Cephalopods, Robots, and Digital Transformation
Man about container town Kelsey Hightower shared a tweet on the hype surrounding digital transformation earlier today:
It made me chuckle, because sarcasm. Then I got busy wondering. What (even) is “digital transformation” anyway? What’s the fixation? What came before? What comes next?
Wikipedia defines Digital Transformation as:
Digital transformation is the change associated with the application of digital technology in all aspects of human society… The transformation stage means that digital usages inherently enable new types of innovation and creativity in a particular domain, rather than simply enhance and support the traditional methods.
Ok. So everything is digital now or will be soon. And we know how to use it or will soon. And we don’t even think about it; it just works, it’s just there, working perfectly and without consequence!
Do you own (nope, license) or use any digital products? I’m guessing your majordomo didn’t hand calligraph this text on vellum for you, so, yes.
Digital transformation could take a mighty long time to realize. At least one dead German philosopher had something to say about this.
“The press, the machine, the railway, the telegraph are premises whose thousand-year conclusion no one has yet dared to draw. “— Friedrich Nietzsche
Perhaps it’s more useful to try to understand what predates the era of “Digital Transformation.” I’ll count on you to fill in the blanks, but, at least on the western world’s timeline and through the lens of software development, it goes something like this:
- Primordial Ooze
- Stone Age
- Agriculture, War, Religion: a three-way tie.
- Bronze Age, Iron Age, etc.
- Bunch of Plagues
- Renaissance
- Scientific Enlightenment
- Computers
- Waterfall model
- Agile Manifesto & Revolution
- SAFe Organizational Transformation
- Whatever — Back to Waterfall
- Cloud Enablement
- $3500 Virtual Reality Rigs
- Digital Transformation!
What comes after “Digital Transformation?” Everyone wants to know what’s next. I reckon it’ll go one of two ways:
- The Humans are Dead, aka The Robot Overlord / Singularity Age, or…
- Let’s have us a Good Old Fashioned Analog Revival!
Number one seems more likely than a retreat to Luddism. When we’re all dead and gone — like, as a species, dead and gone — what will replace us? Not that it matters, but I bet it’s something like “The Squid People.” Or “Robot People.” Or just robots. ‘Bots.
Will our predecessor organism/system/singularity suffer the same myopia of the now as we seem to? Forever fixated on the best marketed hype cycle and/or thirsty for the next. I sure hope the Squid People or ‘Bots incorporate critical thinking earlier in their evolution that we seem to have.
