Despite the progress of the mobile internet, smart devices and social networks, the digital society is still in its infancy.
The internet remains primarily a channel for information acquisition, digital entertainment and e-commerce. ICT technology still serves primarily as a tool to improve human and business efficiency.
The incipient next wave of digital society will see the rise of a new kind of intelligence, a connected and shared wisdom.
In the past, wisdom came from individual knowledge and from the collective experiences of those around us. Now, computer-aided intelligence is augmenting the capabilities of the human brain. The future will be defined by a new systematic intelligence, which is human intelligence integrated with machine intelligence based on big data analytics.
This is re-creating the world’s intelligence, the world’s wisdom. For businesses, future competitiveness depends on being able to grasp and leverage this new kind of wisdom.
Today, we are only beginning to see this new intelligence applied to our daily lives. Real-time data that details the movement of people, cargo, vehicles and routes is now being integrated to make intelligent transportation, intelligent supply chains and self-driving vehicles a reality.
Similarly, real-time translation will leverage the power of language and culture, enabling machines to understand the human thought process and break through the barriers of language.
But the digital society not only brings new opportunities, it also presents new challenges. The biggest challenge traditional businesses face today is that newcomers compete from completely a different model and mindset.