THE world seems to be speeding up while many of us are still trying to find the start button on the remote.
Take AI, for instance. It’s everywhere – changing jobs, rewriting industries, creeping into business, leisure, manufacturing, hospitals, medicines … you name it, AI has its digital fingers in it.
And it’s not a passing fad. New jobs will appear, old ones will fade away, and those still in the workforce will need to adapt, whether they like it or not.
Change is coming, and resistance won’t hold it back.
Then we have electric vehicles. They’re promoted as the great environmental hope, destined to reshape transport as we know it.
But no one wants to talk about the mining needed for the minerals that power these machines – or the similar demands behind the making of solar panels, smartphones, laptops, and the rest of our electronic life.
And let’s not forget: Australia is one of the biggest adopters of solar panels in the world.
On the home front, the new NDIS redesign is touted as a way to fix our broken Medicare system. Yet many service providers say it may end up costing them more than they can afford.
The goal is a system that better supports those who need it, but it remains to be seen whether the cost will hit the very people trying to deliver the care.
And then there’s daily life in the digital age. Before long, we may not have a choice but to carry a smartphone, use a digital wallet, subscribe to every new gadget, or even have our medical details stored on a chip under our skin.
Will we eventually become a cashless society? Will our grandchildren even know what real money feels like in their hands?
Picture the supermarket of the future: walk in, grab your groceries, walk out.
No checkout, no cashier – just hidden AI quietly scanning your items and charging your “cloud-based” account.
But what happens when the power goes out? What happens when the system crashes? How do you buy milk then – or get paid?
Of course, change isn’t all doom and gloom. Humans are an inventive bunch. With enough effort (and enough money thrown at the problem), we come up with solutions. Just look at how quickly the world produced vaccines and treatments during Covid.
But for all this progress, the risks remain. Scammers are more sophisticated than ever, preying on good-hearted, unsuspecting people.
The future should be bright. And it probably will be. But there’s a mountain of decisions to be made as we move through this enormous transition.
Those things we once thought were far-off possibilities are rushing toward us – and they may arrive far sooner than we expect.
