Rethinking Lifestyle

I am reading a book called “How to Fix the Future”. Andrew Keen, the author of the book, says that indeed the future is going to be broken if we humans do not consciously intervene.

The problem with the future that we can already see in this digital revolution is that we are not controlling technology, it is controlling us. The signs of the problem can be seen all around us: increasing inequality between rich and poor, cultural malaise, dwindling trust in our established institutions, polarization of politics, spread of misinformation and the unravelling of international relationships.

Andrew Keen reminds us that these problems are not new. They are a repeat or a continuation of the old problems that arose during the last big transition, the industrial revolution.

John Borthwick, the CEO of Betaworks, a company that helps business startups, says that there are five tools for fixing the future. These tools, just like the problems, are not new. They were successfully employed to “fix” the problems of the industrial revolution. These five tools are: regulation, competitive innovation, social responsibility, worker and consumer choice, and education. These tools cannot successfully be individually applied but must be applied together in a combined strategy.

Andrew Keen sites regulation as an excellent fix during the industrial revolution, giving the example of the unsafe and unclean meat packing business. In the USA, the Meat Inspection Act was passed in 1906. The industry fought regulation long and hard just like the digital industry now is fighting not to be regulated. Bitcoin is a prime example of a technology specifically designed to avoid regulation by not being owned by an identifiable individual or company. Bitcoin is a method of money exchange that is peer to peer and avoids any banking institutions which can be regulated. Digital industry experts that know about Bitcoin say that regulation will probably be good for Bitcoin and for the investor and for the public.

The second tool, competitive innovation, speaks to the problem of monopoly in any industry and the extending of patents so long that others cannot be competitive in the new technologies. A method of effectively extending patents is to keep changing and updating the technology allowing for a new patent to be applied. Apple for example has 70,036 patents as of 2018, over 8000 patents in the year 2018 alone. It is difficult for any competitor to Apple to come up with any innovations because many are blocked by patents. We do have a Competition Bureau in Canada, but it seems to be ineffective in giving us actual market competition.

Social responsibility used to be enforced by church and by law. Now in the digital age our moral and ethical decisions are being made by algorithms in “artificial intelligence” devices. The self driving car for example, has many algorithms that tell the car what to do in case of an unexpected situation like a child on a bicycle versus a crash to the car. We need to discuss who is in control of our moral and ethical decisions.

Education is an obvious fix to the problems we face, as it was in the past. An educated person is less likely to be scammed by misinformation, will be healthier and wealthier and probably cost the justice system less than an uneducated person.

These tools must be applied as a combined strategy for them to be successful and to lead to a good future for us. Now the question remains, “Who will blow the dust off the hammer?”