Advanced technology makes individual stronger: Boyner

ISTANBUL- Hürriyet Daily News

Technology has changed the balance of forces, says Hanzade Doğan Boyner. Company photo

The world has to prepare for the future of the digital world and how to interact with the already-emergent online generation, according to participants meeting at a digital conference yesterday.

“The power of the digital nation was functional yesterday; tomorrow it will be cultural. Technology has changed the balance of forces empowering the individual,” Doğan Online Founder and Chairwoman Hanzade Doğan Boyner said, adding that change had just begun and that cultural transformation would be much deeper.

Boyner, who was also the host of the GDOL Digital TalkFest, which was organized by Doğan Online, the Internet services arm of Doğan Holding, said institutions and companies should be more transparent in interacting with the new generation, which accesses information easily.

Also speaking at the conference, senior Justice and Development Party (AKP) official Hüseyin Çelik said the creation of digital highways was one of the government’s foremost accomplishments. “Turkey has been increasingly making large investments in digital highways since 2003.”

The local information and communication technology market volume is $25 billion, Çelik said, adding that 58 percent of 1,800 firms in technoparks were active in the market.

The best thing for developing countries to do is to raise their education expenditures by 5 percent of gross domestic product in order to keep up with the coming technological era, Professor David Passig, a famous futurist at Tel Aviv’s Bar Ilan University, told the Hürriyet Daily News on the sideline of the conference.

“You will see a great difference in 20 to 30 years. The problem with politicians is that they do not have the guts to take these kinds of decisions because they look three, four or five years ahead only,” he said, adding that the second step would be to cut power by 5 percent.