The future belongs to those who hear it coming

IQS AG, based in Zofingen, has been the Swiss market leader in electronic quality management for years. In 25 years, more than 1300 companies and institutions throughout Switzerland have decided to make their operating processes visible and plannable with IQSoft quality management software. 800 of these customers are active. This is a peak value for a software that, once installed, continuously invites companies to renew it!

From this perspective, it should hardly come as a surprise that company founder Hans-Peter Kost and his son Colin chose to broaden their horizons several times over to mark the successful 25th anniversary of their company. On 2 July 2018, 150 people experienced an enormously exciting and varied afternoon on the topic of the digital future and a perfect summer evening with jazz, blues and more at "New Orleans meets in Zofingen".

A dash of magic to kick things off
Where does this lead when the digital world merges with the real world? How long will we be able to recognize the boundaries? And when will we reach the point where - to paraphrase Arthur C. Clarke - we can no longer tell the difference between magic and technology?

The iPad magician Simon Pierro answers these questions with a charming

"In 23 years, there have been 30 IQSoft releases."

He smiles and proves in his own way that magic and technology have long since become one. The artist, who is in demand all over the world, performed digital magic of the highest order in Zofingen and, among other things, tapped real beer out of his tablet's flat screen. Quite a few guests thought to themselves: I want an iPad like that!

The most important IQSoft release in years
IQSoft has been shaping quality for over two decades and is becoming more popular with each passing year. This is not a matter of course in the fast-paced IT world. Hans-Peter and Colin Kost are enormously grateful to their long-time comrades-in-arms: "The core of what you experience today as IQSoft was once developed by our husband Michael Kiel in his spare time! (see also interview opposite). And since IQS AG does not rest on its laurels and likes to break with tradition, Colin Kost says: "Every technological advance also brings IQSoft forward. We are currently consciously hiring young developers."

Colin Kost presented the future of his product in the Stadtsaal Zofingen: "There have been 30 IQSoft releases in 23 years. With the 7.9 release, major changes are now on the horizon. We have always been somewhat ridiculed because we have remained loyal to MS Access for so long. And we still have many customers who work with Access. But the new release is now finally based on .Net and SQL. Since 2014 alone, that meant 22,500 hours of development work for us. In the process, we listen to our customers: they have requests and we implement a lot."

And where does the journey go for the user? Beautiful, said Colin Kost in Zofingen, is usually not fast. And fast is usually not beautiful. Nevertheless, both are required at the same time. But he is proud of what he has now achieved: "We have made a number of visual and technological changes. This gives us even more dynamism and higher performance, from which all users will benefit. I am sure that our customers will be just as enthusiastic about the new release as we are. We presenters were able to see this for ourselves during the 30-minute live demo.

What could be, what is, what is coming
Change of subject in Zofingen: "Let's take Fa cebook: It's not criminal, it works the way it was programmed. Accordingly, selling ads is by no means illegal. But unethical at best? What's more, we laugh at kids today who are constantly glued to their smartphones. On the other hand, there are these glasses that see everything. How far do we want to go? What should be allowed?" Gerd Leon hard, who does not see himself as a futurist, but as an alert observer of our world, asks questions like these. Leon hard sees exponential change. He says: "Take a curve of doubling. For a long time it just creeps up. And now - this is the current state of technology - we're at stage 4, followed by 8, 16, 32, 64. In ten years, ladies and gentlemen, our smartphones will be a million times more powerful than they are today. Sometime between 2025 and 2050, artificial intelligence will reach an IQ of 500,000. Is that heaven? Or will it be hell? Technology is a wonderful tool, but a terrible ruler."

The future is already here
Leonhard invites to embrace technology, but not to become technology: "Do not lie to dataism! Please don't believe data over people! Computers should not be allowed to make policy and decide biology." For Leonhard, it is clear that there is no way around robots, 3D printing and au tomatization: "The future is not just coming. It is already here. In ten years, 70% of all professions will have been reinvented." "So what is there to think about? New skills! We're raising our children in schools to be robots. But what actually makes us different from machines? Critical thinking, creativity, emotional intelligence, intuition, values, consciousness. These are the kinds of issues we need to be concerned with. David Bowie once said, 'The future belongs to those who hear it coming.'"