Avoiding the apocalypse: Consequences of a strong focus on the digital transformation and technologies. But what about humanity?
Anna Kirah is a design anthropologist and psychologist. She is internationally recognized for work related to ease of use in design, innovation and organizational change. She works to create meaningful, relevant and strategic solutions through understanding and communicating the human motivations and expectations.
The essence of Kirah’s work is a human-centric approach to innovation, service design, leadership and organizational change, which is what she spoke passionately about at Oslo Business Forum’s conference, Digital Leadership.
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«Norway, We Have a Problem»
In her presentation, Kirah was talking about the major issues between technology and humanity; that technology is developing, but our brains are not.
How do we cope with this insane change?
Kirah expresses her opinion about not buying into efficiency and productivity. Technology has made life easy for us, it has also made it difficult. Due to the newest technologies, we have to be available and online 24/7, which is something Kirah finds very problematic.
«Who’s Gonna Dance for my Grandchildren?»
“Last year Norway had a drought. We had a drought! What does that mean?” Kirah explains that we are facing the issue of global warming. She gave examples of both the house insurance that increased considerably in just one year due to drought and fires, and butterflies to illustrate the environmental issue.
“The mass extinction is happening at a very fast rate,” she says, explaining that there used to be huge waves of colorful butterflies in the sky when she was a little girl. In contrast, this year she only saw two, which made her question, “Who’s gonna dance for my grandchildren?” What are the consequences?”
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Systemic Change is a Keyword
Stress and negative consequences are among other things caused by technology, according to Kirah. The balance between technology and humanity is an issue that needs to be solved
“For me is not about digital transformation or digital leadership, it is about building a resilient future for your organization, the individual and groups of individuals working in your organization, the community and the ecosystem.(...) there's a big disconnect between our probable future and our desirable future.” - Anna Kirah