Afraid of IT?
Are you scared of the more and more speedily growing complexity? And do you long for such buzzwords as agile, resilient, anti-fragile?
I never knew either of those fears. For me, the change was something exciting and I looked upon all the buzzwords as the normal result of more and more nonsense being talked without any responsibility in our times.
Because I believed that, even today, we experience nothing but very ordinary progress. Which, of course, at all times, has massively changed the world and society. Just remember the times between 1918 and 1938! Those were twenty years during which everything was in uproar.
And those times, too, can be summarized quite adequately by the words of Bertrand Russell:
» Every increase in technology will cause the same increase in wisdom, provided it is also meant to mean more instead of less human happiness. «
Because even then, it did not work.
There are at least three exceptional and particularly exciting technological dimensions.
- World-machine interaction (sensors) instead of human-machine interaction.
- Total networking of machines (IoT).
- Learning machines at the roots (artificial intelligence) .
Well, these factors have the potential of new superlatives when it comes to change. Because the machines get exponentially more intelligent, they are connected world-wide and they will no longer need humans as connecting agents between themselves and the world.
Taken together, this will probably change our world and society as much as (or even more than) the triumphal procession of the “individual mobility based on combustion motors“ changed it. And that is an idea that brings even me to a point only slightly short of fear. Because the triumphal procession of the car really had tremendous consequences and it probably minimized the happiness of mankind considerably.
Well, the only hope that remains is that people will become wiser with the same speed as the “technological advancement“ gains momentum.
RMD
(Translated by EG)
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