Most businesses and business leaders realise that technology is the future. It will help improve almost every aspect of people’s lives and of course, impact business processes.
It appears that this belief is shared by the majority of teenagers, those who have grown up with the innovation created by technological breakthroughs: think smartphones and iPads.
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In a survey of 1,000 12-15 years olds based in the UK, they revealed what they think they’ll be using when they enter the workplace in the next 10-15 years. The top five technologies identified were:
• Cars that drive themselves (66%).
• Robot assistants at work (47%).
• Artificial Intelligence (41%).
• Virtual offices (38%).
• Robot housekeepers (34%).
What’s more, just over a quarter (26%) of youngsters think commercial space travel will be a thing by 2032, and over one in five (22%) think they’ll be using computers linked to their brains.
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In fact, over half (52%) of 12-15 year olds think they will be using technology that hasn’t even been invented when they go into the workplace in 10-15 years’ time.
What does technology mean to you?
Boomi also asked the children in the survey what technology means to them. Many of the responses centred on how technology ‘makes lives easier’ and ‘makes life better’, as well as how technology ‘assists people’ or ‘helps and entertains humans’.
For others, technology was about the ‘new’ – such as ‘innovations’ and ‘gadgets’ that they can use to talk to friends or do homework, while some simply stated that technology is ‘the future’. The word cloud below highlights the most popular terms and here are just a few quotes from the 12-15 year olds themselves:
• “A better way of doing things”
• “Everything! It’s in everything I do in my life”
• “It’s new stuff. It means life will be easier and maybe better”
• “It’s the future and it will do almost everything that humans can do and more”
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• “Without it I would spiral into depression. It keeps me entertained”
• “A way of escaping reality and having fun with my friends on social media or texting”
Commenting on this findings, Ian Currie, EMEA Director at Dell Boomi said: “It’s clear that technology now plays a central role in every child’s life and their expectations on how they will use innovative technology when they enter the workplace are extremely high.”
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“To meet these demands, businesses need to prepare for the next generation of technology and the many more data points they bring. Developments in the Internet of Things and AI, and the introduction of more applications, will create a greater network of connected things delivering and receiving information. Businesses will need to be able to move, manage, govern and orchestrate this data to adapt and grow for the future.”
“A trusted integration solution, built in the cloud, to quickly connect any combination of cloud and on-premise applications, provides a robust platform to support this. Only with it in place can businesses embrace new innovations and easily transfer data, in real-time, between applications which proves invaluable in remaining competitive.”
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