Films such as: The Matrix and 2001 A Space Odyssey show how humanity could succumb to its own technology. Could this ever become a real threat?
Technological advances such as automation, artificial intelligence, robotics, biotechnology, health etc. have exponentially progressed during the last 2 centuries. As a result Humanity has reached higher levels of efficiency and productivity and has seen its population flourish; in the last 200 years it grew from 1B to 7.5B. Forecasts estimate a growth from 7.5B to 9.5B in the next 30 years.
World Population in the last 2000 years
An unequal distribution of economic resources has also soared.
Is this correlation sustainable? Would we reach a point where adopting a Facile Externality ideology will be more convenient, i.e. less efficiency would actually be more efficient to attain a sustainable distribution of economic resources and reduce inequality?
To explore this idea lets analyse the two sides of a coin:
On one side: Technology is eroding economic development faster than it’s redistributing it.
A good example can be seen in the energy industry where automation is replacing labour.
Our society consumes the largest amounts of energy ever, mainly produced by burning coal. In the past an increase in coal demand was strongly correlated to an increase in labour i.e. miners to extract it.
Today the USA produces almost 50% more coal than it did in 1940 but employs only 13% of so of the miners, according to the bureau of labour statistics. Also, less labour-intensive means to produce energy, such as shale gas and solar techniques, have boosted in the last decade. In 2006 coal generated 49% of USA electricity, by 2015 it provided 30%.
Situations like this have boosted unemployment levels; the displaced jobs are not replaced at the same pace as technology development. (the latest is somehow described by More´s law).
This situation has generated a lot of frustration among middle classes, mostly blue-collar workers, married with an out-dated baby boom life path ideal i.e. working hard in a long term blue collard job to raise a family and eventually retire and get a pension. Today´s middle classes have realised that following this path to fulfil the same life quality levels (or better) than their preceding generation is very hard to achieve; many must hold two or more jobs to get a descent livelihood.
An interesting effect of this context is how Populist Politicians around the world are yielding from this frustration by blaming minorities on lost labour when the one to blame is our own success on achieving higher efficiency and productivity levels, through technology.
Ironically technology has also provided the means to underestimate the stakes of these politicians to reach positions of power. An example of this is Dialler technology which provides an efficient way to call people to survey their vote intention.
Yet, the technology fails to guarantee that a random sample of people actually pick up the phone to objectively respond to a survey. Think of Homer Simpson? Would such a character, common in many western societies, be willing to take the time to objectively respond to a telephone poll? Now thing about Lisa Simpson, would she?
In these cases society could be seen as a victim of their own technological success.
On the other side: Technology is opening new possibilities to allocate economic resources in a way that was unattainable in the past and is disrupting several industries.
For instance the disruption in the Music industry: In the traditional music industry new bands were not able to get a fair take on their sold albums. David Byrnes very well describes this in his book “How music works”.
Companies such as Kobalt are disrupting this market by using digital technologies that allow Musicians to effectively yield from their Music. This has opened a whole new possibility for bands to profit from their artistic work, they now have a better chance to get a livelihood out of their artistic work.
Another good example is Fintech: These companies use digital technologies to provide a range of financial services such as: international payments, personal loans, crowd funding, investment advisory etc. They have flourished during the last 3 years by applying differentiation strategies such as lower interest rates, agile on-boarding processes and tailor made customer service.
They are exploiting the competitive advantage of an operation based on digital technologies that allows them to avoid expensive fix costs such as: a) The operational cost of massive core banking systems and processes (almost impossible to upgrade or replace at large traditional banks) or b) The maintenance cost of traditional brick and mortar branch networks, very inefficient in a digital world. Below a list of some Fintech companies:
Bitcoin Wallet: https://www.snapcard.io
WeFinance: https://www.wefinance.co
Personal Loans: https://www.upstart.com
SigFig: https://www.sigfig.com/site/#/home/am
Dyme: http://www.dyme.co
Stripe: https://stripe.com
Below also a series of interesting videos with several examples of how technology is disrupting well-established industries:
http://eydisrupters.films.economist.com/?utm_source=EFilms&utm_medium=Banner&utm_campaign=EY
In all these cases technological progress is opening new means to distribute economic resources and boost competitiveness.
I believe that technology should eventually balance its own paradoxical economic erosion. Today´s Society must find means to redistribute economic resources fairly and promptly, arising from higher efficiency and productivity. This should couple with the pace of technological development.
Failing to do this could increase inequality and frustration levels and wakeup a social behemoth with the potential to radicalize entire societies and push them to adopt protectionist vices contradicting values such as freedom, equality and fraternity.
At the end our society has always been able to adapt, as Anaïs Nin said: “Something is always born of excess: great art was born of great terror, great loneliness, great inhibitions, instabilities, and it always balances them.”
In this occasion it should not be different but must be exponentially faster.
That´s all there is 