English | EN Open Letter on the Digital Economy – Join the Discussion !
Jun 9, 2015
Will our near future hold a “Race against the Machine,” like Brynjolfsson and McAfee’s book title postulates? Indeed, successful combinations of what we used to call hardware and software are blending over into intelligent species that may well have the potential of making mankind’s effort superfluous.
However, man still is in charge and should cherish the power to remain so. At the same time, we have created a technological environment that forces us to be more clever than ever, for it is expected to grow exponentionally with ditto impact. In fact, throughout history we have been challenging ourselves that way: through science, wars, the discovery of the earth, the universe, and the laws of nature. Each time, applications followed with surprising and devastating effect.
Now that we finally have reached the point of enhancing and expanding our own intelligence with artificial digital smartness based on natural patterns, we seem to have woken up to a new reality in which we must compete with our embodied figments. Researchers from Oxford University predict that 70 per cent of all jobs will simply fade away during the next ten years. Do we ourselves still have a role to play on the societal and economic stage we managed to create? Or will we dramatically triumph in erasing the pride of the human majority? Let us by all means take the lead in discussing and redefining the future of work and the next phase of human-computer interaction.
We are in the early stages of an era of great technological change. Digital innovations are remaking our industries, economy, and society just as steam, electricity, and internal combustion did before them. Like their predecessors, computers and their kin are engines of great prosperity. Progress with hardware, software, and networks is improving our lives in countless ways and creating immense value.
However, this progress is accompanied by some thorny challenges. The majority of US households have seen little if any income growth for over 20 years, the percentage of national income that’s paid out in wages has declined sharply in the US since 2000, and the American middle class, which is one of our country’s great creations, is being hollowed out. Outsourcing and offshoring have contributed to these phenomena, but we should keep in mind that the recent wave of globalization is itself reliant on advances in information and communication technologies. The fundamental facts are that we’re living in an ever-more digital and interlinked world, and the benefits of this technological surge have been very uneven.
Previous surges brought with them greatly increased demand for labor and sustained job and wage growth. This time around, the evidence is causing some people to wonder if things are different. Or, to paraphrase many recent headlines, will robots eat our jobs? We think this is the wrong question, because it assumes that we are powerless to alter or shape the effects of technological change on labor. We reject this idea. Instead, we believe that there’s a great deal we can do to improve prospects for everyone. We propose a three-pronged effort . . .
The last three paragraphs are selected quotes from the Open Letter on the Digital Economy, signed by business leaders and academics. Read it closely, and join the discussion!
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