Thank you so much.
My colleagues, Ms. Yasmeen and Ms. Gagnon, and I are delighted to be here today to discuss this topic with you. We will do our best to contribute to your discussions and reflections.
My mission today is to share with you an emerging conviction that deep knowledge of and skills related to ideas and behaviour--to people, society, and culture--are key to the digital age of the 21st century. This conviction suggests they are conceptual and behavioural changes, and by better understanding these changes we can help make Canada a successful society in the rapidly changing 21st century in the developing digital age.
Specifically, I will emphasize and illustrate today three key conclusions of recent research findings. First, the new media are so important because they are enabling, accelerating, and interacting with profound conceptual changes. These changes are now defining the early 21st century as a truly new era.
I must say as an historian that historians are always very reluctant to emphasize change. We tend to emphasize continuity, but I'm here to share with you a conviction that the 19th and 20th centuries are finally coming to a close in the 21st century and we are embarking on a new era. These changes explain why the developing age is characterized not only by technological developments but also by economic, social, cultural, and political transformations.
The second conclusion is that researchers, students, and their partners across the social sciences and humanities are now at the heart of research and innovation as digital content and the use of new media become the focus of attention. From literature to philosophy, sociology to political science, communications to design, and law to management and education, Canadian researchers are leading global networks, in collaboration with colleagues across the campus and partners in the private, public, and not-for-profit sectors. This development reflects the new conviction that our capacity for innovation increasingly depends upon a constellation of digital technologies, digital content, and digital literacies.
The third conclusion I would like to share with you today is that the past and present ideally position Canada to play a leadership role as the first successful digital country of the 21st century--the first country to harness the power of digital media to create a prosperous and resilient economy, enhance social cohesion by connecting diverse cultures, build robust democratic institutions, and foster a safe and just civil society.
I'm going to unpack these three conclusions and provide you with specific examples and evidence to show that putting people in the picture, as I like to say, is the only way we can effectively move forward in the rapidly-changing 21st century.
Let's begin by acknowledging that the future has always been surprising. Sometimes the future is seen as an extension of the present, while in other cases dramatic shifts are imagined in ways that underestimate the forces of continuity.
One source of disappointment has certainly been the fact that the hopes for new technology have sometimes been quite exaggerated or simply foolhardy. Few predictions about how society would use radios, records, TVs, or telephones have proved to be accurate. Indeed, almost everyone agreed at the time that the birth of TV heralded the death of radio, and no one expected to see TVs hanging on our walls like large 18th century paintings.
But now we see that 41% of Canadians are watching TV online. Who knew that we would come to be connected, with phones in our pockets, seemingly unlimited messages and music--and now books and movies--whenever and wherever we wanted, alone or together with others, at work or at leisure?
A recent study showed that 76% of Canadians and 91% of 18- to 29-year-olds multi-task while online. Who knew that the distinction between work and leisure would become so blurry? One lesson of history is that technologies become important when they meet changing ideas and behaviours--when they enable and inspire new ambitions and aspirations.
Over the centuries successful societies have been nimble, flexible, and adaptable. They have changed in ways that built on their strengths to meet new challenges and seize new opportunities.
Today such characteristics are more important than ever, as three deep conceptual changes are defining the 21st century as a truly new era: first, a new recognition of complexity; second, a new embracing of diversity; and third, a new emphasis on creativity.
The new media are so important because they are enabling, accelerating, and redefining the significance of these three key changes.
Let's begin with the new recognition of complexity. We hear all the time that the world is an increasingly complex place, and indeed it is. The global financial crisis that began last year illustrates the increasingly complex world, as decision-makers continue to struggle to understand and act on processes that reflect values, technologies, ambitions, structures, psychologies, and policies in intertwined ways.
But equally important and of more enduring significance in our era is the growing recognition of the reality of complexity. The new recognition of complexity is redefining both how we think about individuals and their interactions with others, including, now, digital interactions.
On the one hand, new media are helping us come to grips with the complexity of human interactions through analytic strategies like data mining, text mining, and so on. On the other hand, new media are themselves increasing complexity as 20th century distinctions become less obvious, such as those between producers and consumers, between authors and readers, and as industrial-era definitions become contested. Who is an expert? What is authentic? Who is the owner?
In the recognition of complexity, we now know that building the future we want is not simply a matter of technological fixes, magic bullets, miracle drugs, or easy solutions of policy or practice. Rather, we now see that more often than not the significance of any action or technology depends on the relationships within which it is embedded.
It is in this sense that our innovation capacity increasingly depends on a constellation of digital technologies, digital content, and digital literacies in the form of talented people with a deep understanding of social, economic, and cultural complexity.
A special feature of the Canadian context is the central place of universities and research and innovation in contributing both the knowledge and the talented people who possess codified, embodied, and tacit knowledge to use technologies appropriately, talented people who are able to make the crucial small-scale improvements in product design, production processes, the management of knowledge, the types of services and how services are delivered, and how organizations are managed--indeed, in all aspects of innovation, including social and cultural innovation for the 21st century. This is why the role of the new media is at the heart of the new recognition of complexity.
Beyond the new recognition of complexity, we're now embracing diversity in unprecedented ways. Not that long ago, the dominant metaphor for thinking about society was a cookie cutter. A successful country was seen to need a homogenous population. Public policies tried to impose a one-size-fits-all standard for ideas, behaviour, and identity. Until recent decades, diversity was defined as a problem to be solved. In contrast, our era has now made clear that all societies have multiple origins, multiple identities, depending on who is doing the defining and what criteria are being used. We now recognize that no single perspective can hold all the answers.
Not only is the pursuit of uniformity often unrealistic and misguided, but we have realized that sameness can lead to vulnerability. Just as we now value genetic diversity, we have come to appreciate the strength and resilience of social, economic, and cultural diversity. In Canada especially, we live in multiple cultures, languages, histories, and perspectives, and we address the issues that arise from this diversity every day.
In other words, the hope for globalization in the digital age is not based on the imposition of a single model on the rest of the world. The desirable future will not follow a contest to determine superiority among cultures and societies in a zero-sum game. Rather, we'll follow a win-win effort to enhance all societies by drawing upon--increasingly through digital media--insights, evidence, and experience, regardless of their geographic origins.
In this sense, the new media are now deepening and enriching robust global conversations that reflect the increased internationalization of life in communities all around the world.
But in an unanticipated way, the new media are also reinforcing the importance of place, of context. As well as opening a virtual door to anywhere, digital connections expand and deepen connections made in physical space. Just think how much closer contact we keep with distant family members today than we did just a few decades ago.
At the University of Toronto, political scientist David Wolfe, geographer Meric Gertler, and other team members are undertaking an international study on the role of geographic clusters. These are regions where firms and institutions and communities involved in the same sector tend to gather together. Examples include Calgary's wireless industry, the biomedical cluster in Toronto, and the software and digital media cluster in Kitchener-Waterloo-Stratford. This research has shown that these geographic clusters are essential to success in the global economy. Place matters in the digital age, perhaps more than ever. In other words, new media are enabling, accelerating, and influencing differences, as well as similarities, around the world. The promise is a stronger, more resilient, adaptable world.
The third profound change that helps explain the increasing importance of the new media is the emphasis on creativity. The concept of creativity is often thought of in conjunction with the products and services of the arts, entertainment, and media sectors. Indeed, the digital age is dramatically increasing and renewing their importance in profound ways.
In addition, the concept of creativity now includes a wide range of other activities—in research and innovation, in products, services, and processes—throughout the private, public, and not-for-profit sectors. Policies that support and stimulate creativity in ways that enhance economic productivity, competitiveness, and sustainability are now seen to be one of the keys to the prosperity of societies and cultures around the world.
Gerri Sinclair, who is one of the world's digital media pioneers, has developed a Master's of Digital Media program at Vancouver's Centre for Digital Media that embraces the 21st century approach. She states that the curriculum is focused on creativity, innovation, and interdisciplinary improvisation, so that the training the students receive allows them to adapt quickly to new ideas and new situations.
Creativity is also driving commercialization and social innovation in interactive ways. Indeed, customers in the sense of users, whether as individuals or as companies, are now seen to be driving commercialization and social innovation in the digital age. Their ideas, tastes, and preferences make and remake the market as well as our institutions.
This reality makes it clear that we need to understand society, changing tastes, and preferences, all of which can endure or change in unexpected and expected ways. The one special challenge for Canada is to stay in touch with the actual end-users of so many exports.
To begin to come to grips with the digital age our researchers are telling us that the new technologies are enabling, accelerating, and reshaping fundamental conceptual changes. They are engendering a recognition of complexity, an embracing of diversity, and an emphasis on creativity.
These conceptual changes are already evident in Canada and are rapidly changing the structures of our economies, our cultures, and our social organization.
Tom Jenkins, CEO of Open Text and a member of our council, uses a historic and compelling metaphor to emphasize the profound transformation now under way. He explains that:
The Internet economy has thus far belonged largely to the toolmakers (some of them Canadian) that built the infrastructure that made the digital age possible. But the torch is being passed. The future now belongs, at least equally, to the tool users, the creative people, content providers, service deliverers, who have learned how to take images, sounds, ideas, and concepts and share them digitally.
The paradigm-shifting character of this transformation deserves emphasis, as we're now at a critical historical turning point, where we're seeing the convergence between science, technology, art, literature, and culture.
Let me illustrate quickly with a few examples how researchers across the social sciences and humanities are not only addressing the key questions of our era but also using and creating digital media to help Canada move forward successfully in the maturing 21st century.
Steven High, a professor of history at Concordia University, gathers personal oral histories of transformative social events that deeply affect communities in Montreal.The oral accounts are digitally recorded and stored at the university's Centre for Oral History and Digital Storytelling. Working with 15 community partners representing Montreal's diverse immigrant communities, as well as a range of heritage, human rights, and education agencies, the centre provides technical and research training on campus and in the community.
Ray Siemens, professor of English at the University of Victoria, is working with colleagues to build new knowledge environments. He and his team are studying how digital technology is enabling us to change in fundamental ways how we write, read, and record humanity itself. His research shows how the pace of that change has created a gap between our cultural and social practices that depend on stable reading and writing environments, such as print, and the new kinds of digital artifacts—electronic books being just one type of many—that must sustain those practices into the future.
To promote this kind of innovative research, our team at the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council has recently launched, in collaboration with American and British partners, the “Digging into Data Challenge.” We are challenging researchers to come up with novel ways to tap into the digital data repositories around the world to enable new opportunities and promote international linkages.
Another feature of the new research initiatives is the redefinition of the curriculum in our schools at all levels. John Bonnett at Brock University is developing the 3-D virtual buildings project, in which university students generate models of historic settlements using 3-D modelling software.
Jill Goodwin, at the University of Waterloo's Canadian Centre of Arts and Technology, looks at how knowledge transfer and commercialization and digital display technology can be applied to the theatre and performing arts.
Such efforts remind us that the story of Canada as one of the world's most successful societies is based on a distinctive Canadian conviction that the building of a successful society depends upon public investments in the advancement of knowledge and understanding and the development of talent as a public good.
I emphasize this because often we think of Canada as being successful thanks to great natural resources, or perhaps the luck of being next to the United States. I say sure, they have been important factors, but what about Argentina, which is equally rich in natural resources; or what about Mexico, also right next to the United States? In fact, I would argue that rethinking Canada's success during the 19th and 20th centuries provides the necessary background for coming to grips with the digital age of the 21st century in the case of Canada.
Let me tell this story very quickly to conclude: I think chapter one of the story of Canada as a successful society tells of the establishment of common schooling in the 19th century across all the provinces that became part of Canada. Canada overall became one of the world's most literate societies during the 19th century, despite considerable periods of economic uncertainty, political instability, substantial migration, and competing internal and external pressures. The result, in this time, was that Canada developed a remarkably successful agricultural and commercial economy supported by resilient civil society.
Chapter two continues this story of Canada as a successful society by emphasizing the emergence of public universities in the late 19th century and into the 20th century. These universities remained small but have produced the professionals that enabled the growth of the institutions, services, and industries characteristic of modernity. By the mid-20th century, Canada had emerged from two world wars and the Great Depression as a politically sovereign country visible on the world stage. Canada's intellectual assets and human capital played a central role in determining this experience.
Chapter three then describes how Canadian higher education developed rapidly after the 1960s, as illustrated by the increasing number of degrees awarded during the later 20th century. Canadian participation rates at the undergraduate level rose. At the same time, the increase in master's and doctoral enrolment was also significant, though much slower.
One key development during this chapter three period was the building of a made-in-Canada research community. When Canada embarked upon reconstruction following World War II, Canadian universities were predominantly staffed by professors with graduate degrees awarded by foreign institutions, and they offered courses mostly based on imported instructional materials. In other words, Canada was an intellectual colony in many ways.
Over the past 30 years, in contrast, federal research initiatives and federal leadership have helped produce universities with vibrant undergraduate and graduate programs and robust research activities. Such investments have proven to be crucial, as other countries have increased their own public support for research.
Now, in the digital age, we are writing chapter four in the story of Canada as a successful society based on public support for developing people as citizens and as talented leaders across the private, public, and not-for-profit sectors. In this context, becoming a digital culture, with ready access to Canadian content—historical, contemporary, economic, social, and cultural—is increasingly essential. Learning how to use, assess, and manage digital content now underpins Canadians' success.
For these reasons, Canadian content must be digitally collected, preserved, and made accessible to business, education, government, and society at large. The urgency of these issues is reflected in research findings that show that the digital divide has been increasing, particularly since the late 1990s. This digital divide reflects global differences evident at the level of continents in satellite photographs. But the digital divide is also apparent domestically, even within communities. For some, digital media are a great enabler and are a path to great opportunities. But for others, including parts of small-town and rural Canada and disadvantaged groups in all communities, the new media are not always generating a sense of optimism or opportunity.
The complexities of the digital divide, in terms of gender, race, income, aboriginal status, and community, is the focus of researcher Dianne Looker from Mount Saint Vincent University. The sociology and social anthropology scholar is bringing together researchers from Canada, Australia, and South Africa to narrow this digital divide.
The key point is that concerns about the digital divide are not simply about connectivity. More importantly, I think, they're about digital content and digital literacy.
Will the 21st century be the one that truly belongs to Canada? Or, in this digital age, is Canada at risk of becoming a colony again—this time a digital colony? How can we ensure a comprehensive presence of Canadian content on the digital world stage? How can we make Canada a robust, digital nation, globally engaged, contributing to international success in the 21st century?
History says yes. By seizing the digital opportunities, we can showcase to the world Canadian content, so much of which is internationally acclaimed, from literature and artistic expression to public policies on multiculturalism.
Canada has key advantages. Thanks to broadband penetration, talented Canadians are not just seeking information, they're using it and reusing it. They are interacting with it and with others. They are seeking to manipulate and comment on it, to rework it, and to create new content. Indeed, the world is beginning to recognize a distinctly Canadian way of understanding communication and the importance of communication technologies.
Let me conclude by emphasizing that we must admit that despite promising signs and the reality of our potential, Canadians are not taking full advantage of the digital opportunities, whether on our campuses, in our businesses, in our communities, or anywhere. We can and must do more. But on the path to creating the future we want, we must first cross the threshold of the imaginable. In other words, we must first recognize the challenge and opportunity of building a country in the 21st century.
Can Canada become the world's first digital country and therefore be a truly successful 21st century society? Who better? We have the technology. We have the know-how. We have the talent. But do we have the ambition or the courage? Can we dream?
Canada's history says yes. Indeed, the construction of railroads as a nation-building project in the 19th century provides an apt metaphor to describe the challenges and opportunities of the digital age. Certainly late-19th century and early-20th century nation-building in Canada involved railroads tying together the new country. But the last spike was only the beginning. Indeed, it was not the tracks, or even the trains, that made Canada. Rather, it was the content they carried, the people they carried: those who built the schools, businesses, institutions, and communities across Canada.
In the same the way, the digital infrastructure of the 21st century includes not only the digital tracks but also the digital trains. It carries information, ideas, commodities, and identities, connecting us and enabling us in new and profound ways.
Can we make Canada the most information-rich, information-literate country in the world? Can we be successful in identifying value in preserving digital information assets? Can we use these assets to educate our youth, to foster a common cultural identity and pride in our accomplishments, and to create new knowledge and new products that advance our economy? Can we provide ubiquitous and democratic information access for all Canadians to support our common goal of living in an inclusive and progressive society?
Yes, Canada's history says. We used to say that the future is in our hands, but now we say that the future is in our minds. The future is ours to imagine and create. We can make Canada a successful digital country in the 21st century.
Thank you very much for inviting us here.
