With accelerating technological change, new ideas are communicated, applied and copied at a much greater rate than we have previously seen. More than ever, we have the ability to know what everyone is doing right around the world and the rate at which we can acquire knowledge continues to grow.
It used to be so much simpler. For example, in centuries gone by, the latest type of stagecoach could be under development in a part of one country, and it would be some time before a more remote part of that country would know anything about it. The ideas behind the development would be current for longer. They would have a greater shelf life before they became obsolete.
Today global products develop and distribute at a startling rate. The take-up of internet capability has been very much faster than the roll-out of televisions ever was. Highly capable worldwide devices such as the iPhone evolve through different versions at great pace. The original appeared in 2007 with the ‘Mark 4’ appearing just three years later.
All of these unstoppable trends have profound implications for national and local government. Projects which take too long in their analysis and delivery run a risk of providing outcomes that are no longer relevant. This is illustrated in the retail sector where the increase in online transactions has surprised many people.
When online access was quite limited, it used to be supposed that the range of products that could be bought in that way would remain limited. This was in part to avoid the effect of sales cannibalisation, where the online presence would do too much to wreck shop frontage trade for the same organisation. As online access and confidence have grown, this is not so much the case and it is necessary to re-assess the true retail capacity of traditional town centres. It follows that areas previously designated for retail could become available for other usage.
No matter how sophisticated we imagine ourselves to be, the assessment of true retail capacity is not an easy task. We do not really know what developments might come along in the near future to throw the calculations, and potentially make any prediction look too close in credibility to our personal horoscopes. It is nevertheless right to try and plan the future as best we can.
We must also manage the risk of leaving people behind in the wake of technological advance. While this kind of progress can be empowering, it can also be disabling for people without the confidence and access to reap the full benefits. In that sense, new forms of inequality can be opened up. It is possible to create a huge gap in capability and potential between the most technically savvy and those choosing to rely upon more traditional technology. Payment methods represent one area of this where we see the long-standing ‘technology’ of the cheque book now having a particularly short shelf life.
Councillor Bob Lanzer, Leader of Crawley Borough Council
7th June 2011