Clearly data and information integrity is a growing problem worldwide. If we could improve the way our communications systems identify and disarm malicious bots, spam, misinformation, and disinformation (as well as the bad actors behind those efforts), it would greatly benefit the industry and society. This impacts digital advertising as well, since Juniper Research calculates that nearly 50% of programmatic ad spend globally is wasted on fraud.

Another breakthrough would be the practical commercialization of quantum computing and blockchain. Quantum computing would bring faster compute speeds to some of our most challenging workloads. Blockchain would usher in advances in validation, redundancy, storage, and encryption. In fact, the practical commercialization of blockchain could help us make big advances in improving data and information integrity.

Most large telecommunications brands have mission statements related to connecting people. Yet, over the past decade, we’ve seen the social media apps run by many of those brands fuel tribalism. They’ve increased the “us vs. them” mentality.

Over the next decade, telecommunications technologies can help to reduce tribalism. We can build these tools more responsibly than we have in the past. This becomes all the more important when we look toward AI and machine learning (ML) getting more deeply integrated into our technology. AI and ML will serve as accelerants of the negative aspects of communications technology if we’re not careful in how we design and build.

Climate change is the single largest problem our generation is dumping at the doorstep of the next generation. Corporations and institutions of all kinds need to commit to achieve carbon neutrality or negativity as fast as possible. Better yet, figure out ways to profit from the climate tech revolution. After all, it will be one of the largest wealth creation opportunities of our lifetime and will spawn many new multi-billion dollar companies. In addition, companies can take steps like becoming a certified B Corp and/or partnering with the institutions that are leading our transition to an emission-free society like the Rocky Mountain Institute or 1% for the Planet.

The biggest value of PTC is the people. That goes for the dedicated staff of PTC as well as the impressive members. Whenever I get to spend time with PTC staff and members, I’m reminded of the collective importance of our industry and feel hopeful knowing that smart, kind, collaborative people are driving us forward.

PTC fits tightly with Prime Data Centers’ goals. We help large enterprises optimize their data centers as strategic assets. PTC Members represent a large portion of those enterprises. We have a big shared goal: make the Internet and the world’s data more secure and more useful to the industry and society.

Commit to learning about society and governance at large. Technology has a huge and growing impact on the future of human civilization. The people within the industry must get better at understanding how their efforts impact humanity. We can no longer afford to think only within the walls of our companies or industries.

I’m a follower of the Collison brothers who founded Stripe. They’re very smart, have built an incredible company, and they are not afraid to tackle big issues at the company level.

I’m also following Kate Brandt, Google’s chief sustainability officer. Google is leading the way on making their entire business more environmentally sustainable and they’ve done some very interesting work recently around data centers.

Finally, within the data center world, I’m a follower of David Liggitt and his team at datacenterHawk. datacenterHawk is one of the more media-savvy organizations within our space and they know how to make the data center world seem exciting instead of boring.

The data center world has been innovating faster than any other commercial real estate category in many ways, but most importantly in sustainability. The coming years will see further innovation that will also benefit the rest of the CRE world, and by extension, all of humanity. One example is in the deeper integration of data centers and renewable power generation and distribution. As a critical and relatively modern part of national infrastructure, data centers will need to play a role in helping bring about the much-needed improvements in power transmission. We’ve made great strides in bringing on more renewable power generation capability over the past decade, but we’ve not made nearly as much progress in modernizing transmission. As shown with the recent U.S. power grid failures, we need to upgrade our grids.