Telefónica CEO Jose Maria Alvarez-Pallete today juxtaposed most of the world’s ills against the backdrop of digitalization and its ability to right these wrongs during his opening keynote at MWC Barcelona 2022.
His first major speech as chair of GSMA was equal parts rallying cry for the telco industry and a recognition that so much of the world seems to be breaking all at once — a convergence of technological progress stymied by discontent and hardships in every corner of the world.
“We live in an era of conflict, apparently everywhere and about everything. Between East and West, between truth and fake news, between privacy and free services, between sovereignty and big-data platforms, between old industrial models and climate change, between automation and job creation, between digitalization and equality,” he said. “Our society has lost its optimism. Our teams fear that climate change will be irreversible. Many of our citizens think that technological progress will destroy their jobs, erode their freedoms, or impose values that they consider alien. Many think the future will be worse for almost everyone.”
This sense of defeat, which many can relate to and appreciate, has befallen global society despite technological progress, a more connected world, and the longer, healthier, and more comfortable lives that most people enjoy today, according to Alvarez-Pallete.
Despite all of this, we are losing faith in ourselves and in our future” largely because “the link between material progress and ethical progress has been blurred. The convulsions of the 20th century and the disconcerting events of the dawn of the 21st century, such as what is happening right now to Ukraine, has reminded us that technology lacks values.”
While technology affords people the power to change and accomplish more, it can also be used for good or for bad, he explained. “When technology promotes hyper individualistic values to the detriment of values such as solidarity, social empathy, or mere contact between people, society distrusts it and those who provide it.”
It’s exceedingly rare for a technology executive to speak in such terms publicly. However, the latter half of his speech shifted to the positive, focusing on the why, where, and how he hopes wireless networks can overcome many of these challenges. With a little help, of course.
In the last 25 years, no other industry in the world has contributed to the economic and social welfare as this sector. We can proudly say that without us, the deepest technological evolution in human history would not have happened,” he added.
“Without us, the less developed parts of the world would have been dramatically disconnected from the digital revolution. Without us and our resilience, the world would have stopped completely during the [COVID-19] crisis. We did our job. We were there when needed,” he said.
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