The beauty and value of the internet was not lost on me when, due to the latest in a long line of sick children incidents, I missed the first airing of the annual Dimbleby Lecture on BBC1. Appropriately it was to be delivered by Baroness Martha Lane Fox of
www.lastminute.com fame about the power and importance of the internet to all our futures. All was not lost however and with the excellent
BBC I-Player delivered on the very internet platform which was the subject of the lecture, I was able to catch up on what was a stimulating and well considered debate about the potential for the UK to be a global digital powerhouse. Not that long ago, that simple act would have been unthinkable and I would have had to hold out hope for a potential late night re-run on BBC2 some months later. The speed of change that the internet has facilitated across all parts of our daily life is breath-taking and as the lecture suggested we would do well to keep up.
Martha Lane Fox's central focus was to espouse the creation of a new institution with the sole purpose of making Britain brilliant at the internet. Her belief is that we need a new national institution to lead an ambitious charge – to make us the most digital nation on the planet. She believed that we are currently going too slow, being too incremental – in skills, in infrastructure, in public services and that we need to be bolder. She readily admitted that most would think another 'institution' was hardly the best model, given the necessity to take chances and move swiftly. But her vision is for a body that would be an independent organisation that is given its power by government but has a strong mandate from the public. We will all be setting its agenda, we will be informing it and taking part in it - hence the proposed name
DOT EVERYONE.
Her campaign would set out to help educate all of us, from all walks of life, about the internet and to tackle both skills and infrastructure deficits. The internet is the organising principle of our age, touching all our lives, every day. As the late activist Aaron Swartz put it, “It’s not OK not to understand the internet anymore”.
Secondly, she argues that DOT EVERYONE must put women at the heart of the technology sector, pointing to the fact that there are fewer women in the digital sector than there are in Parliament- which as we know is not very many.
Finally, she recognises that the internet is not without its risks and that we should aim for a much more ambitious global role in unpicking the complex moral and ethical issues that the internet clearly presents. For example, what are the implications of an internet embedded in your home appliances? Do children need online rights? What is an acceptable use of drones?
As if to make the case, she held up the BBC and the NHS as examples of what globally significant 'institutions' we have been capable of in the past and argued "let’s not have a poverty of ambition – we can and should be inventing the definitive public institution for our digital age."
Much of what Baroness Lane-Fox argued rang through with a recent report from Fujitsu called the
Digital Inside Out report which suggests that we’re on the cusp of being a Digital First Nation. However, these concerns around a perceived lack of skills and education remain a critical issue which needs to be addressed, leaving exciting opportunities yet to be fully realised.
In fact, Fujitsu found that
39% of people want to see Britain moving faster towards a digital future, whilst a staggering
73% of UK employees believe digital is vital to the success of their organisation.
It is hard to disagree that organisations that put digital at the heart of everything they do will be the ones to prosper in the next ten years. Her suggestion for a grassroots movement to enhance everyone’s understanding, access and skills around the web should improve this massively.
I can't help but think that as a devolved nation, here in Northern Ireland we too should be taking the lead here, investing in our skills and infrastructure to ensure that we are at the cutting edge of this digital revolution. Just as the broader UK vision DOT EVERYONE aspires to, we need joined up thinking and long-term focus and collaboration between the private and public sectors. Sadly the recent evidence of government cuts to STEM Education as outlined in a previous
post on this blog, would suggest we still have important lessons to learn. One thing the internet has done, perhaps more than anything is levelled the playing field when it come to business, industry and commerce on a global scale. Where once the barriers here were oceans and languages or cultures, today with the aid of the internet, the only real barrier is our mindset.
If by chance you miss the 28 day deadline for the I-Player content, fear not as you can find a copy of the speech on the
DOT EVERYONE website. You can even sign a pledge to show your support for the initiative - yet another demonstration of the power of the internet to harness the power of many.
