By Adam Wakefield

On the morning of Thursday, 9 February, WE Communication’s offices in Illovo, Johannesburg, played host to World Wide Worx head and renowned tech fundi Arthur Goldstuck, as he took part in their latest WE Brand Love presentation.

In January, Goldstuck travelled to Las Vegas to attend the CES 2017, the world’s largest annual consumer technology trade show, where he delivered a key note presentation in one of their sessions, on trust in emerging technologies, and this was his focus on Thursday morning.

“Disruption is not new. It has been with us a long time. What has made it so sudden today is that it is all connected,” Goldstuck said. “Everyone has access to anywhere, and it is what has changed everything.”

Change is happening at an increasing rate

One hundred years ago, industries were being disrupted by the day, but at a much slower pace than today. An example Goldstuck showed invited guests was three maps detailing where Facebook users around the world lived.

The maps, dated 2010, 2013, and 2016, showed how connectivity to Facebook exploded between 2010 and 2016 in Africa and India, which Goldstuck put down to under-sea cables being installed along the African coast, and the cost of mobile Internet dropping in India.

“The world is now fully connected and you cannot escape connectivity, which has a knock on effect on technologies like the Internet of things and 5G,” he said.

“It is going to make our concerns about privacy and security today look like we were completely asleep at the wheel.”

In 2010, 4.8 million smartphones were being used by South Africans. In 2016, this number had increased to 29 million. The increase in smart phone ownership had a knock-on effect upon Internet access, with there being 20.1 million Internet users in South Africa in 2016.

“What’s wrong with this picture? Mobile data is so expensive, a quarter of the people with smart phones don’t have Internet access. Internet growth is flattening over the next few years. The mobile networks have a great responsibility to close that divide,” Goldstuck noted.

An important detail to recognise within that figure of 20.1 million Internet users is that only 8.5 million of those have been online for five years or more. It is those experienced Internet users who make active use of devices and services where online connectivity is a critical part of the service offering.

In 2020, it is expected that over one third of South Africa’s population will be experienced internet users, making use of apps and services provided through apps.

“Anyone who is selling a connected gadget, this is highly significant for them,” Goldstuck said.

Fear, loathing and trust in the Internet of things

As more and more people use technology, however, there is also a rising fear that comes with it. Goldstuck said it is both an exaggerated fear, in the case of a foreign hacker targeting your specific self, but also a real fear.

A person might not be targeted individually, but they could fall into a spectrum or fit a certain profile where hackers might reach them, and breach their defences.[KH1] 

Technologies that already exist today, but whose application will only fully be realised in the next 10 years, include VR, machine learning, self-driving cars, micro-medical technology connected to your smartphone, robots, and smart farming. All of them have their benefits, but as Goldstuck warns, they also have their dangers, with trust being a core concern with every one.

For VR, there are concerns the technology will become addictive, cause medical problems, and make people passive and submissive. When it comes to machine learning, for the technology to realise its full potential, it needs data from the user, and much of that data will be stored in cloud. Is that data secure and how will it be used?

If a person has a tiny device inserted into their body that sends a signal to a chip on a person’s skin, which then alerts that person’s smart phone of a looming heart attack, does that open up the user to having their body “hacked”? If your credit card is part of your car’s infrastructure, and therefore is part of the Internet of things, how vulnerable are you to attack? If you replace staff at a fast food chain with robots, how much of what you save on staff costs will you have to spend on security to ensure those robots are not attacked?

With each new technology, comes benefits but also inevitable questions.

“The real demand of creators of technology are guarantees on how the information they receive will be used and how it will be protected,” Goldstuck said

“The message here is when you design these kind products with these kind of technologies, the trust factor has to be built into the design.”

For more information visit www.worldwideworx.com or www.we-worldwide.com. Alternatively, connect with Goldstuck on Twitter.