Technology is a tool to improve our lives, not end them | Principles | A Community Route

It would be foolish to not recognise the value of the advances in technology that humanity has experienced throughout the industrial age.

They have increased exponentially as we have picked up speed through the digital age, with advances that we have now, already providing us with the opportunity to look at life in a very different way.

Technology has always had the power to do much good. To improve life in many ways and to remove all kinds of risks from the workplace for everyone who may be involved.

However, technology and its development has also been increasingly abused, with advancements being used by industry to increase profits and as being seen as a way to reduce the numbers of people employed to work, without any due regard for the impact on individuals, communities, entire countries and the industries that are involved.

It is true that no business or organisation exists purely to employ people. Employment and the need to employ people to carry out any function that the development of a business or organisation and the products or services that it delivers has and always should be a happy consequence of organic growth from the provision of goods and services of a quality that are essential to life and which people and communities genuinely need.

Profit should always be a happy consequence of good delivery and management. Never the primary aim.

The power of good in technology rests in its ability to be used to improve and enhance working practices and quality of life. Not to make work or employment unnecessary for anyone, or to be used as a functional device to control or restrict people or humanity in any way.

There are and always will be negative consequences when technology of any kind is used and harnessed for purposes other than to improve life or working conditions.

Those who lose out will always lose out badly. Whilst those who believe they are using technology to benefit themselves or their business will only every experience a pyrrhic win.

In a people centric or people-first economy and World, technology will always be used to improve the experience of everyone, not as a tool that can only ever benefit the few.