Hong Kong needs innovation, but it is more than just technology

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Children line up their robots for a race at the Chan Lui Chung Tak Memorial School in Yau Tong, May 25. Hong Kong is often called upon to speed up the adoption of technology and to prepare children for the digital revolution, or the “fourth industrial revolution”, a future dominated by automation. Photo: Xiaomei Chen

Published: 6:02pm, 18 Jun 2018Updated: 12:31pm, 15 Oct 2020

Jeffrey Leckstein’s “Hong Kong must embrace innovation or risk irrelevance” (April 23) was a stirring call to arms, acknowledging that technology would play an increasingly important role in the future of the city’s banking and financial services industry.

Yet, Leckstein missed the underlying value of human exuberance and talent, which have made Hong Kong so unique and attractive in the first place.

American social critic Arthur Schlesinger once said, “Science and technology revolutionise our lives, but memory, tradition and myth frame our response.” In spite of what advances might take place in the realm of science and technology, we will always remain rebelliously human.

One might argue that this is profoundly true in Hong Kong, where a pragmatic mindset rules and people are attracted to saving energy by making sense of things in the quickest, most efficient manner. Hong Kong residents have proved repeatedly reluctant to become early adopters of innovative technologies and would rather wait to assess success overseas.

Lack of innovation and incentives holding back Hong Kong from becoming a smart city

Is this abiding display of scepticism such a bad thing? After all, the technology doubters of Hong Kong would be sharing extremely good company with, for example, the likes of US economist Robert Merton Solow who once said: “I always thought that the main difference the computer made in my office was that before the computer my secretary used to work for me, and afterward I worked for my secretary.”