Understanding technology and how it can be a force for good.
The good old days!
Can you remember the days when access to information outside of the school classroom either meant a visit to your local library, waiting for the local mobile library to visit you, or getting on your pushbike to cycle to your Grandparents’ house to look things up in the Readers Digest or Encyclopaedia Britannica?
Let’s face it, while the rose-tinted specs may nod towards better times, nostalgia isn’t much help when it comes to tackling the challenges of the always-on, AI-enabled and hybrid world we now inhabit in 2025.
Access to information
As a technology migrant, also known as ‘Generation X’, I’ve witnessed first-hand how technological progress has transformed daily life — especially our access to information. If we look at the following generations, ‘Y’ (Millennials) and ‘Z’, they have never known a world without digital technology and are far more accustomed to having instant access to what they want, when they want it.
The American author Simon Sinek speaks fluently about how technology has created a need for
instant gratification and extensively about the subsequent behaviours displayed by these generations. As humans, when we get what we want, when we want it, it creates neuropaths in our brains that help us to form habits and influence our behaviours. While we could get into an intergenerational argument about whether this is a good or bad thing, the reality is it’s a fundamental part of how modern life operates.
Let’s face it — if you’re carrying out any DIY and you’re faced with something new to do, you’re more likely to reach for your phone and either Google it, ask ChatGPT, or head to the world’s biggest micro-learning platform: YouTube. There’s an ongoing debate about the quality of some of the information you might find, but for the purpose of this blog, it’s more important to focus on the habits we’ve already developed and those we’re still forming.
Generation Y (Millennials) can be described as ‘technology natives’ because technology has always been around in some form, whereas Generation Z and Generation Alpha are true smartphone natives — growing up with highly portable, AI-enhanced devices and instant access to answers in their pockets.
But what does all this mean?
In the context of learning, it means that some of the more traditional methods are now fundamentally flawed. Given the ease of accessing information instantly, it’s reasonable to argue that rather than focusing solely on people retaining vast amounts of knowledge for instant recall, we should instead focus on how individuals validate the source, relevance, and quality of the information they access on demand.
Taking this into account and applying it to the
traditional learning methods often adopted, it raises some interesting challenges — the biggest of which is change.
Linear, fixed-time learning pathways often lag behind the realities of modern roles. Traditionally, these culminate in an assessmentof an individual’s knowledge and only then are they deemed ‘competent’. But is this really checking an individual’s ability to do their job — or just their ability to retain and recall information when required?
There’s a commonly used phrase: ‘use it or lose it’. This perfectly captures the importance of applying knowledge. If you don’t use something you’ve learned, you’re highly likely to forget it. And where linear learning paths are stretched over elongated periods of time, the risk of lost knowledge is understandably high.
So how is this addressed?
The issue of keeping knowledge up to date is commonly addressed through Continuous Professional Development (CPD). While there’s no doubt this can be a highly effective solution, it’s far from universally adopted across all industries. Now please don’t misunderstand the previous statement — where a job role is regulated and re-certification is a requirement, CPD works well. But in my experience, when there are no formal re-certification requirements, even freely offered CPD tends to be underutilised. (More on the reasons for this in a future article.)
Given what I’ve shared thus far, I think it’s fair to say that I don’t support traditional linear qualification paths being applied to most — if not all — job roles. I believe that if we embrace the technologies at our fingertips, focus more on training people in the core skills they need to thrive from day one, and then let them access the learning they need, when they need it, we’d be in a far better position to support both employees and the businesses they work for.
Now, to be clear, I’m not suggesting that all learning should be reduced to a Google search or AI chatbot query. I’m simply making the point that modern learning needs to be built around on-demand access to trusted, verified, and well-curated resources. We need to move beyond the assumption that people should hold everything they might need to know in their heads, especially when the pace and complexity of work have never been greater.
Given the demands of modern roles, hybrid working models, and AI-driven environments, it’s no surprise that workplace stress, anxiety, and even burnout are more common than ever before. Smarter, more flexible, tech-enabled learning models could be one of the most impactful ways to address this.
Dave Bownes
Director,
Haynes Oliver Limited
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