“After two decades online, I’m perplexed,” American astronomer Clifford Stoll admitted in an article penned for Newsweek back in 1995. “It’s not that I haven’t had a gas of a good time on the Internet,” he explained, adding that he’d “met great people and even caught a hacker or two”. “But,” he conceded, “I’m uneasy about this most trendy and oversold community.”
“Visionaries,“ Stoll observed cynically, “see a future of telecommuting workers, interactive libraries and multimedia classrooms.” Some, he said, are even prophesying a future for “electronic town meetings and virtual communities.” All a bunch of baloney, in Stoll’s words. It will never catch on.
As we come to terms with what’s being described as The Fourth Industrial Revolution, a global all-consuming shift, shaped by dramatic and constant technological innovation, it would be all too easy to dismiss Stoll’s epically false prediction as a sign of simple stupidity.
We’ll tell you what’s true. You can form your own view.
From
15p
€0.18
$0.18
USD 0.27
a day, more exclusives, analysis and extras.
But a flick through the history books informs us that even the greatest thinkers are fallible and can misstep in this way. Albert Einstein in 1932 observed that there’s not “the slightest indication” that nuclear energy will ever be obtainable. A few years later IBM chairman Thomas Watson said that the world market would be able to accommodate “maybe five computers”.
The automobile and television were snubbed as fads, just as categorically as The Beatles were. And today – if the cliche is to believed – history might indeed be repeating itself, as another big hitter seems to be nonchalantly dismissing the digital world as a cute, nice-to-have gimmick: UK Plc.
1/10 No deal, no tariffs
The government has announced that it would slash almost all tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit. Notable exceptions include cars and meat, which will see tariffs in place to protect British farmers
Getty
2/10 Fingerprint payment
NatWest is trialling a new bank card that will allow people to touch their hand to the card when paying rather than typing in a PIN number. The card will work by recognising the user’s fingerprint
NatWest/PA Wire
3/10 Mahabis bust
High-end slipper retailer Mahabis has gone into administration. 2 Jan 2019
Mahabis
4/10 Costa Cola
Coca-Cola has paid £3.9bn for Costa Coffee. A cafe chain is a new venture for the global soft drinks giant
PA
5/10 RIP Payday Loans
A funeral procession for payday loans was held in London on September 2. The future of pay day lenders is in doubt after Wonga, Britain’s biggest, went into administration on August 30
PA
6/10 Musk irks investors and directors
Elon Musk has concluded that Tesla will remain public. Investors and company directors were angry at Musk for tweeting unexpectedly that he was considering taking Tesla private and share prices had taken a tumble in the following weeks
Getty
7/10 Jaguar warning
Iconic British car maker Jaguar Land Rover warned on July 5, 2018 that a “bad” Brexit deal could jeopardise planned investment of more than $100 billion, upping corporate pressure as the government heads into crucial talks
AFP/Getty
8/10 Spotif-IPO
Spotify traded publically for the first time on the New York Stock Exchange on Tuesday. However, the company isn’t issuing shares, but rather, shares held by Spotify’s private investors will be sold
AFP/Getty
9/10 French blue passports
The deadline to award a contract to make blue British passports after Brexit has been extended by two weeks following a request by bidder De La Rue. The move comes after anger at the announcement British passports would be produced by Franco-Dutch firm Gemalto when De La Rue’s contract ends in July.
The British firm said Gemalto was chosen only because it undercut the competition, but the UK company also admitted that it was not the cheapest choice in the tendering process.
10/10 Beast from the east economic impact
The Beast from the East wiped £4m off of Flybe’s revenues due to flight cancellations, airport closures and delays, according to the budget airline’s estimates. Flybe said it cancelled 994 flights in the three months to 31 March, compared to 372 in the same period last year.
1/10 No deal, no tariffs
The government has announced that it would slash almost all tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit. Notable exceptions include cars and meat, which will see tariffs in place to protect British farmers
Getty
2/10 Fingerprint payment
NatWest is trialling a new bank card that will allow people to touch their hand to the card when paying rather than typing in a PIN number. The card will work by recognising the user’s fingerprint
NatWest/PA Wire
3/10 Mahabis bust
High-end slipper retailer Mahabis has gone into administration. 2 Jan 2019
Mahabis
4/10 Costa Cola
Coca-Cola has paid £3.9bn for Costa Coffee. A cafe chain is a new venture for the global soft drinks giant
PA
5/10 RIP Payday Loans
A funeral procession for payday loans was held in London on September 2. The future of pay day lenders is in doubt after Wonga, Britain’s biggest, went into administration on August 30
PA
6/10 Musk irks investors and directors
Elon Musk has concluded that Tesla will remain public. Investors and company directors were angry at Musk for tweeting unexpectedly that he was considering taking Tesla private and share prices had taken a tumble in the following weeks
Getty
7/10 Jaguar warning
Iconic British car maker Jaguar Land Rover warned on July 5, 2018 that a “bad” Brexit deal could jeopardise planned investment of more than $100 billion, upping corporate pressure as the government heads into crucial talks
AFP/Getty
8/10 Spotif-IPO
Spotify traded publically for the first time on the New York Stock Exchange on Tuesday. However, the company isn’t issuing shares, but rather, shares held by Spotify’s private investors will be sold
AFP/Getty
9/10 French blue passports
The deadline to award a contract to make blue British passports after Brexit has been extended by two weeks following a request by bidder De La Rue. The move comes after anger at the announcement British passports would be produced by Franco-Dutch firm Gemalto when De La Rue’s contract ends in July.
The British firm said Gemalto was chosen only because it undercut the competition, but the UK company also admitted that it was not the cheapest choice in the tendering process.
10/10 Beast from the east economic impact
The Beast from the East wiped £4m off of Flybe’s revenues due to flight cancellations, airport closures and delays, according to the budget airline’s estimates. Flybe said it cancelled 994 flights in the three months to 31 March, compared to 372 in the same period last year.
Large UK companies may be making a misjudgement of epic proportions by not choosing to invest in new technologies. A report on digital transformation, published today by the Confederation of British Industry and tech firm Oracle, highlights research showing that tackling businesses’ reluctance to adopt new tech could add £100bn to the UK economy.
The data is compelling. Though our biggest companies only make up 0.1 per cent of total businesses by numbers, they generate close to half of all corporate revenues and employ around 40 per cent of the UK workforce. What they have in scale though, they in many cases lack in innovative appetite, and that is starting to bite.
Since 2008, the UK has had a much sharper productivity slowdown than other major economies, including the US, Japan, Canada, Germany and France. Though the UK is a world leader in many respects, we’ve become a reactionary rather than a revolutionary nation when it comes to adoption of technology in business. At a time when we’d serve as a decent punchline for most international political jokes, the last thing we should be doing is compromising our reputation where we can relatively easily avoid to do so.
Aside from the pure financial risk of underestimating, or not even considering, the possible benefits of taking a more digital approach, let’s not forget about safety. Cyber-security is one of those terms that’s become so embedded in our corporate vocabulary that we take it for granted. Large corporations think they know about the importance of effective cyber defences, but do they really? The report suggests they don’t and are in fact oblivious to what could actually happen if they continue to plod along, romanticising about the opportunities of AI and blockchain.
I like to think of young corporations – those that have only been around for maybe 10 years – as the corporate equivalents of millennials. The unicorns especially get accused of being feisty and entitled, slammed for trying to be disruptive (and often succeeding) and dismissed as having limited life experience.
But just as older generations can learn a thing or two from millennials about being open to change, value-driven and innovative, so too the large, traditional PLCs should look to their fresh-faced counterparts when incorporating tech into the way they do business. Technology isn’t the future, it’s the present. It’s not tomorrow’s generation that wants to live and work digitally, it’s today’s.
The demographic that runs corporate Britain is not attuned to the breakneck pace at which the world is developing. But if Stoll, Watson and Einstein can be known for something other than their bad predictions, then there’s still hope for change.
