Editor’s Note: This post is a lightly edited version of the second presentation I made to students at Georgia Tech University earlier this month. Delays in posting were attributable to several things, one of which is the relentless policy challenges in technology, in peace and security, and related matters which I am having to work harder and harder just to keep up. Still the opportunity to address younger audiences — to share and reflect and even to apologize — is one which I value highly and never take for granted.
I want to begin this afternoon by referencing an MIT study from 1972 which was updated in 2021. There is much to fear regarding the conclusions of this study and its three proposed scenarios, primarily its contention that the global community is headed for a systemic collapse by 2040 if we cannot change our current course and, more specifically, the way in which we as a species choose to innovate in all its dimensions.
Of the three scenarios outlined for 2040, two are relatively hopeful but the third is the one deemed most likely — the problematic “business as usual” scenario where the innovation we need to forestall disaster is still buried under an avalanche of AI and other tech “advances” designed primarily to be monetized, benefitting some at the likely expense of the many.
So, let’s talk a bit about innovation today, something about which all of you are learning to be proficient in this place. From my own limited vantage point, there are three basic types of innovation we need to consider: Making new things, adapting existing things and adjusting our own priorities as a species. I will return to the first of these towards the end.
Regarding innovation as adaptation, the notion of dual use is built into our contemporary understandings, most prominently perhaps in areas of defense and weapons technology where much of that research and development has eventual implications for the consumer sector as well. But such implications are only rarely adapted to context and are only occasionally designed to help real people in the real world live in a manner that protects their future as well as enriches their present. The impetus driving these adaptations is too often what someone wants to sell rather than on some irresistible clamor from prospective consumers. How many of you, for instance, stay awake at night pining for self-driving cars or cruise ships with an amusement park on the top deck?
We increasingly recognize the importance of reuse to sustainable lifestyles, resisting the temptation to merely toss things into landfills when we have finished with them. As such the kind of innovation we need now is also about finding new uses for the things already in our midst, uses which can be both life-affirming and take us well beyond what the enclosed instructions of our consumption seem to encourage.
It is here that I want to introduce innovation in the form of a “hack,” that is, striving to adapt alternative uses for the things around us beyond conventional application and, in some instances, beyond wastefulness as well. In preparing for this talk, I spent some time on YouTube researching some of the many hacks that the clever among us have come up with. Some of the hundreds of examples include:
- Making a broom out of plastic bottles
- Opening beer bottles with an opener made of folded paper (my personal favorite)
- Using a collapsed balloon to make a cell phone case
- Putting lemons in a microwave to get more of the juice when you squeeze
- Making bibs for babies out of plastic bags (babies don’t mind)
These are simple transactions that don’t move the` needle much. But the mentality associated with this type of innovation is important, cultivating the habit of seeing what we can do with things aside from merely turning them into rubbish. I spent the last evening in the Georgia mountains with Dr. Thomas and decided to bring back all my recycling to deposit in the bins here at Tech. Granted, my action doesn’t do much for the world in and of itself but it does reinforce habits of both hands and heart, including mindfulness directed towards trying to give our world a few more hopeful options, about lending my support to something that all of you should soon be expert in – extending the life of the items that our mostly privileged lives routinely use.
Moving on to priorities adjustment, as the MIT study suggests, our behavior in the main is unfortunately not innovating sufficiently to avoid widespread systemic collapse by 2040. We are still too indifferent to the suffering of others, we start too many armed conflicts on too little evidence, we prioritize our own “needs” in competition with others, and we continue to destroy the carrying capacity of the environment beyond its ability to repair. We talk about lofty things in places like the UN but with too-little confidence that the quality of our innovation will match the volume of our rhetoric. At the same time, we permit ourselves to be deceived by credentials and claims of expertise – not only credentials that don’t often generate impact that is sustainable, but even those credentials-holders who manage to stifle as much hopeful innovation as they enable.
This begs the question which some of you in this room are actually in this room to try and answer. How do we innovate for sustainability? And how do we measure and communicate that impact? The answer to these questions is not just about what we are “doing” or the impressiveness of our LinkedIn page, but what difference it makes, what difference we wish to make, and to whom we wish to make it.
We live in a time when branding is a de facto substitute for impact. In this moment of our history, if you can convince others that you are on the right track, and they are willing to invest resources based on that judgment, it doesn’t really matter at one level whether you are on the right track or not. If you get more social media attention than the one sitting next to you, you can claim impact no matter how ephemeral such affirmation might be. Indeed, the confusion over position or wealth and its alleged ability to move the pile on our collective survival is compounded by our seemingly endless confusion over exactly who the influencers are and what precisely is being influenced.
It seems clearly dangerous to our prospects for 2040 to promote any further such linkages between position, money, brand and impact. Branding and status often drive investment, but neither necessarily implies impact that is both sustainable and scalable. And sometimes when funders or investors insist on “outcomes,” they are insisting on something that is abstract or inappropriate to the needs of constituents, let alone to the current needs of our threatened world.
For me, there are two rules related to impact no matter how delusional and out-of-touch they might seem on the surface: The first rule is that what we support or enable will always be greater than what we do ourselves. And the second is that in this enormously complex, competitive and at times corrupt world, a healthy regard for the skills of others, skills to be honored but also cultivated, is key to ensuring that “business as usual” might soon not be so “usual.”. What we can do ourselves is but a tiny fraction of what needs to be done in this threatened world. What we enable in others based on a healthy regard for their own innovation potential can set off a chain reaction of sustainable progress that we desperately need.
This sounds more like a passion for ministry than a passion for acquisition, but it is really about ensuring your own personal values are integrated into what and how you innovate, ensuring as best you are able that what you help to create or recreate makes a healthier planet and not only – or even primarily — a healthier stock price.
So let’s return now to the issue of innovation as “making new things.”
For those of us who work in tech-informed policy, whether through the UN or NGOs (we try to do both) there are issues that come up routinely for us, including in our work to examine impacts and opportunities of what has become a veritable “wild west” of technological development:
- How does the direction of technological development get younger and more inclusive by gender, race and culture?
- How do we inspire innovation without increasing the economic and social gaps which already divide people and stoke conflict? Where are the pressure points related to innovation and access?
- How can we regulate technology without killing innovation? Is it even possible? Given regulatory absence there is an ethical void which leads to the potential for corruption in the sector, corruption not so much related to bribery and other classic manifestations of misuse but about innovation which is intended only for the benefit of the few, innovation which mostly serves to magnify rather than shrink gaps of access and inclusion.
- How do we ensure attention to “what can go wrong” in a time when technology appears to be running significantly ahead of efforts to impose some ethical standards to guide its introductions? In this context, I am reminded of a radio host who asked an AI expert about prospects for government control in the technology sector. The expert paused, then laughed, and then said “I think that horse has already left the barn.” If true, those of us in policy are left to work on a few identifiable excesses but have lost touch with the pace of what is now coming into view off and online, and coming with little regard for how the genies might be returned to their bottles, if needed, once they have been released.
UN working groups do address access and inclusion questions, as well as what it calls “malicious uses” of the internet as it seeks to create voluntary norms for technological assessments. But it is still not clear whose job it is to assess the impacts of technology before it is unleashed on an unsuspecting public. What are the effects of so much mediated reality and how do we call attention to the dangers without stifling the entrepreneurial creativity that our world also needs? We must all contribute more towards addressing these concerns and dilemmas while there is still time and room to do so.
Back to the MIT prediction now. Where are you likely to be if and when these computer-generated prophecies come to pass?
I will surely be dead in 2040. You all will be middle-aged, also mid-career if you decide to go that route. Many of you will have children of your own, children who may have some legitimate fears but perhaps also many questions about why we didn’t change course when it was clear that course correction was an urgent necessity. At the moment, we still have options going forward, but if the MIT folks are correct, business as usual is going to mean a good deal of unpleasantness for you and everyone you care about. And when that time comes, if that time comes, your response options will likely be severely constrained regardless of your academic degrees or financial resources.
Innovation has a key role to play in forestalling disaster, but innovation which exists beyond technology itself and certainly beyond its relentless and rapid monetization. We need more innovation which is context specific, adaptable to scale, committed to new uses, and which does not obscure the importance of growth in the personal realm, of becoming more like the people we have the potential to be, people who can move beyond business as usual and embrace the tasks and responsibilities of business as unusual. There is a lot of talent in this room. There is a lot of anxiety in this room as well. Time for all of us to get busy and stay busy to ensure that “business as usual” doesn’t back us into corners we will eventually find it almost possible to escape.
The hard lesson in all of this is to be careful what you innovate. Be mindful of what you innovate. We in the educational and policy realms are barely staying connected to all that has come and all that is to come as technology now seems to be driving humanity, perhaps eventually off a cliff, if we cannot together find ways to retain control of the steering wheel.
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