Event Recap: SIMCAC Celebrates its 40th Anniversary! This past Tuesday evening, over 50 current, past, and prospective SIMCAC members met at Virginia Tech’s Research Center in Arlington, VA to celebrate our 40-year anniversary while considering our roles as technology leaders over the next 40 years.
As attendees mingled over cocktails and amazing food, people could be overheard comparing stories of everything from mainframes to cloud computing as a slide show of technologies from the 1970s through today circulated in the background.
After an hour of celebrating our past, Mike Huthwaite, SIMCAC’s Chairman, kicked off the meeting, spending a few minutes discussing chapter business, announcing details about our November and December events, and introducing SIM National’s new CEO, Mark Taylor. Mark recognized our chapter as the first chapter to be chartered by the National organization and gave attendees a glimpse into where SIM is headed.
Joe Malfesi, our Chair Emeritus and STEM Outreach Chair, then organized a cake cutting ceremony involving many of our longest-term members (some of which have been active members for the last 20 years), before introducing Dr. David Bray, who had prepared a presentation on the future of AI, the Internet, and Data in Open Societies.
Dr. Bray started his presentation speaking about technology milestones over the past 50 years. In fact, in recognition of the 50-year anniversary of the birth of the internet, Dr. Bray shared that the first message sent over the internet on October 29
th, 1969 was LO. The intended word to be transmitted was “LOGIN”, but the system crashed after the first two letters.
Dr. Bray called on the audience of Technology leaders to understand the impact that our decisions about technology will have on the future, stating that choices we make over the next 3-4 years will have a substantial impact over the next 30-40 years. To hit that point home, Dr. Bray linked how decisions about the use of the internet has contributed to the intense polarization within the United States and throughout the world, reminding us that technology now empowers all of us to do things that only nation states used to be able to do. In fact, Dr. Bray shared that misinformation and other disruptive data (that is driven by AI) currently equates to 80% of all the currently uploaded data. This misinformation creates what David referred to as ‘social wedges’, impacting communities and organizations.
While stating that it typically takes 10-25 years to sort out ethical uses of new technologies, David concluded the presentation by placing action on the audience to be leaders in this regard and to find ways to engage with empathy and understanding for the digital future. So, what can we do?
- We must focus on how each of us can be positive #ChangeAgents within our organizations and communities.
- We must apply the power of diversity, the power of the edge, and overcome barriers to action.
- We must champion shared goals from leadership and throughout the entire organization, which will enable innovation and forward thinking from the ground up, not the top down.
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Dr. Bray’s presentation is available to current members through the Communities page of our website, which is available once members login. Thank you Dr. Bray for an inspiring discussion about a positive path forward!
See everyone at our next meeting on November, 12th!