Digital transformation must be balanced by humans and ethics

Digital transformation isn't just about technology - it's also about humans, and telcos need to find the right balance between the two in order to successfully transform. That was the message from Gerd Leonhard, futurist and CEO of The Futures Agency, during a keynote at the morning plenary of the CommunicAsia2016 Summit on Wednesday. Leonhard said that digital transformation is being driven by technology trends such as exponential connectivity (i.e. the Internet of Things), big data, intelligence (intelligent assistants and AI), and man-machine convergence. An example of the latter is the rise of the smart device as an external brain, and the cloud as a global brain. "This is changing how we interact with computers - we touch them and speak to them," he said.