The System Clashes of our Digital Age
A popular saying in the 1960s and 70’s was, “it’s the system man.” More accurately, it was the systems. Not just the system. Massive systemic changes were afoot in that time. Societal, political, generational, cultural, technological. The rise of the Digital Age that we entering now though, was only just beginning with the invention of the microchip. Now, 50 years later, we are almost exactly in the cycle of revolutionary changes caused by technology described by economist Dr. Carlota Perez.
Arguably, we may be in a time of even more significant systemic changes. Perhaps on a level akin to the ancient gods of Nordic Sagas, Greek, Hindu, Native American mythologies and other ancient societies. Their stories of gods and deities battling it out amongst each other and us mere humans being their playthings, was in part, always about a change of systems. They are important constructs.
Such stories and myths have long been how we mere mortals make sense of our lives, our societies, history and how to live. So profound are these tales in our psyche that they still inspire many Hollywood movies, streaming series and modern Sci-Fi and fantasy literature.
We are all aware, to varying degrees and interest, that the world is going through some monumental changes. Economic markets are not behaving the way we’ve been used to. A war in Europe no one thought would happen until it did. Senseless as it is. A pandemic that played a part in what was already looming; that the way capitalism is working is not what the majority of society wants. Growing income inequality. Climate change acceleration. Massive inflation. Democracy under threat and the rise of populism and authoritarianism. The existential threat of Artificial Intelligence (which may well be overhyped. Or not.)
These are all happening because sociocultural systems are changing. At a global scale, faster than ever before in human history. This includes financial systems, economic models, military, politics, the current form of capitalism. They are clashing between what was and the future people around the world want it to become.
A common thread through all of these systems that are clashing are digital technologies. The microchip lead to the mass manufacturing of more affordable computing, genetic engineering, Artificial Intelligence, data storage, the internet, social media, smartphones, the Internet-of-Things, better rockets, better robots, blockchain, crypto and so on.
These technologies have also resulted in both good and bad outcomes. I’ll not dive into these here for fear of putting you to sleep. We know that all technologies are a double-edged sword and we know they all have unintended consequences. Not that we’re really taking any of those lessons to heart. That would not be helpful for shareholder dividends.
We shouldn’t blame the technologies themselves either. Technology is mostly neutral. It’s how humans decide to use it that makes the difference. As I’ve written before, technology does change us, but we then, through culture, change technology.
Human sociocultural systems have been changing for hundreds of thousands of years. We once wandered about the plains trying to avoid being some other animals dinner. We figured out hanging out together was safer too. From foraging, hunter-gathering, agriculture, cities and to where we are today.
Over the past several thousand years we’ve played with all kinds of social systems, economic models, politics, governance. One of them that we hung onto for dear life was bureaucracy. When we figured out the technology of writing, we didn’t write love poems to our romantic interests. We wrote down inventories and debts. Ledgers.
Today, Artificial Intelligence could disrupt both corporate and government bureaucracies. Talk about a clash of systems! Bureaucrats first order of business has always been to protect their jobs going back to the time of one on the greatest bureaucratic systems ever known, the Egyptians.
Crypto too, is less about the technology and more about an argument against the current financial system. Today, the battle between the crypto bros and the established financial system is in full bore.
Social media has played a role in bringing us together, but also dividing us and making us feel more lonely. Right now, culture is figuring out how to fix it. Such systemic changes take a while. But we see already how different generations view social media as represented through memes as cultural methods of signalling.
Blockchain is a dream of bringing transparency to industries and systems that are often opaque best and often have grey areas. Such light of transparency goes against how many complex, massive systems today operate. Is our world ready for such a degree of transparency? Also, blockchain doesn’t scale well. So there’s that wee challenge.
The internet has enabled a suite of tools that showed us the world in new ways, to organise and communicate at a scale and speed never before possible in our species history. We’ve long known it would change us, we just didn’t quite know how. And here we are. Good and bad.
Then there are the technology giants of today. They too, want their share of new systems. The more of our systems we put in their clouds, the more they can change our systems. This can be good, it can also be quite dangerous. In a recent TED Talk, Ian Bremmer points to this potential future. The Tech Giants wield incredible economic and lobbying power, they too are trying to change analog systems.
Our societies and cultures have always been changing; evolving and sometimes devolving, then evolving. It is the cycle of being human. As the saying goes, history doesn’t repeat, but it often rhymes.
Technologies have always played a role as well. Inventing stone tools helped us when we organised into early clans and tribes. Just as the internet today helps us form clans and tribes with new rules. Some things never really change.
I recently wrote about how the flood of technologies today may be overwhelming culture. Part of that is all the systems that we use to run our increasingly complex world that are being impacted by technology.
Technology isn’t to blame for this period of systemic changes we are in, but it does play a significant role. And it will be technologies that help us to figure it out too. And when we do, we are likely to find we’ve made sociocultural progress.
So yes, it’s the systems my fellow humans.
