We’re Not Ready For Digital Threats. We’re Not Even Talking About Them.

I understand the competition for headlines.  The Corona virus, insurrections, vigilantes, California fires, school shootings, energy, inflation and threats to members of Congress (from members of Congress) are all profitable clickbait.  Or it might be that we just don’t understand technology, that AI, blockchain and the Internet-of-Things are too confusing, and talking about confusing things is uncomfortable.  But make no mistake, technology will disrupt every aspect of our personal and professional lives in less than ten years. We better start planning.

Maybe that’s the problem.  Maybe ten years is too long a horizon, especially when things are disintegrating all around us right now.  But trust me, we’re not prepared for the jolt that will undermine businesses, replace people and hit the economy harder – much harder – than a pandemic.  There will be winners – think Musk – and there will be tens of millions of losers.  This threat – the one no one’s talking about – is as disruptive as climate change.  Jobs will disappear, careers will end, professions will vanish, fertility rates will fall, privacy will vanish, and the educational system will fail to educate and train the right people with the right skills at the right time.  Companies are unprepared.  Families are clueless.  State governments are confused and the federal government is held captive by so-called legislators more concerned about their reelection than the social and economic health of their country.  Making things even worse, many colleges and universities are decades behind, “STEM” notwithstanding.

When pundits write about this – which they seldom do – they talk about the fun things technology will enable, like self-driving cars, pizzas that appear at your door without a human handoff.  Like dead entertainers touring the country.  The end of tax returns.  Universal healthcare from smartphones.  It’s all good.  We can’t wait because there are some fabulous technologies that will impact how we travel, learn, relax, enjoy sports, listen to music, spend time with friends, buy stuff, move money and work.  All this activity, and much more, will be completely and permanently transformed by technology.

The Technologies

The drivers of all this change are already out of the barn.  By 2030, 6G will connect everything.  Artificial intelligence – “AI” – and its brains – machine/deep learning – will enable just about everything from recognizing tomatoes ready for picking by robotic arms to self-driving cars that know how to avoid people crossing streets.  Computer vision, image recognition, natural language understanding and algorithms – all sorts of algorithms – will power change.  The Internet-of-Things – IOT – will add billions of devices to the world’s networks.  3D modeling and manufacturing will construct cars, houses and boats (and, unfortunately, guns).  Augmented and virtual reality will transform entertainment, commerce and learning.  Robots will perform dangerous tasks, pick fruit, flip hamburgers, check us into hotels, provide child care and comfort the lonely.  Quantum computers will accelerate everything. By 2030, many of us will be fully immersed in shared spaces that merge our physical and virtual existence.  Imagine the impact on gaming, entertainment, commerce, marketing, communication and relationships.  The metaverse is where all the changes come together – for better or worse.

Good, Bad & Really Ugly

These changes are sometimes “good.”  They free us from trivia, annoyances and boredom – the stuff of modern life.  If technology can help us stay healthier and deliver a more convenient and safer future, we shouldn’t fear it at least until it becomes as lethal as the “intelligence” we face today.  At some point we’ll learn the virtues of creativity made possible by digital, but it will take some time.

But it’s not all good.  As more and more of our lives go digital, the threats to security, privacy, misinformation and manipulation grow.  Cyberwarfare will be continuous, lethal and impossible to end.  People will lose their jobs, and while the number of new jobs created by digital will grow, there will be an education and training gap in how we prepare for those jobs.  Like it or not, some kind of policy response will be required.  Eventually, but only with the right investments, the gap will close.  Digital will be re-defined – in some quarters – as weaponry.  New arms races will explode.  The very nature of communication and relationships will change.  Basic human emotions will exist in the physical and virtual worlds complicating already complicated human interaction.  If anyone thinks we’re prepared for all this, they’re dangerously mistaken.

What a Story

The digital story has it all:  excitement, danger, opportunity, suspense and a cast of award-winning characters.  But unlike a movie that affects – maybe – the people who see it, this story affects everyone.  So why doesn’t it attract more attention?  Clickbait aside, the kind of change digital will deliver is worthy of serious headlines – and conversation.  When machines are already reading our MRIs and writing music, how in the world can we avoid discussions about how our lives will change, how business will be transformed, and what it all means to us as humans?

Maybe it’s all the distractions, maybe it’s ignorance, or maybe it’s the “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” phenomenon that haunts innovation and change everywhere.  Regardless, it’s way past time to add digital to the mastheads and push some of the less impactful headlines off our pages.  I promise you that digital can be as intriguing and titillating as the stories we have today.  But it can also be threatening.  Isn’t it time we looked past today’s obsession with politics and personalities and focus on the meteor coming right at us?