a common mindset or technology worldview we won't look at our situation from a similar perspective, and it will be very difficult to articulate and believe in a strategy that builds upon our current state to get to where we want to go.

For those who are already a ways along a technology path, say as an early-adopter, it is hard to embrace the concerns and misgivings of those lagging behind, and for the uninitiated it's hard to envision the same future as the visionaries.

Which brings us to the Luddites (no discussion of tech revolutions can be complete without bringing up Luddites!), and their approach to avoiding a technological future that didn't seem palatable. It's popular of late, with our techie advances of the 20th and 21st centuries, to dismiss the Luddite concerns, but in actuality they were valid -- technology disruption in the long term does not impair employment, but it DOES destroy professions.

And that points out a need for our strategy: not only must we plot a course for skills, technology, and employment that focuses on increasingly-competitive-value products, but we must foresee and avoid areas that will become fading backwater eddies as technology marches on. It's not that the Luddites were wrong in their assessment of their situation, but their approach to the future was wrong; they should have focused on retraining and innovating to exploit the evolving technology.

That's what we need to do, too. We need to focus on embracing the future and re-training and re-skilling to not only meet it head-on, but to facilitate its evolution and bend it to our liking. More on that next time.