Last Thursday, I was privileged to have the opportunity to keynote at CBAFF, a conference communicating with those in the customs broking and freight forwarding industry, so let’s dive in and look at some of those things that I discussed that are actually relevant to all of us about where technology is taking our lives.

My Thoughts

So where are we ten years ago, smartphones were unusual, not many people have them but now they’re just the norm. So, what do the next few years ahead of us hold?

Well, autonomous vehicles’ one thing right now used in a few places, they used to truck things around in the mining industry in Western Australia. We see them do it millions of miles around the world and test companies like Waymo, Uber, Ford and so on.

These companies are out on the roads with their vehicles but still unusual, in five years won’t be uncommon for us to be seeing and maneuvering around within autonomous vehicles as it will be for the trucking industry and for the freight industry.

The Internet, well we get a pretty reasonable internet in a lot of the parts of the world at the moment, other parts, not so much. Well, that’s all changing. We’re seeing governments rolling out really fast internet through mobile networks, fibre optics.

We have companies like Alphabet and SpaceX who are working on new ways to deliver the internet everywhere so the internet will become much more accessible right across our population, much lower costs, faster.

So, they’ve changed it, what else? Well, we’ve really got all sorts of changes that are going to flip things on its head.

Things like artificial intelligence, machine learning, robotics, the blockchain, there are all sorts of pieces that will change our worlds and be looking ahead ten years, it’s going to be dramatically different for all of us in our workplaces and our normal day-to-day lives.

What does that mean for you? Well, as individuals, we need to embrace the technologies and work out how we make sure we’re positioned both ourselves, our families, our children.

How do we make sure that in the next ten years that we’re in a good place that we don’t see the technology changes displacing our work and leaving us stuck?

What else, well, businesses, they’re going to have to deal with some interesting challenges, as well governments because there will be some employment that will disappear but there are all sorts of new opportunities, there will be new jobs, but employers and organizations need to be thinking around, “how do we embrace these new technologies to ensure that our organizations are still around and the years to come that they’re not displaced, they’re not bumped out?”

So, important now within your own organization to make sure you’re thinking five, ten years out, what should the organization look like, and when you establish that strategy, realize that you just can’t sit on a strategy.

Now, organizations need to keep adjusting, updating and reworking what they do because the disruption will be continuous.

So, there are good possibilities ahead, it’s just a matter of making sure that we position ourselves, governments will have some challenges ahead, but I think those that are forward-thinking will navigate this well and will have great results.

Well, that’s it for me this week. You can catch my updates, paulspain.com/updates and of course you can follow me on social media. Alright, thanks!