29th January 2016 – Just More Four Years to 2020
After more than twenty years, this is our last MBendi newsletter. When we started out back in 1995 the Internet was in its infancy. There were no tools for developing websites. You listed your URL on a register which contained, perhaps, 100,000 entries. Democracy had come to South Africa and it seemed the whole of Africa was opening for business. While it’s tempting to reminisce about our journey using the web to sell Africa as a business destination, I prefer to look to the future.
Last week at Davos the high and mighty were particularly impressed by an interesting report entitled Deep Shift: 21 Ways Software Will Transform Global Society. Although it was meant to just focus on software, the scope is much broader encompassing hardware and telecommunications as well. I was going to list all 21 new technologies here but then I thought that might make your head spin and you wouldn’t read on.
In light of all these developments, the report went on to briefly discuss the impact on Jobs and the Nature of Work; Security; Transparency, Trust and Privacy; The Economy; Government, Organizations, Communities and the Individual; and Shifting Ownership. If these are topics that interest you, then I suggest you download the report from the WEF website and peruse it at your leisure.
For the American author of the report (was she perhaps responsible for the onerous intellectual property clauses in the Trans-Pacific partnership agreement, I wonder?), the Internet is described as though it is neutral and benign. The executives surveyed probably came predominantly from the developed world and based their responses on what is happening in their own countries, in fact, maybe only in their own privileged personal lives. I doubt they even gave a passing thought to an ISIS-tempted unemployed Malian youth or a Mongolian camel-herding nomad, let alone canvassed their input.
However, as I reflected on this vision of a technology driven future, I sensed a couple of missing elements. For instance, there was no mention of the fracking technology that has brought the world oil industry to its knees or of the monster machinery that allows a handful of operators to create huge holes in the ground or of the trains that speed across the landscape at hundreds of kilometres an hour. Devices for creating and storing the energy to power the IT revolution were barely mentioned.
Then again, how are the billions of people made redundant by the new technology going to afford to participate in this new revolution – or are they just going to stage a traditional revolution like the one taking place in Tunisia this week protesting lack of jobs?
There was also no hint that the Internet today is dominated by four American behemoths. God-like Google has life or death control over your website, deciding opaquely whether it will be found or not. Amazon is relentlessly driving retailers out of the market. Apple devices incorporate the features of everything from a traditional Swiss cuckoo clock to the latest medical monitors. In order to reach the next billion users, Facebook has signed a controversial deal with Indian telecommunication companies (and perhaps South Africa’s Cell C and others) whereby their clients get free access to an Internet that consists of Facebook and just about nothing else.
When a possible rival pops up, the big four either swat it aside or gobble it up for a cool billion and small change. Together these four probably know more about us than we do ourselves, from our spending patterns to our heart rate as we cycled up the local hill to all our links with our fellow mankind. Before too long they will know how we think and act. They suck up the advertising revenues that should rightly go to creators of content. They pay minimal taxes in the regimes where they operate. Instead the profits flow to the multi-billionaire owners, most of whom feature on the list of the world’s 68 richest people whose total wealth eclipses that of the poorest 50% of mankind. We laud them for their benevolence when they make huge charitable donations which rightly belong to the national fisci. Competition authorities everywhere are powerless to stop them colonising every aspect of our lives. And we, poor suckers, allow this to continue by voluntarily signing up for every new gimmick and gadget they launch. Where will it ever end?
In Sapiens, Yuval Harari’s fascinating Brief History of Humankind, he describes the irreversible mistake our ancestors made when they gave up the good life of the hunter-gatherer for a life of toiling in the fields and, centuries later, the factory. One wonders whether we aren’t in the process of making another irreversible – and deadly – mistake.
Powered by technology the world is changing and changing fast. 2020 might be just four short years away but we could find it is a very different place from the one we inhabit today. Are we ready?
After more than twenty years, this is our last MBendi newsletter. When we started out back in 1995 the Internet was in its infancy. There were no tools for developing websites. You listed your URL on a register which contained, perhaps, 100,000 entries. Democracy had come to South Africa and it seemed the whole of Africa was opening for business. While it’s tempting to reminisce about our journey using the web to sell Africa as a business destination, I prefer to look to the future.
Last week at Davos the high and mighty were particularly impressed by an interesting report entitled Deep Shift: 21 Ways Software Will Transform Global Society. Although it was meant to just focus on software, the scope is much broader encompassing hardware and telecommunications as well. I was going to list all 21 new technologies here but then I thought that might make your head spin and you wouldn’t read on.
In light of all these developments, the report went on to briefly discuss the impact on Jobs and the Nature of Work; Security; Transparency, Trust and Privacy; The Economy; Government, Organizations, Communities and the Individual; and Shifting Ownership. If these are topics that interest you, then I suggest you download the report from the WEF website and peruse it at your leisure.
For the American author of the report (was she perhaps responsible for the onerous intellectual property clauses in the Trans-Pacific partnership agreement, I wonder?), the Internet is described as though it is neutral and benign. The executives surveyed probably came predominantly from the developed world and based their responses on what is happening in their own countries, in fact, maybe only in their own privileged personal lives. I doubt they even gave a passing thought to an ISIS-tempted unemployed Malian youth or a Mongolian camel-herding nomad, let alone canvassed their input.
However, as I reflected on this vision of a technology driven future, I sensed a couple of missing elements. For instance, there was no mention of the fracking technology that has brought the world oil industry to its knees or of the monster machinery that allows a handful of operators to create huge holes in the ground or of the trains that speed across the landscape at hundreds of kilometres an hour. Devices for creating and storing the energy to power the IT revolution were barely mentioned.
Then again, how are the billions of people made redundant by the new technology going to afford to participate in this new revolution – or are they just going to stage a traditional revolution like the one taking place in Tunisia this week protesting lack of jobs?
There was also no hint that the Internet today is dominated by four American behemoths. God-like Google has life or death control over your website, deciding opaquely whether it will be found or not. Amazon is relentlessly driving retailers out of the market. Apple devices incorporate the features of everything from a traditional Swiss cuckoo clock to the latest medical monitors. In order to reach the next billion users, Facebook has signed a controversial deal with Indian telecommunication companies (and perhaps South Africa’s Cell C and others) whereby their clients get free access to an Internet that consists of Facebook and just about nothing else.
When a possible rival pops up, the big four either swat it aside or gobble it up for a cool billion and small change. Together these four probably know more about us than we do ourselves, from our spending patterns to our heart rate as we cycled up the local hill to all our links with our fellow mankind. Before too long they will know how we think and act. They suck up the advertising revenues that should rightly go to creators of content. They pay minimal taxes in the regimes where they operate. Instead the profits flow to the multi-billionaire owners, most of whom feature on the list of the world’s 68 richest people whose total wealth eclipses that of the poorest 50% of mankind. We laud them for their benevolence when they make huge charitable donations which rightly belong to the national fisci. Competition authorities everywhere are powerless to stop them colonising every aspect of our lives. And we, poor suckers, allow this to continue by voluntarily signing up for every new gimmick and gadget they launch. Where will it ever end?
In Sapiens, Yuval Harari’s fascinating Brief History of Humankind, he describes the irreversible mistake our ancestors made when they gave up the good life of the hunter-gatherer for a life of toiling in the fields and, centuries later, the factory. One wonders whether we aren’t in the process of making another irreversible – and deadly – mistake.
Powered by technology the world is changing and changing fast. 2020 might be just four short years away but we could find it is a very different place from the one we inhabit today. Are we ready?
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