The data and digital revolution has made Britain's industrial legislation obsolete. BIMA's Wyndham Lewis explains what the future holds

"The technology is ahead of the legislation"

Bristol is ten minutes behind London. This is not some slur on where I grew up, but a geographical feature that was highlighted with advent of the railway. The newfound ability to connect to British cities in hours rather than days required a standard time-table.

The train was a critical element of the Industrial Revolution, but it has since been superseded. This makes George Osborne’s vow to return Britain to a golden Victorian age of train travel rather depressing. It is also indicative of the political classes’ inability to understand the impact of digital technology and the data revolution. Grand projects such as HS2, that will cost approximately £40 billion and take over 20 years, fail to understand how much technological and behavioural change will occur druing that timespan.

In August 2012, Google announced their self-driving cars had driven 300,000 accident free miles. The self-driving car will have a transformative effect on the way we live. Changing the distances we are willing to travel to work, the infrastructure and eventually the design and layout of the roads themselves. But the technology is ahead of the legislation, which in many cases was created in a time of horse drawn carriages. As William Gibson opined, “The future is already here – it’s just not very evenly distributed.”

Politicians need to look to the future and begin to define Britain’s role in the digital and data revolution. If they are unable to do this we will fall behind the rest of the world. We need visionary leadership that understands how technology is reshaping our lives.

Digital makes the world flat. Reducing journey times between our major cities by a few minutes will not enhance our global competitiveness. Ensuring accessible, universal and fast broadband will enable us to connect anywhere, anytime and with anyone. Geographic location is increasingly virtualised and success is built on attracting the best talent to make the best teams.

New skills and ways of teaching need to be implemented. Despite unemployment levels, here is a shortage of talent in mathematics, programming, design and commercial management in the digital industries. Our industry, with initiatives like BIMA’s D-Day, is reaching out to schools to help children understand the available roles and skills they need for their future earlier in their educations.

We need to redefine our views of industries and our need to ‘save’ them. With over a third of retail sales to be made online by 2020, the high street can never be the same. The high street is not dead, though it needs redefinition. Humans are still social and want spaces for physical interaction. We should expect more experiential stores, both permanent and temporary, which brands use to showroom and support their products and services.

Similarly, manufacturing will be transformed by 3D printing, which has the potential to redistribute manufacturing to the point of purchase. The need for panel beaters and fabricators will be replaced by originators who need ideas and design skills.

For this new future, we need companies to lead the commercialisation of creativity and technology. They need to come from across the whole of the UK and we should jettison a U.S.-based cluster model that aims to rebuild Silicon Valley on a London underpass to while refocusing on world class universities that are the UK’s centres of innovation.

Politicians need to stop building policies based on the technology that built Victorian society and look forward to develop a bold and visionary world view.

Wyndham Lewis is a BIMA director dedicated to developing and supporting digital industries.