The World is a Better Place !
Technology is AMAZING ! So many words have been written describing its fundamental impact on our lives, especially during the last decade. Technology, just like everything in life, brings positive and negative influences. That is also clear. But, the fact of the manner is that in the last year more and more of the ‘negative’ is being narrated and surfaced through many futurists, politicians, philosophers and academics. They are all right.
Take Social Media, for example. The half-empty view emphasizes the enormous time-waste, serious privacy concerns, propaganda and fake news conduit, a blame and shame tool and more. Looking at E-Commerce will surface the negatives of ultra-consumerism, social inequalities or even the explosion of delivery trucks on our streets. Wonderful technologies like Robotics and Artificial Intelligence, are blamed through a doom-and-gloom perspective to be job threatening, brain cells killers, zombies’ creators and most recently “unfair warfare” inducers. Again, this pessimistic approach is not only natural, but also, to a certain extent, healthy. It brings an extra dimension of ‘checks and balances’ that is needed here. But, what one can easily feel is that the negativity is now on a ‘high’, almost a trend. Everybody talks about it and boy how people LOVE to complain. This wave casts shadow on all those amazing positive aspects manifested through social, financial, life-style, health, ecological, educational, spiritual, political (yes, political. Remember the ‘Arab Spring’ ?) and many more aspects of our life here. Technology is AMAZING. But, you know that…
This whole long introduction is there to put things in a perspective of hope – “The World is (already) a Better Place”. Take for example, the Textile industry. This has been known for many years to be a platform enabling human exploitation, child labor, overworking the soil, damaging planet earth, corruption, incorrect labelling and certifications and more. Recently we had a dinner with a friend who is a Textile trader in one of the bigger trading companies.
He eloquently took us through a revolution his company is undergoing for years now, turning the whole thing upside down. “Leave aside”, he argued, “the immense impact of technology on production floor efficiency. The real impact has to do with the enablement of authenticity”. He proudly described the tracking and tracing systems they installed. This system is helping them to identify ill treatment of workers, child labor abuse, wrong doing when it comes to certifications, sources of chemicals used in the dying process, toxicity level of soil, ecological and climate change impact of a particular Textile source and other purity indicators. In essence - the actual sustainability level of the trade. It is quite astonishing that technology allows you to have visibility into all those aspects these days. Imagine trying to plot the same information some 20 years ago…
And, “is it that important to you ?”, I asked. “Yes. Very important to us as traders, but vastly more important to the end user, these days. It actually comes as a consumer demand from close to 40% of the people in many countries now”. And so, I am thinking, wow ! The world is becoming a better place. If this is even half true for Textile, imagine applying the same for other industries.
Think Food. Luckily with the obligation to list down the ingredients on a label of each food package, we, at least, know what’s there (that, of course, subject to having bionic eyes and an immense cognitive ability to remember all the acronyms and E number’ combinations). Now, Think of standing in your own kitchen and scanning a food package with a simple connected counter-scanner (or your smartphone). Imagine now that the scanner spits out clear GREEN or RED evaluation that is a result of tracking and tracing all ingredients, their sources, use of chemicals, toxicity and micro-nutrients combinations. Was there a child labor abuse ? Any deviation from saturated fat norms ? What were the byproducts of this particular food ingrediant production process ? Who manufactured the additives and where ? Was there any fraud in certifying the food ? How pure are the ingredients ? Is it really organic, as the label suggests ? In other words – verifying the authenticity and health characteristics of each of the food packages we use at home; making sure of their sustainable nature and informing YOU about it in a simple manner so you can make a much more educated choice, each and every day.
Is it a DREAM ? Not at all, many components of this technology already exist today and others will, no-doubt, soon be here.
Food for Thought !