Data Toboggan back stories

 It was over 5 years ago we started planning the Data Toboggan event. It has been great to see the event grow 3x and we have changed with the technology growth. We will be opening CfS shortly for the next event anticipated to be 31 January 2025. 

The second main event name was based on a film as it seemed fitting and fun.

From Steam to Silicon to Sentience: Four Industrial Revolutions and the Fragile Future of AI

The story of human progress is punctuated by revolutions, not just in technology, but in how we think, organize, and trust. From the steam engines of the 1840s to the generative models of the 2020s, each wave has promised liberation and delivered disruption. Today, as AI surges toward ubiquity, we must ask: what have we learned from past revolutions, and what must we safeguard before the bubble bursts.

Four Revolutions That Changed Everything

There are four revolutions that resulted in significant change where we can learn from the affects to help the AI revolution progress unhindered.

Era	Catalyst	Impact	Risk
Industrial Revolution (c. 1760 – 1840s)	Steam power, mechanization	Mass production, urbanization, labour displacement	Exploitation, unrest (e.g. Plug Plot Riots, 1842)
Digital Revolution (1950s – 1990s)	Mainframes, UK computing pioneers, PCs	Automation, global communication, software economies	Surveillance, fragmentation, digital exclusion
Cloud Revolution (2000s – 2020s)	Virtualization, SaaS, mobile-first	Scalable infrastructure, remote work, data centralization	Vendor lock-in, opaque governance, cyber risk
AI Revolution (2020s –)	Foundation models, generative AI	Cognitive automation, new interfaces, synthetic creativity	Hallucinations, bias, job loss, trust collapse

 During the industrial revolution there was a deep industrial economic depression. The Plug Plot Riots were a wave of industrial action and disturbances across Lancashire, Cheshire, and Yorkshire, triggered by severe wage reductions (often 20-25% in the cotton and coal industries). Many workers aligned with the Chartist movement advocating for political reform, responded by "plugging" mill boilers, removing drain plugs to flood engines and halt production which forced factories to close.   The Plug Plot Riots of 1842 led to some improvements for workers, notably the prevention of further wage cuts and the eventual passage of the Factory Act 1844, which introduced limited reforms. It introduced a reduction in working hours for women and children, some safety regulations in factories and a modest step toward better labour conditions.

The second revolution of computing was not just technical. It redefined abstraction, logic, and control. From the UK’s early computing pioneers to the rise of PCs, it laid the groundwork for cloud and AI. Yet it also introduced new vulnerabilities: fragmented standards, digital inequality, and the erosion of analogue memory.

Cloud as the Bridge: Infrastructure to Intelligence

Cloud computing connected digital and AI with its abstracted hardware, centralized data, and the capabilities to scale with ease. But as Satya Nadella emphasizes in his annual letter and Microsoft’s 2025 report, innovation without strategic purpose is fragile. Microsoft’s Secure Future Initiative and Quality Excellence Initiative reflect a shift: AI must be built on trust, not just talent.

Brad Smith’s AI Diffusion Report warns that AI is spreading faster than any prior technology but unevenly. The Global South, non-English languages, and underrepresented communities’ risk being left behind.

Data: The Fuel, the Flaw, the Future

AI’s power is unprecedented and has the power to improve or destroy depending on the algorithm development but also on the state of data. Poor quality, biased, or ungoverned data leads to hallucinations, misinformation, and systemic risk. As the BBC’s article on AI hallucinations shows, even the most advanced models can confidently fabricate facts, undermining journalism, science, and public trust. From the simplest things I have seen AI fabricate data, which is written so well, to the untrained eye it could be believed. Once the data is triangulated the output can be trusted. However, the data sources quality, the prompts and data that is behind paywalls will influence the outcome.

This is not a glitch it is a consequence of probabilistic systems trained on imperfect inputs. Without rigorous data governance, provenance tracking, and human oversight, AI becomes a mirror of our worst assumptions.

When the Bubble Bursts: Coping with the AI Comedown

Every revolution has its reckoning. The Plug Plot Riots of 1842, the dot-com crash, and the decline of post-industrial towns all reveal the cost of overhyped promises and underprepared systems. When the AI bubble bursts whether through regulation, disillusionment, or economic correction, organizations with strong data foundations, ethical frameworks, and human-centred design will endure.

Those who chased novelty without governance will falter.

Satya Nadella’s mantra is “thinking in decades, executing in quarters” is more than a business strategy. It’s a survival imperative. The AI era demands long-term vision grounded in short-term accountability. That means:

- Investing in data quality and lineage as core infrastructure

- Embedding responsible AI principles into every product and process

- Preparing workers for augmentation, not just automation

- Designing for resilience, not just scale

Conclusion: From Revolution to Renaissance

The Industrial Revolution reshaped labour. The digital revolution redefined logic. The cloud revolution scaled infrastructure. AI is now rewriting cognition. but without trust, transparency, and governance, even the most powerful tools will falter. As the socio-technical divide deepens and ecological systems strain, the cost of inaction grows, and we risk accelerating collapse socially and ecologically.

The disruption from AI is only just beginning. As Business Insider quoted, “Elon Musk said AI will make desk jobs feel like when workers used to make calculations by hand before the computer age.” This echoes the upheaval of 1842, when industrialisation redefined labour.

If we want AI to be a renaissance, not a reckoning, we must treat data as infrastructure, governance as strategy, and human ethics as non-negotiable. The future isn’t just what we build; it’s what we’re willing to steward.

We must draw a line: to protect data, embed meaningful guardrails, and confront the human cost of displacement. That means planning not only for the jobs we lose, but for the ones we must invent. It also means addressing the widening continental divide in AI development and its cascading impact on the environment and global economy.

References

'It's going to be really bad': Fears over AI bubble bursting grow in Silicon Valley 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cz69qy760weo

Satya Nadella annual letter: Thinking in decades, executing in quarters

https://www.microsoft.com/investor/reports/ar25/index.htmlhttps://www.linkedin.com/pulse/my-annual-letter-thinking-decades-executing-quarters-satya-nadella-7orpc?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_android&utm_campaign=share_via

Brad Smith https://aka.ms/AIDiffusionReport

Elon Musk says the AI 'supersonic tsunami' will eliminate desk jobs 'at a very rapid pace'

https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-ai-supersonic-tsunami-job-displacement-future-joe-rogan-2025-11

 Transparency: Written with the help of Copilot.

SQLCon 2026

A new conference has arrived. The Microsoft SQL Community Conference, SQLCon 2026, is coming as part of the Microsoft Fabric Community Conference, 16-20 March 2026 in Atlanta. 

It will be a premier level conference for data professionals, featuring 50 breakout sessions and 4 expert-led workshops covering SQL Server, Azure SQL, SQL in Fabric, SQL Tools, migration & modernization, optimization, database security, AI Apps with SQL and much more.

It is a place where the SQL community can come together to share what works, what’s next, and what truly matters.

Register now  https://sqlcon.us/

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/sqlserver/announcing-sqlcon-2026-better-together-with-fabcon/4466701