[HOLDING POST] 'Our Digital Future - Getting Ready for Everything'
”We cannot just assume the USA will underpin the global architecture act as it has since World War 2.” Reproducing a talk I gave in 2019.
I’m playing catch up after a hectic, and fascinating, period for my own work, while the Trump Administration has been also having a hectic and…heart-stopping? period — taking a chainsaw to the established order. Actually, several chainsaws, both within the US and beyond, with international alliances.
There’s been too much to digest and write up. Apologies.
As a holding post, below is the text of a talk I gave in February 2019 to Community Links, a hub tackling health and social inequality in East London and beyond. They asked me to speak on ‘Our Digital Future: Getting Ready for Everything’.
The reason I’m sharing it now is that one of the big claims is that ‘the past is ending’, including:
“We cannot just assume the USA will underpin the global architecture act as it has since World War 2.”
I also said that future historians will refer to this decade as The Shocking ‘20s.
Six years ago I tried to explore what could be done about the end of the foundation building blocks of our lives in the UK.
It is, of course, wrong — I don’t agree with all of it now. But hopefully it is useful.
SubStack is telling me it is too long to fit in an email. If, after reading the contents, you want to read the rest you might need to click through to the webpage.
Enjoy! WeekNotes to return soon!
David
Contents
1. INTRODUCTION
2. OUR PAST IS ENDING
-‘If you have a job then you will have a secure livelihood.’
-‘Free markets, guided by technocrats, will solve all problems.’
-For last 60 years: ‘American economic and military might will underpin the rules-based global order.’
-For the last 200 years: ‘The West will always do better than the rest.’
-For the last 200 years ‘Cheap fossil fuel will power us forever.’
-For the last 400 years: ‘Nature is indestructible and infinite. We cannot affect it.’
-For the last 400 years: ‘Humans are more capable and more intelligent than anything else.’
3. THE FUTURE IS SCARY.
Get ready for a LOT MORE digital revolution.
-Will keep improving technology performance.
-Will unbundle jobs.
-Will default towards digital platforms.
-Will likely head towards low marginal cost
Climate Change and the environment.
The Shocking 2020s.
4. OUR NEED TODAY IS TO IMAGINE BETTER.
Taking a long view of history.
Re-solving dilemmas.
-Combining urgency with consent.
-Growth vs Environmental limits.
-Motivate activity for prosperity without defining people as their economic contribution.
-Strong-enough boundary for sense of identity and security while also being open to change.
-Cultivating a rich, resilient hope that comes from working with fear.
Co-creating new moral glue and new stories.
Preparing for crisis.
5. DAY IN THE LIFE.
6. THERE IS A BETTER FUTURE TO AIM FOR.
7. TO SUM UP.
8. THE TASK OF OUR GENERATION.
Our Digital Future:
Getting Ready for Everything.
1. INTRODUCTION
Good evening. It is an honour and a privilege to speak with you this evening.
My task this evening is to look at some of the big questions.
How artificial intelligence and the digital revolution will affect our working and social lives?
How can we flourish, individually and collectively, in times of profound change?
My intention is to be unflinching of the risks we face, but inspiring and thought-provoking on how we can act.
Of course, there’s a lot of ‘everything’ to get ready for. Even in 45 mins, I cannot cover all the topics.
So, my focus: will be today’s rich nations (with a shorthand of ‘The West’ or Global North). I believe that they face challenges that are similar enough that those countries can be though of as a group, even though there are important differences in local expressions and responses.
At the heart of my talk are five points:
Currently, we are not ready for everything. Today’s struggles show that. The most plausible future starting from here is scary.
Getting ready for everything requires a transformation like the Enlightenment, where we shift our fundamental understanding of the world and that cascades through our cultures, our politics and our economies.
AI, automation and renewable energy are exactly the disruptive technologies we need now.
Getting the politics right involves changing how we approach:
a. Giving people voice in decisions.
b. What our economy is for.
c. Having identity while also being open to change.
d. Cultivating hope in scary times.
There is something for all of us to do, in our daily habits through to how we lead big institutions.
2. OUR PAST IS ENDING
The astonishing successes of digital technologies in recent decades is part of extraordinary changes in the world at large. And those changes are undermining centuries-old foundations of Western life for the last centuries.
When I was at University in the mid 90s, the people with mobile phones either had gone to Eton or were drug dealers. Or both.
There was one computer terminal for the college which had email. You queued up to use it after lunch, and that queue would go out of the door.
Let’s illustrate the reach of digital technologies:
· Who has a mobile phone?
· Who has a smart phone?
· Who has used email today? More than once?
· Who has used social media today: Facebook, Twitter..?
· Who accesses music or TV online? Subscribes to: Spotify, Netflix?
· Who works in a company that uses IT extensively?
· Who has a job which uses IT and the job didn’t exist 20 years ago?
There has been an astonishing rise in digital technologies. In 1990, the number of internet users was , in 2018 4 billion [1]. The total iPhone sales from 2007 to November 2018 was 2.2billion [2]. At the start of 2018, the number of unique mobile users: 5.135 billion, or 68% of world population. Facebook alone had 2.17 billion users. In 2018, in every minute [3] there were: 3.9m Google searches; 13m text messages; people watch 97,000 hours on Netflix and Spotify streamed 750,000 songs.
The big digital platforms valuations have grown quickly and are worth a lot. If you had invested $1,000 in Netflix in 2007 it would now be worth $90,000 now. The enterprise value of Apple on 7 Feb 2019was $850 billion [4] and Amazon: $804 billion [5]. For comparison, Exxon Mobile was $350 billion [6].
Before we think about the future, we need to acknowledge how much has changed in the recent past. Over the last 30-40 years some fundamental assumptions about life in the UK have been undermined by digital technologies.
‘If you have a job then you will have a secure livelihood.’
Through the middle part of the 20th century, if you were working then things would get better for you. You might not have a brilliant wage, but you had financial security and also belonging.
Technology and globalization made it easier to unbundle a factor into specific tasks, and so replace a Western worker with a lower-paid person overseas. Two effects to highlight.
Emerging markets became the workshop of the world, with more people having jobs are higher wages than they had before. Billions were lifted out of poverty.
But the unbundling removed the bargaining power of Western workers, and their wages stagnated and living costs like housing are going up [7].
Many people now have low-paid, precarious livelihoods. In the West we have near-record employment levels, but many people struggle to get by [8].
The Institute for Global Prosperity (where I am was an Honorary Senior Research Associate) surveyed some 650 people in East London as part of creating a Prosperity Index. Across those East London neighbourhoods, 63% of households with an adult in work were below the Minimum Income Standards, the amount of income needed to maintain a minimum standard of living, according to research with members of the public (the basis of the Living Wage). Some 44% of people in work agreed with the statement “There is no point trying to improve my life, there’s nothing that can be done”. And 65% of people on temporary contracts, or who are self-employed, say that they are not so out of choice.
Having a job no longer means you have a security.
‘Free markets, guided by technocrats, will solve all problems.’
The early 80s, we’ve been told There Is No Alternative. Government should let markets do as much as possible, as freely as possible. The efficient allocation of resources will drive growth. This will trickle down to all the parts of society.
But, clearly, that hasn’t worked.
Instead we’ve had decades of ‘success to the successful’. If you start with an advantage, then loosening markets means you use that head start to get a better return than others.
Hence Thomas Picketty’s findings, and growing wealth inequality in the West.
That was true before digital technologies existed, just think to times before trade unions or the welfare state. But digital technologies accelerate the success to the successful dynamic.
The ’network effect’ is where the value of a product or service increases according to the number of others using it. I remember when Facebook came to the UK. Conversations in the pub: are you on Facebook yet? Have you had an invite? Wanted to be on the inside. And as more of your friends were interacting on it, the more you needed to be there.
Many digital businesses have this network effect. It tends towards a small number of winners, who win big. They dominate their market place. With search, it’s Google, with commerce, Amazon.
So, the last decades were the worst time for these technologies to emerge. The attitude of our political economy was “Winner Take All is fine, as long as customers are getting some value”. The policy toolbox to deal with the consequences was narrowed. Because trade unions had been undermined, the voice of workers from the ground was weaker.
Letting digital technologies play out in a time of free markets allows for concentration of power amongst a small number of big companies. And that does not solve problems, instead it creates many.
But these are not the only foundations of Western dominance and prosperity that are shaky. Here are some more:
For last 60 years: ‘American economic and military might will underpin the rules-based global order.’
Trump is actively wanting to move away from a rules-based architecture. While the next President might try to reverse that, Trump has tapped into a wider desire to Make America Great Again by winning zero-sum games, not creating positive-sum. We cannot just assume the USA will underpin the global architecture act as it has since World War 2.
For the last 200 years: ‘The West will always do better than the rest.’
The rise of China and India tells that Westerners are no longer going to be the top of the tree, with the best prospects and power.
For the last 200 years ‘Cheap fossil fuel will power us forever.’
The industrial revolution was powered by cheap fossil fuels. Our economies – and political power – orientated around using that vital energy source, and also making sure it is always available.
Now renewables are declining in price very quickly. Soon, it will be cheaper to switch off old fossil fuel and replace with new renewables [9]. Cheap renewables opens up the chance to reconfigure how our economy functions, from a small number of large electricity generators to a large number of distributed electricity generators.
But, it threatens companies and countries that are dependent on fossil fuels. This partly explains Russia’s efforts at political disruption [10].
For the last 400 years: ‘Nature is indestructible and infinite. We cannot affect it.’
For centuries we’ve behaved as if nature is a dead thing for us to use. But we are now learning that we can affect nature.
Not just individual rivers or lakes, but the entire ocean. Plastics have been found in the depths of the Marianna Trench [11].
That is an illustration of the ‘anthropocene’. It used to be that natural factors like plate tectonics were the most important in driving the natural world. But now human factors – our emissions of greenhouse gases in particular – are the most important driver of the natural world. [xii]
The latest science implies that nature can be undermined destroyed, by us.
For the last 400 years: ‘Humans are more capable and more intelligent than anything else.’
We have believed we are special because we are intelligent. But Artificial Intelligence threatens that. If a machine can do it, then what value do we bring? What makes us human? What makes being human special? And if we’re not special, what is our place in the universe?
These have been fundamental to how we have lived in the UK for decades, or centuries.
Getting ready for a digital future is not just about digital technologies.
We will need we shift our fundamental understanding of the world.
3. THE FUTURE IS SCARY.
What are we going to have get ready for? A lot more digital revolution and a lot more climate change
GET READY FOR A LOT MORE THE DIGITAL REVOLUTION
Over the coming decades, digital technologies will keep exponentially improving their performance; will unbundle jobs into tasks; will default to domineering platforms; and willtend towards low marginal cost.
Let’s unpack each of those.
Will keep improving technology performance
In the future, AI and automation will be ubiquitous. We can expect Moore’s Law to continue. The cost of processing power will halve every 18 months or so. So, in 30 years, we will have 1 million times better processing power per unit cost than today. Because it will be so cheap, it will be everywhere.
What that means: we’re nowhere near the end of how the disruption plays out. Anyone claiming that AI definitely won’t be able to do a particular task is being very, very confident indeed. In 2014 when a machine could beat the best humans at Go, a strategy boardgame much more complex than chess, one expert answered ‘maybe ten years’ – and was treated as an optimist by others. But it happened within 2 years [13].
Currently, people are saying that things like creativity and social skills will remain uniquely human. Maybe. But it’s a big, bit risk to base your plans on that being true.
Will unbundle jobs
Past industrial revolutions destroyed old jobs, but created new ones. Indeed technological revolutions massively increased the productive capacity of society. So even with population growth, there were more jobs at nearly same rate. This has led some people to say we don’t have to worry?
But this time might be different. Consider one time automation caused massive unemployment – of horses.
In 1915 there were 21.5 million horses in America, pulling carriages and agricultural machinery. Today the number of horses in America is two million. That is rather severe technological unemployment.[xiv]
Past rounds of automation have mostly been mechanisation: the replacement of muscle power by machines. Once machines took the muscle jobs, the horse had nothing else to offer, which is why 1915 was “peak horse”.
Humans were more fortunate: instead of pulling, pushing and lifting, we now use our cognitive abilities in offices and shops. But now a new and different type of automation is on the way: cognitive automation.
If machines take our cognitive jobs, what will we humans offer next? If the only thing we value is economic contribution, and if robots and computers can contribute better than most of us, what will happen to us?
I’ve already said how digital technologies have revolutionised globalisation once with unbundling of factories.[xv]. Into the future, I think this unbundling will happen to jobs.
It is the same sort of dynamic: specific tasks within a job can now be outsourced to a cheaper worker or to a machine. There will be parts of jobs that cannot be automated, whether because it just isn’t technically possible yet or regulation and institutional inertia.
But automation will always be learning, catching up. So, the bargaining power of workers will be further reduced.
Kevin Kelly, the founder of digital technology bible WIRED, has said that “How well you get paid will depend on how well you work with robots”. So, we need to think beyond person vs robot. We need to think about how Person + Machine = ‘Centaur’.
The unbundling of jobs into tasks also affects the form of the organisations that succeed. It used to be cheaper to have permanent employees then go and find the right people at the right time. But, if you can unbundle tasks, then no longer always true. The gig economy reflects this, but small at the moment.
What about going forward? I can see almost a return to piece work. Before factories, people would work in their homes. They would produce stuff, which a coordinator would buy off them, paying a price per unit (or piece) rather than employing them.
Will default towards digital platforms
And with this, as with so much else in this technological revolution, the direction of travel is towards digital platforms, which coordinate across many actors.
Now, a platform [16] is a multi-sided online arrangement between suppliers and users, with the platform as intermediator. They benefit from low marginal costs, powerful network effects and focus on user number growth. There are "transaction platforms", also known as "digital matchmakers", like Amazon, Airbnb, Uber and Baidu. There are "innovation platform", which provides a common technology framework upon which others can build, eg Microsoft’s Windows operating system, Apple’s Operating System. And there are social platforms like Facebook and Twitter
If your platform can attract more and more participants who get what they need, then you can have a network effect. Dominant platforms tend towards monopoly, e.g. Facebook ~74% social network market share in the UK [17].
These platforms have a dynamic where they have the better data, better processing power and better automation, which drives more success and brings in more data. The result is an ever-growing advantage in the economy, with data extraction is core to their activities.
As the recent IPPR report on digital commonwealth argues, there are some benefits but also big problems. The platforms concentrate bargaining power against workers, and limit innovation rates by putting off entrepreneurs or buying up rivals.
They also host and affect the public and private spheres. It is very difficult to interact with people without being on a digital platform. They are deeply embedded in our lives.
Because their success relies on getting data about you, your attention is more important to them than the quality of the debate. That is why they have a distorting our democracy.
Because the ‘universal platforms’ – Facebook, Google, Amazon and Apple – have most data and ownership of digital infrastructure, they are poised to dominate AI.
We are in a situation Harvard Prof Zuboff calls the result ‘Surveillance Capitalism’ where “the game is selling access to the real-time flow of your daily life –your reality—in order to directly influence and modify your behavior for profit” [18].
Will likely head towards low marginal cost
Finally, increasing AI and automation means the unit costs of goods and services can be massively less.
As our example, let’s look at music. Mick Jagger has said that before recordings, musicians earnt by playing live. With recorded music a few people became pop stars and earnt from selling the recordings. But digital platforms like YouTube, Spotify, or iTunes deliver for users, but reduces what you can earn from recording. So, musicians are back to earning from playing live.
Over time, large parts of our economy could become demonetised[xix]. Difficult to earn lots from it. But also, doesn’t cost much to access.
There is a tantalising possibility: you can be rich in access to goods and services for your life, even if not rich in cash or financial assets.
Fundamentally, the advance of digital technologies will continue to change everything .We know from past technological revolutions, that General Purpose Technologies don’t just disrupt the economy, they also profoundly alter culture, power, knowledge, politics – everything.
The Guttenburg printing press, changed who had access to knowledge and therefore who had power. So, it is and will be digital revolution.
Climate change and the environment.
But there is still more to get ready for. On climate change, and the environment in general, the latest science is scary.
Just this week, study found Himalayan glaciers likely to melt [10], which puts at risk the water supply for millions of people.
In October 2018, the UN International Panel on Climate Change released a Special Report on keeping average warming to less than 1.5C above pre-industrial levels [21]. Their conclusions were twofold. First, going beyond 1.5C degrees will cause deep harm and suffering. Second, we 12 years to decisively be on a low-carbon path.
As noted climate entrepreneur Michael Leibriech has put it, “in just two business cycles – well within the range of our remaining careers – we will find ourselves in a world where either carbon emissions are dramatically lower, or there will be no remaining carbon budget, and presumably no societal license to operate carbon-intensive businesses.” [22]
In short, we need an industrial revolution against a deadline.
The Shocking ‘20s
Therefore, I expect the next 10 years to be full of disruption, conflict and tension.
If the 1920s were the Roaring ‘20s, then then the 2020s will be the Shocking ‘20s.
…and breathe…
So, we’re at the low point in my talk. The bottom of the rollercoaster, so to speak.
Have said currently, we are not ready for everything. Today’s struggles show that. The most plausible futures starting from here is scary.
Now, we’re going to turn the corner:
Our need today is to imagine better.
There is a better future to aim for.
There is something for everyone to do.
4. OUR NEED TODAY IS TO IMAGINE BETTER.
We can get ready for everything by imagining better: by taking a long view of history; by continuously re-solving dilemmas; by co-creating new stories; and by preparing examples and networks to take advantage of crises.
Taking a long-view of history
It is possible to see human history as a series of modes: Hunter Gatherer; Agriculture; Mercantile Capitalism; Industrial Capitalism; and Consumer Capitalism [23]. Each a step up from the last, with more human agency, more cognitive capacity, more energy use – and more environmental destruction.
Now we need a phase change where we have more agency, thinking capacity, energy use but far less environmental impact.
Therefore, digital and renewables are exactly technologies we need, if only we can harness then right. Therefore, also the phase change implies we shift our fundamental understanding of the world and that cascades through our cultures, our politics and our economies.
Getting ready for everything requires a transformation like the Enlightenment. We need to replace all those crumbling foundations I mentioned earlier with a new basis for flourishing.
Resolving dilemmas
At a minimum I can see five dilemmas – seemingly impossible choices – that we need to address. And I suspect the way to address them is not by resolving them choosing one side or the other. Instead, we need to find a way to be continuously re-solving them, to be finding a generous combination of their best qualities [24].
Combining urgency with consent.
We need an industrial revolution against a deadline. There, we need the fastest, deepest and widest change in human history.
It is easy to conclude that we should pursue a radical revolution. But revolutions eat their children. If those acting for change are radical without wider consent, then they will trigger defence routines – and so slow their own change down.
Besides, part of the problem has been technocrats imposing change on people. Many in the West feel like the objects of destructive creation, rather than the beneficiaries of creative destruction.
We need to find a way to combine urgency with consent.
Growth vs Environmental limits.
Just increasing the size of the economy as it is currently configured – fossil fuelled and linear – will boil us alive. But just reducing the amount of useful human activity will mean people are unable to flourish in their own way.
I believe we need to have degrowth of the old, growth of the new.
That is, we need to have an absolute limit on material throughput and so on environmental damage, indeed we will need to regenerate aspects of the natural wold, to better cope with climate chaos. Therefore, we will need to reduce the human activity that relies on material throughput. Hence, ‘degrow the old’.
But, we do need human activity which supports our own flourishing, in ways that are synergistic with the natural world. hence, ‘growth of the new’.
Motivate activity for prosperity without defining people as their economic contribution.
Over the last decades it has been normal to define the value of a person as just their economic contribution. And it has been easy to say that person deserves to be left behind, when they are adding no value.
We face the prospect of digital technologies being better at many things. And, many people being able to add little economic value. Which could be used to justify leaving them (further) behind.
This implies we need to shift how we value a person as not just their economic contribution.
But then a fear arises: will people do useful activities if there are not economic incentives and punishments. This is the large-scale, diffuse coordinating function of markets and price signals. Central planning and resource allocation wasn’t very successful. What else do we have?
We will need to find a way to motivate people’s activity for prosperity without defining people as their economic contribution.
Strong-enough boundary for sense of identity and security while also being open to change.
Being ready for everything will require being open to new experiences to be able to deal with change. But that openness comes bundled with being open to new people entering into the community. We know that people find changes to the ‘in’ group threatening.
In the recent past in the UK, immigration has run ahead of people’s consent. People had the experience of not being able to feel any control or influence over the arrival of outsiders. And so the issue of immigration became a demonstration of being left behind and left out.
Which points to being open to new experiences while people also having a voice the process of change. In turn, I believe that requires people can have a sense of identity and security which they know will last.
Cultivating a rich, resilient hope that comes from working with fear.
There is what I think of as naïve hope: everything will be alright. Think of that cartoon dog in a café on fire saying “Everything is fine!” Clearly, everything is not fine. Going forward with this sort of thin optimism is, in my view dangerous. Through the Shocking 2020s there will be setbacks and disruption. I believe we will find that this naive hope is brittle.
Face with all the challenges and scares that I have outlined so far, fear and despair are natural and normal responses.
It is a small step from there to saying there is nothing can have the effect we need. That we cannot change the politics or the beliefs, or address the permanent advantage of the digital platforms, nor roll out all the climate solutions we need in time. Then the conclusion becomes: all we can do is pull up the drawbridge. (Some people claim that this story of inevitable collapse has contributed to the rise of populist politics across the West [25].)
But just retreating and trying to protect what we have had will not work.
What we need is a rich, thick hope, which is the other side of despair.
I believe we need to find a way of living what has been called the Stockdale paradox: both face the brutal facts and, at the same time, keep faith ultimately find a way through [26].
Co-creating new moral glue and new stories.
We need new stories that act as social sinews we can use to take us in the right direction.
Alex Evans puts this nicely in The Myth Gap. He says we need new myths that change how we see our place in the world, by prompting us to think in terms of:
A larger us - non-zero-sum outcomes at the global scale;
A longer now – deep past and an equally deep future;
A different good life – not based on material consumption but on a profound sense of belonging and purpose;
Redemption – feel and move past our grief and our guilt, [at what we have to done to ourselves, to each other and to the natural world]; and
A future of renewal.
Political space for transformation relies on shift in beliefs, attitudes in individuals that also aggregate up to culture.What I definitely don’t mean here is: “if only other people had a values shift…”. What I do mean is that we all need to do inner work, in order to have this outer change in the world.
And this needs to be pursued through ‘show, not tell’. A vision poster or policy statement is absolutely inadequate. These new stories must be part of people’s lived experiences, they must be demonstrated through actions.
Preparing for crises
“Only a crisis—actual or perceived—produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes politically inevitable.”
So said Milton Friedman, not someone I usually refer to positively [27]. But his success, overturning Keynesian economic policy with neoliberalism, points to the fundamental insight. In our case, we need to build examples and networks, ready to turn the disruptions into profound, positive change.
5. DAY IN THE LIFE
Now, all that is rather dry. So let’s imagine a day in the life of someone in 2040. [Note: I asked the audience for a volunteer to be placed into 2040. The person who put up their hand was Emma, a well-being practitioner.]
It is Tuesday, 7 Feb, 2040. Emma wakes up in Kier Hardie Towers, run by Community Links. She picks up this morning’s deliveries, including her clean clothes for the day.
The morning news is about the National Citizens Jury on UK’s Coastal Seas. The waters around the UK will be getting warmer for decades, even though global carbon emissions peaked over a decade ago and are still declining. The citizen jury is considering how best to deal with the consequences, even use them for farming fourth generation biofuels. Emma shakes her head.
Over breakfast, Emma talks with her grandson about what they are doing in school. It’s recent history: the food shortage of the late 2020s. Not good times. But it did prompt the national mission on food production. Emma reminds him it is their turn to weed the garden on the outside wall of the flat. “Keeps us cool and adds a bit to the table” you say.
Emma’s concierge AI informs tells Emma your latest payment into her UK Digital Citizen Account. Every month for fifteen years, she’s received a small amount of cash, which is her share of the revenues generated by companies from data about Emma. The more you open up your data, the more you might earn but reduces your privacy. Emma has chosen a medium setting.
Of course, many of the digital platforms are now regulated as public utilities, much as water companies were in the past. There is money to be made by building businesses on top of these platforms, but competition law is too strong to allow for-profit monopolies. Who would have thought the US and the EU would have collaborated to make that happen in 2025? Or that China would follow suit 5 years later?
Emma’s self-drive car arrives just when you need it, as pre-emptively ordered by her concierge AI. She shares the ride with some other passengers who have a similar route. Each of you talk and work as the automated car makes it way to the co-working hub.
Emma settles into her co-working space, which has fantastic Virtual Reality suite, where she interacts with people in India, China and the UK as if they are in the next seat.
Most days Emma works at home, but the higher quality interaction is needed for some of the today. There will be a long list of options for a building. Most were generated by the machines, with design criteria set by Emma. Now, along with her colleagues, She has to select the best, and articulate the reasons why she think the eventual users will like them.
Emma has several projects at the same time, each for different worker-owned, cooperatives. She is attracted by the quality of the people, and the AIs. There are certain people and AIs which she finds she works best with, and they all chose to join together.
All Emma’s contributions are recorded, so that she gets paid on the basis of her element of the final design.
She remembers when being paid-per-task would have felt risky. But she has some security, from the Digital Citizen payments.
There’s also the local community currency. That keep tabs on how much people are helping other people in Canning Town – just to make sure there are no free riders. Emma puts in a bit of design work for individuals, and running a Vintage Gaming night at the local community hub. Classic Football Manager 2015 with some nostalgic folks. She uses them for babysitting.
Of course, the flat itself is one of the Universal Basic Services you use. The semi-communal living is cheaper than a private flat, and more fun too. Lots of effort goes into making the intergenerational groups get on with each other. The shared garden space helps, as does group tasks like the weeding. More important is the celebrating things together; each month there is something for you all together round.
Mid-afternoon she takes part in a focus group on regional immigration. The Mayor of London is setting the regional quota, and engaging people across the city. Emma’s is only one vote among thousands, but the Mayor has to show how they respond to the inputs.
You get home from work to find another of the regular deliveries. It includes ingredients, ready-to-cook. Tonight is the ‘Mixing Newham Pot Luck’, hosted by your block of flats. Anyone can turn up with a food contribution, and people talk with strangers or friends. When these were first started it felt odd, but now they are just part of the norm of a participatory city.
Also, the 3D printer in the apartment block has made some plates, replacing the ones Emma’s grandson broke yesterday. Emma remembers when you had to go and buy stuff from shops which had been made far away. Much rarer now, the intellectual property is traded, but many things are made – and repaired, and recycled - locally. Thanks to that ‘Circular London’ mission from 2023.
Emma’s other delivery is camping gear from a subscription service, the latest kit for the weekend trip.
Emma get a reminder from Open University. Sunday is the deadline for your technical assignment. You ask your AI concierge to put some time aside to finish it on Friday, which is study day. Everyone works a four day week now.
Late in the evening Emma gets a call from a friend. They were out on a date, set up by an app. But it didn’t go well. Apparently his in-ear AI wingman was on the blink again. It kept suggesting the wrong thing to say.
6. THERE IS A BETTER FUTURE TO AIM FOR.
That was a day in the life of a someone in a digitally-enabled access economy, where people and communities can flourish in co-evolution with the rest of nature.
Now, over the coming 100 years, we are going to need to shift to a global human society that [28]:
Gives everyone access to what they need to flourish in their own way.
Has socio-economic systems that can flex to challenges at the scale and urgency that they occur.
Co-evolves with nature.
The urgent task for the next decade is to take a big step in that direction. We need to start moving to:
Low-carbon, circular modes of production and consumption.
Political institutions and economic configuration that are responsive [29].
People having secure livelihoods and a stake in their future.
The day in the life illustrated some different aspects of how we might achieve this.
It was a digitally-enabled access economy. On the level of physical flows, all those deliveries from subscription services were supposed to show it was it was circular and renewably powered. That is one direction for a smart city, with ubiquitous AI and an Internet of Things.
The digital technologies make possible local production from global ideas (aka Cosmo-Localism [30]). This changes what is possible with local industrial strategies.
Emma has a secure livelihood, comprised of a formal (task-based) income, informal support, micropayments, a local community currency and Universal Basic Services [31]. Public services and goods delivered in ways that simultaneously give people access to functional capabilities and build the capacity of local communities.
In the story, an individual’s wellbeing comes from context and web of relations, which create belonging and identity.
This 2040 envisages complimentary roles of people and machines. Machines bring fast analysis and pattern recognition that answers a question. People bring emotionally- and socially-astute insights that reveal the quest behind the question [32].
The vision also has new institutions for new times. So, digital platforms are public utilities or owned and run as cooperatives.
Finally, people have voice in decisions that affect them Forms of deliberative democracy are a norm.
Taken all together, this story is proposing that there could be more prosperity for far less environmental impact.
7. TO SUM UP
1. Currently, we are not ready for everything.
Today’s politics show that. The most plausible future starting from here: digital technologies driver further concentration of power and more wealth inequalities. Where more people feel left behind and left out.
When you add in thresholds in how our climate will change, then global civilisation could be permanently diminished. People are right to be afraid and angry. No wonder they turn to people who claim they can protect them.
2. Getting ready for everything requires a transformation like the Enlightenment
We need to shift our fundamental understanding of the world and that cascades through our cultures, our politics and our economies.
3. AI, automation and renewable energy are exactly the disruptive technologies we need now.
If we can get the worldviews and politics right then we craft a digitally-enabled access economy, where physical stuff flows in loops, and is powered by renewables. People can be rich in what they access, even if not rich in income or assets.
4. Getting the politics right involves at least:
Combining urgency with consent.
Degrowth of the old, growth of the new.
Motivating activity for prosperity without defining people as their economic contribution.
Strong enough boundaries for sense of identity and security while also being open to change.
Cultivating a rich, resilient hope that comes after working with fear.
5. There is something for all of us to do, in our daily habits through to how we lead big institutions.
We need to build examples and networks, ready to turn disruptions into profound, positive change. All the while demonstrating to people that their fears can be addressed through change.
The activity together shows a bigger story: a larger us; a longer now; a different good life; redemption for past hurts, so we can move forward; and renewal.
8. THE TASK OF OUR GENERATION.
There is one last thing I wanted to say: this is the task of our generation.
We are the lucky few. We get to be the people who give future generations the gift of abundance, and security.
If we just look at the history of this building in Canning Town, different generations have acted for progress and prosperity. 100 years ago, Sylvia Pankhurst and others campaigned for Votes for Women, and succeeded. 120 years ago Kier Hardie and others founded the Labour Party, tilting power towards people for the 20th century. I’m told Ghandi may have spoken here in the 1880s, and decades later he led the movement for Indian Independence.
Getting Ready for Everything is what we get to do with our time. In 20 years, 50 years, 100 years, 200 years, they will be glad of our efforts.
We can harness amazing digital innovations and abundant capacity people and communities in all their brilliance to face our collective challenges.
We get to a create digital future where people and communities can flourish, where societies can flex to challenges and where we co-evolve with nature
A digital future, where we are ready for everything.
Thank you.
References
[1] https://wearesocial.com/blog/2018/01/global-digital-report-2018
[2] https://www.lifewire.com/how-many-iphones-have-been-sold-1999500
[3] https://www.domo.com/learn/data-never-sleeps-6
[4] https://www.gurufocus.com/term/ev/AAPL/Enterprise-Value/Apple%20Inc
[5] https://www.gurufocus.com/term/ev/AMZN/Enterprise-Value/Amazon.com%20Inc
[6] https://www.gurufocus.com/term/ev/XOM/Enterprise-Value/Exxon-Mobil-Corp
[7] See Richard Baldwin’s The Great Convergence
[8] See Brooking’s Institute ‘Robot’s aren’t Taking the Jobs – Just the Paychecks’
[9] As predicted by Bloomberg New Energy Finance – see their New Energy Outlook 2018
[10] See Alex Steffen, Trump, Putin and Pipelines to Nowhere
[12] See The Anthropocene equation by Owen Gaffney and Will Steffen.
[13] Full story in David Wood’s Transcending Politics, Chapter 4.
[14] Story in ‘Robots will steal our jobs. Hooray?’ by Calum Chace in RSA’s Field Guide To The Future Of Work: Essay Collection.
[15] Baldwin, The Great Convergence
[16] Lawrence and Laybourn-Langton, The Digital Commonwealth: from private enclosure to public benefit, IPPR
[17] IPPR, The Digital Commonwealth
[18] Zuboff, The Secrets of Surveillance Capitalism.
[19] ‘Robots will steal our jobs. Hooray?’ by Calum Chace in RSA’s Field Guide To The Future Of Work: Essay Collection.
[20] Coverage in the Guardian – here.
[21] IPCC Special Report 1.5C - here
[22] Liebreich, ‘Two Business Cycles to Prepare for A Low-Carbon World,’ here
[23] Lewis, S., and M. Maslin. "The human planet: How we created the Anthropocene." (2018).
[24] This notion of ‘re-solving’ is inspired by two sources. The International Future Forum’s approach to dilemma thinking (see here) and Rilke’s Letter to a Young Poet, saying he should live the question.
[25] For instance, Alex Evans in The Myth Gap.
[26] More on the Stockdale Paradix can be found on Wikipedia.
[27] Quote in Duncan Green, How Change Happens.
[28] This is my current way of expressing a sustainable footing.
- ‘access to what they need to flourish’ follows Sen and Nussbaum’s capabilities framework.
- ‘flex to challenges’ comes from my thought that sustainability comes from the ability to adapt, following for instance Orit Gal’s notion of social acupuncture.
- Co-evolving with nature comes from The Anthropocene equation by Owen Gaffney and Will Steffen.
[29] The need for inclusive political and economic institutions comes from Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson’s Why Nations Fail
[30] See P2P Foundation explanation here
[31] More on Universal Basic Services here
[32] Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson Machine, Crowd, Platform