Machines are on the verge of
providing us with capabilities we can hardly begin to imagine. Yet before we
can actually take advantage of them, we must eliminate the side effects of
using machines at an unprecedented scale since the First Machine Age kicked in
in the late 18th century, also known as the Age of Western Enlightenment. Once
we manage to do so, instead of the apocalyptic scenarios of singularity, we may
discover the essence of our own humanity in a way never seen before: as a
machine-human continuum, and US realizing that with great (machine) power comes
great responsibility!
Motto: “Ignorance, the root and stem of all evil.” (Plato)
In his pamphlet 21st Century Enlightenment, Matthew Taylor, CEO of
the RSA (Royal Society for the Encouragement
of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce), referred to the social aspiration gap as “the
gap between the kind of future to which most people in a moderate, reasonably
cohesive society aspire and our trajectory relying on current modes of thought
and behavior.”
He asserts: “…this
gap can be said to comprise
three dimensions; three ways in which
tomorrow’s citizens need, in aggregate, to be different to today’s.
First, citizens need to be more engaged, by which I
mean more willing to appreciate the choices society faces, to get involved in
those choices, to give permission to their leaders to make the right decisions
for all of us for the long term, and to recognize how their own behavior shapes
those choices.
Second,
with the cost of labor intensive public services bound to rise, citizens need to be more self-sufficient and
resourceful. Whether it is looking after our health, investing in our
education, saving for our retirement or setting up our own business, we need to
be comfortable with managing our own lives and confident about taking
initiative.
Third, we
need to be more
pro-social, behaving in ways which strengthen society, contributing to what the
writer on social capital, David Halpern, calls the hidden wealth of nations;
our capacity for trust, caring and co-operation.”
He continues suggesting that the “gap is less one of recognition and more one
of intent. We seem to see that things need to be different, and that this has
implications for us all, while responding to the empty promise that change can
be achieved without challenging any of our assumptions and behaviors. A poll
commissioned by the 2020 Public Services Trust at the RSA found that voters
tended to condemn politicians for failing to tell the truth about the current
deficit while at the same time demanding to be protected from any service cuts
or tax rises.”
In my interpretation, recognition
implies something more than the intuition that something is not right; we can start
by asking: How can we be so delusional and lack intent? What makes us so
disengaged (socially and politically) and isolates us from the wealth of our
inner and social resources, which would dramatically increase our autonomy?
There is wide consensus that historically,
people have never had it so good, – even in light of the pockets of political
instability and war across the globe. There is also consensus that this has
been made possible by the momentous changes brought about by Western
Enlightenment – the market economy, modern state institutions and science/technology
- which could effectively serve the notions of human autonomy, universality and
humanistic purpose. The closely linked relationship between these notions has
created a world in which progress towards the humanistic values of the Enlightenment
seemed linear - especially until the end of the 20th century when Francis
Fukuyama proclaimed
the End of History.
Yet, as Mr. Taylor asserts, we
haven’t accomplished what the authors of the Enlightenment envisioned.
The reason for this seems to be
related to the progress of science and technology, to the efficiency-chasing
and inequality creating the logic of the market economy as well as to our
success in liberating ourselves (some more than others) from various
existential constrains that were characteristic of humanity’s earlier history.
But most importantly, it is related to our psychological (in)ability to cope
with all of these achievements and to their effects on how we view ourselves,
our social environment (communities) and how they drive our intentions.
The First Machine Age triggered
an automation at such a large scale that while humanity, by and large, lived
better (less constrained) and longer, it also became disengaged due to
specialization and bureaucracies that fueled its underlying revolution in
efficiency. Specialization created parallel worlds of "soft"
humanities and "hard" science/technology, which in turn generated the
illusion that humanity can exist separately from machines that exist to simply
deal with tedious everyday tasks. While work has become more productive and
efficient than ever before, it has also become less engaging because it is more
automated.
Consequently, instead of the former existential physical
constraints we used to be confronted with, we have created new ones, but this
time mental ones! This is the price we as the representatives of humanity as a
whole are paying for more efficiency, the market economy and the modern state. This
cost remained hidden for quite some time (or was articulated in an erroneous
context, such as in the case of Karl Marx, providing a wrong
solution, communism, and adding even more costs on top of the existing ones).
Kant was among those who
recognized the danger of Enlightenment values turning into an own dogma,
forgetting the limited and contingent nature of human rationality. Michel Foucault says of Kant’s own description of
enlightenment: “It has to be conceived as
attitude, an ethos and a philosophical life in which the critique of what we
are is at one and the same time the historical analysis of the limits that are
imposed on us and an experiment with the possibility of going beyond them.”
Enter the Second Machine Age. Machines have added another dimension to their
capabilities (leveraging/duplicating our innate abilities, but this time, in
the mental space) and, at least in theory, we now have the possibility of removing
the mental constraints from our lives as well. Unfortunately, this hasn't
happened yet for at least
three identifiable reasons:
First, in the transitional phase, computers simply mimicked First Machine Age (process-driven, rational) efficiency. Today,
they do so even more efficiently and thus additional “human” value is lost (e.g.,
doctors’ paper medical records, which were invaluable for professional and
educational purposes, have been lost due to digitization). This “transitional
phase effect” has been observed before, when electric engines replaced steam
engines (initially, the factory design followed the earlier patterns when the
big steam engine was located in the center of the assembly floor).
Secondly, because we are still not
articulating the mental constraints (or ignorance), we are subjected to our
natural inclinations and social environment or to the fact that technology or
tools are not designed around human needs and experiences. The “quantified self”
concept, for example, often distorts the significance of the data we are
hoarding about the “self” – instead of complementing it, it may actually
replace the mental picture we have of ourselves (the lure of “easy numbers”). As
pointed out by philosopher Bruno Latour
“Matters
of fact are only very partial and, I would argue, very polemical, very
political renderings of matters of concern and only a subset of what could also
be called states of affairs” . Cognitive computing is now available, but only as a tool for
specialized domains, instead of integrating knowledge and disseminating it.
Thirdly, because science has led us
to the conclusion that human nature is ultimately controlled by our mind. As
science brings more and more examples of how incredibly flexible our brain is
(just look at a TED-talk of David
Eagleman) we see more and more evidence that our nature staid essentially
the same during the millennia of human civilization, evidence that led
philosopher N. N. Taleb to formulate
the following conjecture on a recent post on FaceBook: “Any "discovery" in the
"soft" sciences related to human nature that is not wrong should be
found in the ancients, and, if not there, it would be wrong.”
Last, but not least, because the path of least
resistance (therefore more efficient) ultimately leads to the conclusion that it is
unnecessary to formulate intentions (of any kind). The
data available about people allow the formulation of solutions (by more
efficient businesses and governments) even before they have to possibility to articulate
a need or intention!
What Mark Lilla says about current political thinking - “Our hubris is
to think that we no longer have to think hard or pay attention or look for
connections, that all we have to do is stick to our “democratic values” and
economic models and faith in the individual and all will be well” - is also echoed by Michael Sandel on the role of markets in our lives: “Our reluctance to bring competing
conceptions of the good life into political debate has not only impoverished
our public discourse; it has also left us ill equipped to contend with the
growing role and reach of markets in our lives.”, as well as by Evgeny Morozov on the
current digital infrastructure (known under the collective name “the Internet”),
which is assuming an increasingly significant role in exposing us to both
politics and markets: “If the public
debate is any indication, the finality of "the Internet"— the belief
that it's the ultimate technology and the ultimate network— has been widely
accepted. Its Silicon Valley's own version of the end of history: just as
capitalism-driven liberal democracy in Francis Fukuyama's controversial account
remains the only game in town, so does the capitalism-driven "Internet”. It,
the logic goes, is a precious gift from the gods that humanity should never
abandon or tinker with. Thus, while "the Internet" might disrupt
everything, it itself should never be disrupted. It's here to stay— and we'd
better work around it, discover its real nature, accept its features as given,
learn its lessons, and refurbish our world accordingly. If it sounds like a
religion, it's because it is.”
The direct consequence is that people are operating on
autopilot-mode, know less about themselves than computing-enabled businesses
and governments and don’t even counterbalance this phenomenon by formulating
intentions of their own (who has time to do so when there is so much going on on
Netflix and Facebook?)!
The indirect consequence is that we
continue to satisfy most of their personal needs (while at the same time
gradually becoming more ignorant about other needs), we are becoming disengaged
socially (if we cannot even formulate personal intentions, it is even less
likely to formulate collective or shared intentions) and politically (in our
“digital Disneyland”, politics sound very unfamiliar and problematic).
Technology and socio-economic status determine an individual’s “cognitive
island”, leading to ever increasing inequality and ever decreasing social
cohesion.
…and ultimately: the prospect of technological Singularity– the prospect that the
exponentially increasing capabilities of technology will hopelessly outpace
human capabilities (although, as we can see, this has already happened!) – both
its economic and social consequences need to be addressed to close the social
aspiration gap to ensure that society can flourish.
Our aim should be a society that
is aware of its machine-enhanced capabilities and is able to engender intentions
that foster both personal and collective well-being.
