When I was younger, I used to wonder what the world would be like when I was forty years old. Would we have world peace? Would Canada still exist? What about the problems of pollution and over-population? And, more importantly at the time, would the Montreal Canadiens still be Stanley Cup champions?

I was young. I was innocent. I always believed the world would allow me room to change, room to grow at a pace I felt comfortable with.

Ive been lamenting a certain loss of innocence lately

You see, Ive been introduced to a whole new world. A whole new way of doing things. It happened gradually. Bit by bit, moment by moment, Ive been exposed to it without even considering the ramifications. Its engulfed me, entranced me, and enthralled me.

Digital.

Yes, Im slowly becoming accustomed to the face of the digital future. Everything I am doing now, is increasingly digital. From the pictures I take, to the television I watch, to the time on my sons watch. Its all digital.

I didnt realize how much our lives changed until I started editing the most recent episode of "The Northern Entrepreneur", which will be aired on the CAT Channel this fall.

Paul is a great guy, and a fine technician. He belongs to a generation where being digital is an every day fact of life. He was trained on digital equipment. For him, learning new software is easy. For him, editing on a computer is almost second nature. He clicks, double-clicks and moves the cursor across the screen with the same ease Nolan Ryan used to throw fastballs. Always too fast for me to see, but always hitting the strike zone.

I come from the old school of broadcast journalism, where we taped an interview on cassette, transfer it to a reel-to-reel machine and manually cut-and-splice the interview for broadcast later. It was a lengthy, tedious process, and most times, worked without glitches.

When I worked for the CBC twelve years ago, being digital was just a dream. It was a notion that wasnt given much thought. We always assumed that it would take ten skilled people to produce a half hour television program. It was considered normal to spend three full days in the edit suite, producing four stories, complete with bridges. We would carry fifteen beta tapes into the suite, and generally, walk out with one complete show.

Now, all of that has changed.

Let me give you an example. Paul and I spent about seven hours (yes, seven), to produce a complete half-hour program recently. Add in the hour it took to do stand-ups (where the host stands in front of the camera telling the audience whats going to happen next), and the two or three hours it took to conduct interviews and cover, and youre only accounting for little more than ten hours of activity. Almost eleven hours to produce a full, half-hour program, from start to finish, ready for broadcast. All done on one computer, with one program. What an amazing world we live in.

We live in a world thats always changing, always moving, always evolving. We live in a world where it is now possible to chat with people on the computer who are living half-way around the world, about the concerns of the day. A world where, once upon a time, it used to be unthinkable to be able to talk on the phone to someone in South Africa with the kind of clarity generally reserved for local calls. We can benefit and profit from, changes in the business world that are fashionable one month, and obsolete the next. We truly are living in interesting times.

Isnt it grand to always have the opportunity to grow, to expand our minds in ways previously considered unimaginable? Isnt it enthralling to know that no matter what limit we, as humans, place upon ourselves, theres always someone, somewhere, who believes they can push "the envelope" further and higher?

At the same time I embrace the tools of the future, I am also fearful of them. For a very good reason.

As a native person, I used to worry that my children werent being exposed to the basics of education. I used to worry they werent learning how to read, write and do the kind of arithmetic that got me through grade school. Now, I worry theyre not being exposed to the new technologies soon enough. What kind of burden am I now guilty of placing upon their shoulders? And, is it wrong to want your child to assume the mantel of progressive thinking at the cost of his or her culture, language, traditions and everything else we, as a society, hold near and dear?

I weigh these questions with a ponderous eye towards the future, because I worry they will cast aside everything that makes them uniquely native, uniquely Northern, in favour of something that simply makes them a cog in a larger societal machine, for someone elses benefit and profit. I live in a part of the world where the gems of individuality are heralded by the same devices that digitize our lives into nothing more than 1s and 0s. It is this dichotomous thinking that will plague me throughout the remainder of my days, because I believe myself to be a caring individual with a view towards the future.

In business, we need to always consider the cost of progress when weighed against the human toll such change might exact. We need to consider who were gaining as partners and employees, against who were losing as friends. The world will not stand in the way of our inflexibility towards change, it will simply go around us.

Like others in my demographic group, I must change if I wish to survive in this industry. I must avail myself of the training and tools and learn new skills, in order to remain competitive. This has to be the commitment we must make, as small business owners.

So let us always be in awe of what is possible. Let us always stare at the universe in wonder. But, at the same time, let us keep our feet firmly planted on the ground and recognize that no matter what mask progress wears, there is, and always will be, a human face behind it.