Embrace tech or become irrelevant

Dear Editor,

Too many of our nation’s institutions are caught in a PRECOVID-19 time bubble that needs bursting if we are to progress as a people and embrace the changes needed in our thinking and being in the Digital Age.

On one end of the spectrum can be found young people who did not graduate from educational institutions due to pinning past traditions that are no longer relevant nor driven by a sense of participatory history that would have recorded how they were apart of the creative processes in charting new opportunities.

We have churches whose leadership contradict their prophetic and discerning role in the realisation of the historical nature of pandemics that signalled changes in religious/theological thinking, the rise and fall of nations, and social upheavals. These groups have cancelled important conferences, conventions, synods, or symposiums while waiting to return to a world that no longer exists.

Then we have political parties, and in this case the People’s National Party (PNP). Where are its tech-savvy members in providing the digital platforms to connect to its constituents? Have the leadership forgotten the lessons of Ann-marie Vaz with her young adults in the Portland Eastern constituency, or the involvement of technology-driven campaigning contributing to the loss of the Kingston Central constituency? Is this the same party that was hoping to lead Jamaica in embracing the Fourth

Revolution and living in the Digital Age?

It is time for us to stop living like the metaphorical Jonah in the belly of the great fish. Our world has changed and, as Albert Einstein has reminded us, “The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking.” Those who fail to change their thinking will find themselves irrelevant.