There is no area of life that has not been impacted by the explosion of technology.
A decade ago, smartphones didn’t exist. Three decades earlier, no one even owned a computer. Think about that—the first personal computers arrived about 40 years ago!
Today our lives are dominated by technology, in our homes, at school, work, leisure time, our health and how we communicate – the impact of technology has changed every area of modern life and is an endless list.If it feels like technology is progressing faster than ever. You would be right if you feel that way yes, it absolutely is!
In 2005 the classic book “The Singularity Is Near” was written by Ray Kurzweil – He explains,
“Since the publication, we’ve witnessed a whirlwind of breakthroughs: like medical regeneration of the human body, autonomous robotics, computing power, renewable energy. Advanced sensor arrays and internet meshes are uniting all people and things within the interconnected environments we live in, and with each other. Today’s massively scaled knowledge, unique innovation and shared human experience are taking us to the future”.
Regardless of whether you share the views of this visionary that at some point machines intelligence and humans would merge – we would probably all agree that life is on speed dial!
In the area of protecting underground assets and planning for the future, technology has played a big role in the advancement and planning.
In the last few years, there has been a growing recognition of the benefits of accurately geolocating underground infrastructure and the business opportunities this creates. The business benefits of accurate geolocation of underground infrastructure have been documented by a number of ROI studies.
When it comes to protecting our underground assets that pretty much drive our modern lives, there have been great advances meaning potholing and environmental damage is almost a thing of the past.
If you are involved in the design or building process you understand the importance of this advance. Everyone follows the regulations but technology and regulation has definitely decreased the risk and “dig and see” approach.
The protection of our underground assets is everyone’s responsibility and technology plays a big role in that protection by being able to accurately detect and map those assets.
Not even the baby boomers have escaped the modern world, that have had no choice but embrace the internet for banking, health, research, shopping and the myriad of other things we can now do online.
There is no escape from the acceleration and it provides us with a modern quality of life.