As a researcher and consultant in the field of digital transformation, I work with companies, NGOs and governments and watch closely the emergence of digital innovations that ought to shape our future and the future of next generations. As much as I do believe in the positive impacts of such innovations on the economy, health, education and governance, I do share some fears, like many others, for the negative impact of such digital innovations on the future of human beings. Those fears are incited by looking at the motives behind the development of many of nowadays’ digital innovation.
Those motives often revolves around reducing expenses and boosting profits through replacing humans with software or artificial intelligence. Such motives are in fact problematic for our future and they raise several important questions that are important for us to consider and resolve. For example: with such a fast growing speed of AI adoption, what would be the future of work for us as humans? What consequences may some digital innovations have on our mental, social and economic well being? What would the wealth gap look like in such an envisioned digital future? Are we going to suffer from extreme stress, mental and psychological illness due to information overload or our dependency on technology? Or are we going to develop technology that would reduce our stress levels and promote our mental well being? Are we going to delegate our memory brain functions to technology and evolve to have a fish-like memory? Or are we going to develop technologies that would strengthen our mental abilities and boost our human memory? Should we in the future develop a mental gym like we developed a physical one in the past to maintain our bare minimum mental functions? Or are we going to use technology to maintain our collective human intellect at an acceptable level?
I was asked recently to deliver a keynote speech at the European Union funded conference “Digital Citizens, Where Are You?” in Erfurt, Germany addressing educators who work with the youngsters through various digital tools. I saw that speech as an opportunity to address the growing fears of humanity’s digital future with a positive outlook on what we can do to face them. I decided to address the question of: what can we do to protect our future from the potential dangers of some digital innovations that do not take humans’ well being and needs into consideration?
We can indeed protect our future if we work together on three different dimensions, which in my opinion, can shape a humane digital future for us and next generations.
First, we need a radical change in the digital transformation’s agenda by protecting humans and putting their well-being first in every digital innovation, because without doing so, we risk the future of humanity’s intellect.
We first need a conceptual revolution in the purposes of digital innovation. Digital innovation should be driven by a moral compass, rather than by the capitalist machine. It should focus on helping humans perform better rather than reducing costs or boosting profits. If we don’t do this now, our future might be at a great risk.
We should in fact learn from our history in order for us to have a better future with digitization. The industrial revolution, which was largely inspired by the vision of substituting people’s physical abilities with machines in order to increase profits, produce on mass scale and do what humans used to do, in a better way has failed in creating a better future for humanity. Without a moral compass that puts humans first, we suffered an era of climate change, diseases related to industrialized process foods, and deterioration of people’s physical abilities due to reduction of mobility and the use of physical strength in average.
Even though we have such history in the back of our minds, humans started to invest in digital transformation with a motivation that is not very far from that of the industrial revolution driven by the capitalist machine, loathing after profits and cost reduction.
Yes, we as a digital generation, have to embrace technologies, it’s not in question, but at the same time we have to adjust the path of innovation so that it puts humans first. We should promote digital innovation that takes into consideration the innate needs for human beings to think, to connect and to be social, and fight the digital innovation that does otherwise.
Second, we need to capitalize on the digital crowd’s power to create a future that we want to have, not a future that is dictated for us. In doing so, we should first not underestimate the power of the digital crowd.
In 2011, I, among many other Egyptians, was active on Social Media following and sharing the pictures that got leaked in the press for Khaled Said, the Egyptian young citizen who was tortured and killed by the police forces. The photos that were being shared on social media inspired people to create a Facebook group named “we are all Khaked Said”, the group got bigger and bigger and the admins of the group started to share more evidence about prior atrocities of our governments and their complete disregard for human rights, and the poor. People organized an event on the same platform for the 25th of January to which I responded. People who participated physically were few actually on that day, but the police forces decided to end this, they dispersed the small crowd forcibly, and arrested whoever they could. This was filmed by media and activists, and later shared on social media, inspiring many others to plan for a much bigger protest the following Friday the 28th of January. So many people have subscribed to that event, in huge numbers that the government decided to take down the internet on the 28th to prevent people from seeing that event. Yes, the whole country was without internet at all. But people who were mobilized online and on social media went to the streets, and those who couldn’t follow what was happening on social media soon joined as well and in 18 days they overthrew the regime. Afterwards, and during the trials, one of the things that were mentioned by the government officials, is that they initially didn’t act on what was happening on Facebook was not that they didn’t know, it was that they thought they were just some kids playing on the internet.
The power of the digital crowd can and has been proven to be useful in driving local and international agendas, and it can, if we want, be used to drive our digital future. That doesn’t mean of course that we should start a revolution, but we have to keep in mind what power we have when we think about what we want our future to look like. Digital citizens are powerful, and the change that can be done digitally is something that should never be underestimated.
Last but not least, we need to empower empower visionary leaders who embrace technologies and use it in favor of humans and not against them.
In 2013, I was hired by the deputy prime minister’s office in Egypt to become a researcher on digitization and digital transformation in the field of planning and international cooperation. The minister at that time had a vision about the future, he wanted to listen to people, and engage with them online and offline. He prioritized digital initiatives that would help in good governance rather than those that aimed at reducing the workforce (although options were on the table). The purpose of policies on his agenda was not to save costs, but rather to help govern better and to include more citizens in decision making. There, we started a mapping platform where citizens could rate and review public service institutions, which was one of a kind at that time globally. We were also aware of the digital divide and wanted to complement this with physical touch-points for reviewing public services and projects. We actually launched the platform under the name “ra2eb” or in English terms, monitor. It had all services on a large map where people can simply put their rating and detailed feedback for each service so that action can be taken by the respective governmental body. The project was a great success and we invited into discussion several stakeholders, NGOs, citizens who are on social media and those who even didn’t have access to technology to understand how they can take part in this initiative. A lot of other initiatives in the ministry were inspired by his leadership and several organic initiatives emerged. Unfortunately, not long after, leadership changed for political reasons. The fast speeding train has halted and it went backwards, in fears that such technology initiatives would become a threat to the power and authority of organizations.
That kind of visionary leadership, that not only utilizes technology to improve governance and assist workers rather than replace them, but also the one that inspires digital change in their organization is the one we need if we want to have a humane digital future. We should empower this leadership, place it in power and support it, not only with our digital collective powers but also with our votes and other political mechanisms that are in place.
I’m personally very hopeful and optimistic about our future only if:
- We become aware, critical and active in shaping the digital future of our generation where humans’ well-being and needs are at the forefront of digital innovation.
- We capitalize on our digital collective power and drive the agenda of digital innovations.
- We encourage and support visionary leaders to embrace technologies and shape the vision of our future.
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