This week Conservative MP for Aylesbury and minister for Europe, David Lidington, writes to Bucks Free Press readers about how technology is changing the world.

During my time in Parliament, I've seen the start of the revolutionary impact that digital technology is having on how we live our lives.

Even ten years ago, the great majority of my constituency correspondence was on paper. Now, it's almost entirely email.

Very few constituents send me letters any more. I use text to contact other ministers, both in our own government and in other countries.

My children have grown up in a world where the Internet is a fact of life, not a novelty, and where social media and instant messaging are natural ways to chat to your friends.

Digital technology poses huge challenges. Some are economic. Shops in Wycombe and Risborough have lost business because we as customers have chosen to shop online. App based services like Uber threaten the viability of taxi and car hire firms. Print newspapers are losing out to websites.

In the next couple of decades, we'll be in a world where it will be possible for a lot of routine legal and accountancy work, even some journalism, to be done by algorithms instead of people.

Digital technology is set to shake up white collar and professional work in the way that automation transformed factory production lines a generation ago.

But as well as challenges, there are opportunities. Online sales mean that small, niche businesses like local food producers can market what they offer more cheaply and sell more easily beyond their immediate neighbourhood.

And now that the whole EU is supporting British ideas to have a single set of rules on digital sales across Europe, our businesses will be able to sell online to 500 million customers in 28 countries as their home market.

Our colleges and universities are looking at how to build more online courses into their offer, giving students access to top specialists and experts in their field from around this country and the world.

Medicine too will change. Talking recently to our local NHS, I learned how digital communications mean that it will soon be possible for a doctor (a GP or perhaps a specialist based at the other end of country) to talk to a patient through what amounts to an NHS Skype system.

Patients in their 80s and 90s could see a doctor without having to travel.

We can't uninvent new technology. So let's try to seize every opportunity it brings.