What is the purpose of society? How do we define who we are? What is the role of nations? What is fair? What is the role of private actors? What is the future of global governance?
That such great questions are posed by the cascading consequences of the digital disruptions already taking place is a sign that we are indeed at an epochal watershed. Today is, in fact, the day before the Renaissance. While the changes ahead are exciting, they also demand that we accept an urgent responsibility: long before we can gain any real answers or insights into what that future might be, we first have the obligation to undertake a harder, more consequential search—a search for the right questions.
It is a prospect that is as daunting and, at times, truly terrifying as it is promising. But that is the nature of great threshold moments in history. Fortunately, we can take comfort from the fact that any rigorous analysis of that history demands optimism. Progress works. Today we live longer, healthier lives, and more people are better off, better educated, and more empowered than ever before. There is greater freedom and greater hope for the future.
The problem is this: Progress has as often been a great shock to our system as it has been pure inspiration. And it is compounded by the fact that great strides forward—from the advent of the Age of Exploration to the Industrial Revolution—have also brought with them exploitation, upheaval, and sometimes tragedy, from the slave trade to colonialism to genocide, from the abuse of workers to the failures of communism.
In the end, the difference is made by those who rise up in each era and lead with ideas. For the world, the challenge is to find them and sort through them to separate those with something beneficial to offer from those who are leading us in a more dangerous direction.
Perhaps somewhere out there is the next Marx, coming up with an alternative to modern capitalism based on the growing inequity he or she sees within it. He or she won’t look a thing like the last one, nor will his or her ideas necessarily resemble those of Marx. He or she probably won’t be found as Marx was, studying and writing away in the British Library. In fact, we would be wise to look in new places—in Asia or Africa—for the next Marx, Marie Curie, or Jefferson. The secret to distinguishing them and their ideas is, of course, that which is the secret to coming up with those ideas in the first place. It is what my father devoted his life to as a scientist. It is what sets apart all creative thinkers: it is asking the right questions. It is looking at a catastrophe like the Black Plague and asking how our world has changed. How do we cope with the new reality? How do we reorganize? What must we do differently? Because with the right questions come breakthroughs and transformational eras, like the Renaissance. And only by asking important questions during these transformational eras can we hope for real progress and avoid calamity.
That is why I am certain that, were he alive today and looking at the information revolution in which he was involved throughout his life, my father would be asking questions like those posed in these pages and forcing our perspectives away from the daily headlines and press releases of the self-interested toward more fundamental issues. What is really changing? Why is it important? What do we want?
As the years have passed, I have come to appreciate my father in many ways that eluded me when I was younger. As a scientist, he tried to look at the world—whether in the laboratory or in a history book—with a kind of detachment and skepticism of conventional explanations. History is spin, after all. It is tailored to the needs of its authors, those who commissioned them, and the times. Progress is sometimes not the result of enlightened leadership, inspired plans, or battlefield victories. Sometimes—perhaps more often than we care to acknowledge—it comes from accident, chance, or even catastrophe.
Part of my father’s message, therefore, was cautionary. It was, if anything, a warning we need to heed today more than at any other time in memory. That is because the press of great technological, demographic, and natural changes has us on the verge of a watershed moment in the long story of civilization.
We should resist the temptation to judge history in the moment; when we are too caught up in the human reaction to events as they occur, we lack the objectivity to see what progress they might trigger. The good is often unleashed by the bad, and big changes come from small or unexpected developments—though any meteorologist will tell you that 85 percent of the time tomorrow we will have the same weather as today, that means that one out every six or so days we do not.
Most of the time, the changes that take place impact us only slightly. History unfolds incrementally. Decades go by in which it seems very little happens. This leads to the most common heuristic trap (the most common shortcut analysts take) when trying to predict what will happen in the future: we assume that it will be much like yesterday. You know the phenomenon. It manifests itself in our daily life in countless ways. For example, a guy tries to blow up an airplane with a bomb in his shoe, and we therefore determine that the big new threat of our time is shoe bombers. Thereafter, you must take your shoes off every time you pass through airport security.
Past results are not a predictor of future performance. In fact, we are deceived by the past into thinking in the wrong ways about what is yet to come. We call it experience. We can only project the future based on our experience. It is a useful survival instinct. It keeps us from stumbling upon the same bear in the same part of the woods whenever we go for a walk. But it doesn’t prepare us for what comes when we leave the woods with which we are familiar and go to a place where there are no bears and where the threats and opportunities are entirely new to us.
That does not mean that we must be blindsided by the future. If we train ourselves to think with the distance and skepticism and sensitive eye of the scientist, we can often see patterns in the past that can help us navigate—and even predict and prepare for—very different futures. No one has, of course, perfected this skill. But those who are better at it end up with a big advantage, and are thus better able to thrive as change inevitably comes—even very, very big change.
There are many brilliant minds in the world today asking just such questions. But it will take many more at every level of society to tap the potential this new era may bring. Be among them. Remember Einstein’s admonition: when searching for solutions, devote your attention to finding the right question first. If you do, the best answers are sure to follow.