Cayman Islands Digital Economy conference commenced today (Thu) at the Kimpton Seafire Resort.

The agenda included digitising public services, Cayman Islands e-government, the future of financial services, the world of cryptocurrencies and digital identification systems.

In his opening address, Cayman’s Premier Alden McLaughlin commenced by quoting Charles Darwin – “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change”. Darwin said this in 1859!

The Cayman Islands I live in now is not the same as the one I arrived here over 36 years ago. I well remember seeing my first computer in a shop window here. I stared at it for ages in wonderment.

When the iPad was introduced in 2007 by Apple I thought how ridiculous it was. I would never want one of those. I still use the very first one Apple made. I use it every day.

The world has evolved from different ages:

Stone Age
Bronze Age
Iron Age
Middle Ages (also called the Dark Ages)
Machine Age
jet Age
Atomic Age
Nuclear Age
Space Age
Information Age
War Age
Jazz Age

And

Digital Age

There was also a Romantic Age snuggled in between 1770 – 1850. What a pity I wasn’t born during that time. We are still in the War Age that started in 1914 and continues unabated.

The Digital Age commenced with the Digital Revolution and really got going with the Internet. 1980. Was it only 38 years ago?

And with this digital age comes cybercrime and digital disruptions. Russian hackers. Wikileaks.

All this stress.

It feels to an old man like me, as if we’re in warp speed and technology is out of control, Self-driving cars, drones, Siri, Alexa, Blockchain…..

And what about password protection, secure socket layer encryption, firewalls, intrusion detection, audits, database backups, military cyber coders, security experts, and now even cyberwarriors.

Yes, I know, my life is becoming easier as a result of the digital age, but I still ignore a lot of them. I don’t use banking apps, nor all the other apps I can download on my smart phone (yes I do have one that I use as a telephone), I rarely use social media, have never used Twitter, I have used Amazon to shop, and it took me some time to know what AI is. Artificial Intelligence. It is, I understand, poised to take over. It can defeat chess champions and hold conversations and even argue convincingly.

Companies spend large amounts of corporate capital to keep our corporate capital and customers safe.

Does all this thrill you like going on a roller coater?

No. Not one bit.

We advance, we improve, but don’t we just get more headaches?

What happened to analogue?