1.11 Two Scenarios: Coercion or Freedom
11
The digital revolution implies great opportunities and risks. Digital technologies enable different ways of running future economies and societies. If we
don’t want to lose our jobs, personal freedom, and democracy, we must carefully consider how to make digital technologies work for us, rather than against
us. There are at least two possibilities to automate society: we may either run
it in a top-down way, trying to controll the citizens’ decisions and actions,
using powerful information technologies, or we may instead support bottom-up
self-organization based on distributed control. The latter would be compatible
with individual freedom, creativity and innovation (see Fig. 1.2). However, the
digital revolution enables both. As I will explain further on, to support largely
autonomous decisions and processes and the coordination of them, we would
have to
1. create participatory opportunities,
2. support informational self-control,
3. increase distributed design and control elements,
4. add transparency for the sake of trust,
5. reduce information biases and noise,
6. enable user-controlled information filters,
7. support socio-economic diversity,
8. increase interoperability and innovation,
9. build coordination tools,
10. create digital assistants,
11. support collective (“swarm”) intelligence,
12. measure and consider external effects (“externalities”),
13. enable favorable feedback loops,
14. support a fair and multi-dimensional value exchange,
15. increase digital literacy and awareness.
In this book, I am trying to offer concepts and ideas that can contribute to a
smarter and more resilient digital society. Such a framework is needed, because in
many important respects, the world has become quite unpredictable and unstable.
This is partially due to the increasing level of interdependency of our systems,
often driven by advances in Information and Communication Technology. Therefore, which approach will be superior in a world characterized by too much data, too
much speed, and too much connectivity? Will it be top-down governance or bottomup participation? Or would it be better to combine both approaches? And how would
we do this?
20 We will see that this mainly depends on the complexity of the systems
surrounding us.
20 In his book on The Third Industrial Revolution, Jeremy Rifkin gives interesting answers to this
for the case of smart (energy) grids and some other systems.
11
The digital revolution implies great opportunities and risks. Digital technologies enable different ways of running future economies and societies. If we
don’t want to lose our jobs, personal freedom, and democracy, we must carefully consider how to make digital technologies work for us, rather than against
us. There are at least two possibilities to automate society: we may either run
it in a top-down way, trying to controll the citizens’ decisions and actions,
using powerful information technologies, or we may instead support bottom-up
self-organization based on distributed control. The latter would be compatible
with individual freedom, creativity and innovation (see Fig. 1.2). However, the
digital revolution enables both. As I will explain further on, to support largely
autonomous decisions and processes and the coordination of them, we would
have to
1. create participatory opportunities,
2. support informational self-control,
3. increase distributed design and control elements,
4. add transparency for the sake of trust,
5. reduce information biases and noise,
6. enable user-controlled information filters,
7. support socio-economic diversity,
8. increase interoperability and innovation,
9. build coordination tools,
10. create digital assistants,
11. support collective (“swarm”) intelligence,
12. measure and consider external effects (“externalities”),
13. enable favorable feedback loops,
14. support a fair and multi-dimensional value exchange,
15. increase digital literacy and awareness.
In this book, I am trying to offer concepts and ideas that can contribute to a
smarter and more resilient digital society. Such a framework is needed, because in
many important respects, the world has become quite unpredictable and unstable.
This is partially due to the increasing level of interdependency of our systems,
often driven by advances in Information and Communication Technology. Therefore, which approach will be superior in a world characterized by too much data, too
much speed, and too much connectivity? Will it be top-down governance or bottomup participation? Or would it be better to combine both approaches? And how would
we do this?
20 We will see that this mainly depends on the complexity of the systems
surrounding us.
20 In his book on The Third Industrial Revolution, Jeremy Rifkin gives interesting answers to this
for the case of smart (energy) grids and some other systems.