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The computer revolution is just beginning, and most of us are unprepared

Nicholas Stuart

You might not be interested in technology, but technology is very interested in you. Or, perhaps more specifically, in taking your job.

It was all on display in Sydney last week at the wonderful CeBIT – office automation and IT – conference. Stuff that is genuinely exciting, like "sound scouts", a fun quick game that can provide a comprehensive and detailed report on a child's hearing. All over the internet, all whenever it suits, and all without human intervention, freeing up resources. It's terrific.

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Robots kill more jobs than China

President Trump blames China and Mexico for stealing American jobs. But economists say most jobs are lost to automation.

Unfortunately, not everyone's on the same page, or aware of the dramatic changes that are already surging through society, challenging our normal way of doing business.

This became dramatically apparent on the first evening when a person (self-described as a "futurist and provocateur") gave a rambling, disjointed talk about the opportunities this digitally enabled future would bring. But there were gaps in even this highly excited visionary's speech. He didn't, for example, explain where the tax money was coming from that would fund this digital economy, nor how those put out of work would manage to find a job. And this is the crux of the issue when it comes to the new "fourth wave" of the technology/industrial revolution that we're witnessing all around us.

We are all thrilled with the idea of self-driving cars and getting trucks off the road. Nick Davis, from the World Economic Forum in Geneva, pointed out this will destroy the jobs of 200,000 truckies. He believes upskilling and retraining means new work will be created; my question is, do you really want a former long-distance road-hauler making your macchiato in the morning?

Over the past year to April, for example, 172,000 people joined the Australian workforce but only 152,000 jobs were created. The part-time workforce is expanding as rapidly as middle-class debt, and there's no sign that this isn't the new normal. Despite this, the Treasury continues to predict the economy will return to trend – the only thing it won't do is satisfactorily explain why.

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This discrepancy between the Panglossian and the hard-headed view was apparent at a seminar on the second day; this one dealt with the interaction between personal information and government data, using last year's "census fail" as an example. Jacob Boyle, a cyber-policy adviser at the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, demonstrated a strong understanding of the importance of maintaining trust in interactions between government and individuals. He demonstrated a clear awareness that data can be sliced and diced to present remarkably detailed portraits of individuals in particular demographic locations, and that government has a responsibility to keep this information secure.

Immediately afterwards, however, the NSW member of the panel seemed absolutely unfazed by the idea of selling data wholesale to the private sector. Nor did she appear worried about the possibility of companies introducing discriminatory pricing, by using such information to extrapolate detailed information about how much people might be prepared to pay for services.

No one doubts that the government needs to collect information, but people have a right to feel this will be protected. If personal knowledge is then sold to companies, it allows discrimination on the basis of simply assigning people to particular demographic datasets. This is taking place anyway. It's crucial vital that government doesn't abuse people's trust by selling such information to organisations that exist solely to make a profit.

These problems are easy to comprehend. Everyone's now become accustomed to the idea of Qantas using analytics to charge customers different prices for seats on the same aeroplane. But this doesn't mean we want government to provide companies with even more data that would allow the market to be further diced and sliced, until every cent has been extracted from the consumer.

At least there's evidence the (federal) government is finally getting ahead of the new critical issues that emerged at the conference. There was, on the sidelines, a key meeting between Russian hacking expert Eugene Kaspersky and the Prime Minister special adviser on cyber-security, Alistair MacGibbon. This signals an understanding that there's recognition at the highest levels that the current state of confusion about hacking attacks isn't good enough. If another country dropped a bomb on a highway, destroying the road, we'd expect the government to take action. Exactly the same issues are at stake if a cyber-attack threatens to take out critical infrastructure, such as the electricity grid or communications. While banks are big and ugly enough to look after themselves, government should be prepared to delineate exactly what it's prepared to defend. Unfortunately, as the conference clearly demonstrated, no one nobody is out there explaining and outlining exactly what responsibility government is prepared to accept in the cyber-domain.

We are caught in a new wave of this technologically driven revolution that's transforming society. We will never return to "business as usual". The concern is that the cultural and political ramifications of what's taking place are not understood. Instead, confusion reigns. Most worryingly, these issues are not even being probed by the politicians who will need to deal with the fallout. It's time for some focus.

Nicholas Stuart is a Canberra writer.