JORGE MARTIN DIAZ DE ESPADA

During the Turklim conferences, in which I had the honour of participating, we were amazed to see the great evolution that technology has experienced in recent decades in all sectors of industry, including ports and maritime transport, to which those of us presentat the conference owe so much.

Without a doubt, for me the most remarkable thing to observe is how this evolution is not only man made but the result of the technology itself, capable of creating on its turn new technology. This also generates a certain fear as to what the limits of all this will be and whether it will not get out of hand at some point.

One of the most important reflections is to accept that, although every new situation can solve some existing problems, it will also create other new problems in parallel that we must be able to identify and manage.

People of my generation look back with nostalgia to a past that undoubtedly served to inspire this present, but at the same time we have the obligation to adapt to it and evolve together. Perhaps we can feel privileged because we had to live through the greatest number of substantial changes in a relatively short time, while our successors already arrived in a well-advanced work environment.

In any case, there is something that will never change which is the responsibility that we all have to make this rapid evolution truly sustainable, and the only thing that will make it sustainable will be its ability to have the individual at the central objective of its added values. If all this progress ends up attacking the very man who originally created it or ignoring him, we will have failed as an industry and as a society.

Let us hope that in this great port community we will know how to take the time to evaluate and reconfirm that we are on the right path, adapting technology to man and not the other way around.