Dirk Helbing

Next Civilization

Digital Democracy and Socio-Ecological Finance—How to Avoid Dystopia and Upgrade Society by Digital Means

2nd ed. 2021
Dirk Helbing
ETH Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland
ISBN 978-3-030-62329-6e-ISBN 978-3-030-62330-2
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-62330-2
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2015, 2021
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The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

I would like to dedicate this book to Dietmar Huber

for the incredible support he has given to me over so many years.

Prologue

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

The United States Declaration of Independence after Thomas Jefferson 1

Those who surrender freedom for security will not have, nor do they deserve, either one.

Benjamin Franklin 2

Many people know me as the scientist who has worked, among other things, on traffic and pedestrian flows and crowd disasters. As some may still remember, I have also been the initiator and scientific coordinator of the FuturICT project.3 This project attracted serious interest of Google, NASA, the US government,4 Russia5 and China,6 for example.

FuturICT was a visionary project for the digital age that was in the pole position for Europe’s one billion dollar flagship funding.7 You will find more information about it in the Epilogue. In short: hundreds of scientists were ready to bring a new paradigm for the world on the way. But, then, to everyone’s—including our competitors’—surprise, another flagship candidate was chosen.8 With the 1 billion Euro Human Brain Project,9 Europe wanted to build a realistic brain in silico, and Barack Obama announced a multi-billion dollar Brain Initiative.10 With this, the transhumanist era was launched.11 In the course of this book, we will understand the worrying implications of this.

In principle, it is a normal thing that one project wins and another one loses, and people move on. However, here, things were pretty different for various reasons. Whatever part of the project I wanted to follow up on—Nervousnet,12 for example—was seriously obstructed. This applied also to our work on “Digital Democracy”,13 which was repeatedly not even accessible on the Internet. Furthermore, I was permanently put under pressure for years, and so I wondered what was going on…

My discoveries were highly concerning.14 In the meantime, a digital mirror world15 has become reality16—but without privacy, ethics, participation and democracy, it seems. Instead of a visionary, almost utopian project, it appears that dystopia is on its way, as I will show in the course of this book (besides the great potentials of the digital revolution, too).

I have been warning the world about the dangers of dual use17 of digital technologies since 2011.18 After the FuturICT flagship was turned down, I got concerned and started to alert the public.19 In the years since 2013, hundreds of newspaper articles appeared (these can be found with Google News). I have given several hundred talks, which were uploaded to the FuturICT youtube channel20 (but not all of them are publicly accessible). I have also published dozens of blogs (see http://​futurict.​blogspot.​com), many of which appeared in two books entitled “Thinking Ahead”21 and “Towards Digital Enlightenment”.22

Furthermore, I have worked on the self-published book “The Automation of Society Is Next: How to Survive the Digital Revolution”,23 which is written for a scientifically interested readership that is open to philosophical, ethical and programmatic considerations. The 10 chapters from 2015 (Chaps. 1–5 and 7–11) have become the core of this book with the title Next Civilization, but I have added 4 new chapters that were written in 2019 (Chap. 14) and 2020 (Chaps. 6, 12 and 13). For the sake of historical authenticity, I left the previous chapters largely unchanged.

From today’s perspective, it is hard to imagine that the 2015 version of the book was highly controversial. At that time, a global digital control system was in the making. My alternative vision of the future, based on distributed organization, coordination, self-organization, and self-governance, fundamentally questioned the data-driven paradigm controlled by a powerful Artificial Intelligence (AI).

At that time, many were looking forward to the “singularity”, after which we would see a superintelligent system or “digital God,”24 which may be allowed to reign the world like a “benevolent dictator”,25 based on mass surveillance data. It could also be tasked to make the world sustainable. Unfortunately, the Artificial Intelligence system may figure out that a “depopulation strategy” might “fix the problem”. Later on, you will learn that this terrible scenario is not just theoretical, but a real possibility and serious threat.

I have, therefore, started to work on concepts that could make the world more sustainable in a democratic way: “digital democracy,” “City Olympics,” “democratic capitalism,” and a “socio-ecological finance system” (“FIN4”) to boost a circular economy26—to mention just a few of the ideas featured in Chaps. 7–13. In other words, there are surely alternatives to a dystopian future, but we would have to bring them on the way.

It turns out, however, that this is more difficult than expected, because many stakeholders seem to have different plans in mind, such as China, for example, or the big tech companies of “surveillance capitalism”. These often appear to be more interested in maximizing power or profit than in “saving the world”. And even those who claim that they want to save the world (such as CERN,27 the United Nations,28 and the World Economic Forum29) seem to pursue a centralized approach based on mass surveillance, with little transparency and no democratic participation.

In the end, one of the people who probably know more about this made a worrying statement in front of the United Nations’ General Assembly 2019:

“Can we still have confidence in politics, in business, in international organizations? These are questions to which we must find answers at our General Assembly”.30

In fact, the past years have been a tough time characterized by a global struggle for the path into the future. The following events give just a glimpse of what has happened in these years.31

On September 25, 2015, for example, a Snowden revelation was published about the “Karma Police” program run by British secret service GCHQ, which judges (the value of) everyone’s life based on mass surveillance.32 On the same day, Pope Francis promoted the Sustainability Development Goals (Agenda 2030) at the United Nation’s general assembly.33 I mention this here, because—believe it or not—I sent him a preprint of “The Automation of Society Is Next: How to Survive the Digital Revolution” before (it was my only mail to a pope ever). Just ahead of his speech, on September 24, 2015, and on September 11, 2015, Saudi Arabia suffered from a twin disaster. It was the biggest tragedy in the history of the Muslim pilgrimage34 and felt like part of the apocalypse.

As a follow-up to the UN general assembly, from November 30 to December 16, 2015, the Paris Agreement was worked out, which tried to bring a binding global contract to fight climate change on the way.35 However, before the US Congress signed the agreement, Donald Trump was elected US president, who later quit the international climate deal.36

Shortly before the Paris Agreement, I published the Digital Manifesto (“Digital Democracy Rather than Data Dictatorship”)37 together with an interdisciplinary team of scientists. The German online version appeared on November 12, 2015, but one day later, the world got distracted by the shocking terror attacks in Paris38 ahead of the climate summit. The publication of the English translation was ready to be published in Scientific American the week after. However, it got delayed for more than a year (in fact, until the end of the Obama administration).

Already before Obama left his office, it seems that China was trying to take over the role of the world’s leading superpower. At the G20 summit in Hangzhou in September 2016, Obama was denied the usual red carpet treatment.39 Before this happened, on April 30, 2016, Obama had warned the world40:

“… this is also a time around the world when some of the fundamental ideals of liberal democracies are under attack, and when notions of objectivity, and of a free press, and of facts, and of evidence are trying to be undermined. Or, in some cases, ignored entirely.

And in such a climate, it’s not enough just to give people a megaphone. And that’s why your power and your responsibility to dig and to question and to counter distortions and untruths is more important than ever”.

This hinted at the upcoming post truth era,41 which apparently took over after the control of the Internet was given to ICANN at the end of September 2016.42 It seems this cleared the way for a highly personalized Internet (using surveillance data about all of us). The development was complemented by two laws allowing for (counter-)propaganda.43 I believe, we have been in a kind of information war44 ever since. After the Cambridge Analytica scandal,45 we know how much this development has challenged democracies all over the world.

You are certainly aware that the struggle for the future of this planet has further intensified since the world started suffering from COVID-19.46 So, if you want to understand what might come next and what are the alternatives, it is about time to read this book, because these developments will likely affect your life much more than you ever have imagined.

August, 202047

Zürich, Switzerland
Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the FuturICT community for the many inspiring discussions and also everyone, who had to be patient with me in the last couple of years, including my parents.

I am also very grateful to Philip Ball, Stefano Bennati, Anna Carbone, Andreas Diekmann, Jeroen van den Hoven, Dietmar Huber, Eoin Jones, Caleb Koch, Richard Mann, Heinrich Nax, Paul Ormerod, Evangelos Pournaras, Kay-Ti Tan, and others for their valuable feedback on the manuscript and the many improvements (but don’t hold them responsible for any contents of this book). Jan Fasnacht, Petr Neugebauer, Petra Parikova, and Felix Schulz have been a great help with figures, formatting, references, permissions, and cover designs.

Furthermore, I would like to thank the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin—Institute for Advanced Study for the creative atmosphere and excellent opportunity to do research and prepare this book.48

Contents
1 Introduction:​ The Digital Society 1
1.​1 Living in the Age of “Big Data” 1
1.​2 Data Sets Bigger Than the Largest Library 2
1.​3 Will a Digital Revolution Solve Our Problems?​ 3
1.​4 Big Data Gold Rush for the Twenty-First Century’s Oil 4
1.​5 Will Artificial Intelligence Overtake Us?​ 5
1.​6 When Big Data Starts to Steer Our Lives 6
1.​7 The Cybernetic Society 7
1.​8 Wise Kings and Benevolent Dictators, Fueled by Big Data 7
1.​9 Do We Need to Sacrifice Our Personal Freedom?​ 8
1.​10 Who Will Rule the World?​ 10
1.​11 Two Scenarios:​ Coercion or Freedom 10
1.​12 A Better Future Ahead of Us 12
1.​13 On the Way to a Smarter Digital Society 14
References 15
2 Complexity Time Bomb 17
2.​1 Phantom Traffic Jams 18
2.​2 Recessions—Traffic Jams in the World Economy?​ 19
2.​3 Systemic Instability 19
2.​4 Beware of Strongly Coupled Systems! 20
2.​5 Cascading Effects in Complex Networks 22
2.​6 Large-Scale Power Blackouts 23
2.​7 From Bankruptcy Cascades to Financial Crisis 23
2.​8 A World Economic Crisis Results 24
2.​9 Fundamental (“Radical”) Uncertainty 28
2.​10 Explosive Epidemics 28
2.​11 Systemic Interdependence 28
2.​12 Have Humans Created a “Complexity Time Bomb”?​ 29
2.​13 Unintended Wars and Revolutions 30
2.​14 Revolutionary Systemic Shifts 31
2.​15 Conclusion 31
2.​16 Appendix 1:​ How Harmless Behavior Can Become Critical 32
2.​17 Appendix 2:​ Loss of Synchronization in Hierarchical Systems 32
References 33
3 Social Forces 35
3.​1 Measuring the World 2.​0 36
3.​2 Monitoring the Flu and Other Diseases 38
3.​3 Flu Prediction Better Than Google 38
3.​4 Creating a Planetary Nervous System as a Citizen Web 40
3.​5 Sociophysics:​ Revealing the Hidden Forces Governing Our Society 41
3.​6 Social Forces Between Pedestrians 42
3.​7 Self-Organization of Unidirectional Lanes in Pedestrian Counter-Flows 43
3.​8 Walking Through a “Wall” of People Without Stopping 44
3.​9 Measuring Forces 45
3.​10 Most Pedestrian Facilities Are Inefficient 45
3.​11 Crowd Disasters 47
3.​12 Countering Crowd Disasters 49
3.​13 Forces Describing Opinion Formation and Other Behaviors 50
3.​14 Culture:​ More Persistent Than Steel 52
3.​15 Reducing Conflict 52
3.​16 What We Can Learn from Jerusalem 53
3.​17 Punishment Doesn’t Always Work 54
3.​18 Why “Social Capital” Is so Terribly Important 54
3.​19 Trust and Power 55
3.​20 Appendix 1:​ Nervousnet:​ A Decentralized Digital Nervous System 57
3.​21 Appendix 2:​ Social Fields and Social Forces 59
References 59
4 Google as God?​ 63
4.​1 Technology to Empower a “Wise King”?​ 64
4.​2 A Digital “Crystal Ball”?​ 65
4.​3 The Digital “Magic Wand”:​ A Remote Control for Humans?​ 66
4.​4 A New World Order Based on Information?​ 67
4.​5 Nudging:​ When the State Takes Care of Our Decisions 68
4.​6 Google as God?​ 71
4.​7 Errors or First and Second Kind:​ Doing Good Isn’t Easy 72
4.​8 Limitations of the “Crystal Ball” 74
4.​9 Limitations of the “Magic Wand” 75
4.​10 Complexity Is the Greatest Challenge 76
4.11 Appendix 1: Democracy and Freedom—Outdated Concepts? 78
4.​12 Appendix 2:​ Limitations to Building a Crystal Ball 80
4.​12.​1 Laplace’s Demon and Measurement Problems 80
4.​12.​2 Parameter Sensitivity 80
4.​12.​3 Instability, Turbulence and Chaos:​ When All the Data in the World Can’t Help 81
4.​12.​4 Ambiguity 82
4.​12.​5 Information Overload 82
4.​12.​6 Herding 82
4.​12.​7 Randomness and Innovation 83
4.​13 Appendix 3:​ Will New Technologies Make the World Predictable?​ 83
References 84
5 Genie Out of the Bottle 85
5.​1 The China Model 85
5.​2 Can Corporate Control Fix the World?​ 87
5.​3 The Digital Revolution on Its Way 88
5.​4 Computers More Intelligent Than Humans?​ 89
5.​5 When Will We See Artificial Superintelligenc​es and Superhumans?​ 90
5.​6 Everything Will Change 93
5.​7 The Third Economic Revolution 94
5.​8 The New Logic of Prosperity and Leadership 95
5.​9 Creating a Resilient Society 96
5.​10 Time for a New Approach 99
5.​11 Appendix 1:​ Side Effects of Massive Data Collection 99
5.​11.​1 Crime 99
5.​11.​2 Military Risks 100
5.​11.​3 Economic Risks 100
5.​11.​4 Social and Societal Risks 101
5.​11.​5 Political Risks 102
5.​12 Appendix 2:​ Why Privacy Is Still Needed 102
References 103
6 A Planetary-Scale Threat 105
6.​1 Big Data 105
6.​2 Surveillance Capitalism 106
6.​3 Digital Crystal Ball 108
6.​4 Profiling and Digital Double 109
6.​5 World Simulation (and “Benevolent Dictator”) 109
6.​6 Attention Economy 110
6.​7 Conformity and Distraction 111
6.​8 Censorship and Propaganda 112
6.​9 Targeting and Behavioral Manipulation 113
6.​10 Citizen Score and Behavioral Control 115
6.​11 Digital Policing 116
6.​12 Cashless Society 117
6.​13 Reading and Controlling Minds 118
6.​14 Neurocapitalism 119
6.​15 Human Machine Convergence 121
6.​16 Algorithm-Based Dying and Killing 122
6.​17 Technological Totalitarianism and Digital Fascism 124
6.​18 Singularity and Digital God 125
6.​19 Apocalyptic AI 126
References 129
7 Digitally Assisted Self-Organization 131
7.​1 Self-Organization “like Magic” 132
7.​2 The Physics of Traffic 134
7.​3 A Capacity Drop, When Traffic Flows Best! 135
7.​4 Avoiding Traffic Jams 136
7.​5 Assisting Traffic Flow 136
7.​6 Creating Favorable Collective Effects 137
7.​7 Cars with Collective Intelligence 138
7.​8 Self-Organizing Traffic Lights 139
7.​9 How to Outsmart Centralized Control 140
7.​10 A Pilot Study 143
7.​11 Lessons Learned 144
7.​12 Industry 4.​0:​ Towards Smart, Self-Organizing Production 145
7.​13 Making the “Invisible Hand” Work 147
7.​14 Information Technologies to Assist Social Systems 148
7.​15 Appendix 1:​ Faster-Is-Slower Effect 149
7.​16 Appendix 2:​ The Challenge of Fairness 150
References 151
8 How Society Works 153
8.​1 The Challenge of Cooperation 154
8.​2 When Everyone Wants More, but Loses 154
8.​3 Family Relations 155
8.​4 Scared by Future “Revenge” 155
8.​5 Costly Punishment 156
8.​6 The Birth of Moral Behavior 156
8.​7 Containing Crime 158
8.​8 Group Selection 159
8.​9 The Surprising Role of Success-Driven Migration 159
8.​10 Common Pool Resource Management 161
8.​11 Why and How Globalization Undermines Cooperation and Social Order 162
8.​12 Age of Coercion or Age of Reputation?​ 163
8.​13 Costly, Trustworthy Signals 163
8.​14 Building on Reputation 164
8.​15 A Healthy Information Ecosystem by Pluralistic Social Filtering 165
8.​16 Merit-Based Matching:​ Who Pays More Earns More 166
8.​17 Social Technologies 167
8.​18 Digital Assistants 168
8.​19 Appendix 1:​ Creating a Trend for the Better 169
8.​20 Appendix 2:​ Towards Distributed Security, Based on Self-Organization 170
8.​20.​1 Community-Based Moderation 171
References 172
9 Networked Minds 175
9.​1 Modeling Decision-Making:​ The Hidden Drivers of Our Behavior 177
9.​2 Sex, Drugs and Rock ‘n Roll 177
9.​3 Hunger for Information 178
9.​4 Lessons Learned 178
9.​5 Suddenly, “Irrational Behavior” Makes Sense 179
9.​6 Multi-Billion Dollar Industries for Each Desire 180
9.​7 Being Social Is Rewarding, Too 180
9.​8 The Evolution of “Networked Minds” 181
9.​9 Making Mistakes Is Important! 184
9.​10 “Networked Minds” Require a “New Economic Thinking” 186
9.​11 The Netflix Challenge 187
9.​12 Diversity Wins, not the Best 187
9.​13 Future Decision-Making Institutions 188
9.​14 How to Produce Collective Intelligence 189
9.​15 What We Can Learn from IBM’s Watson Computer 190
9.​16 Collective Intelligence Versus Superintelligenc​e 191
9.​17 There Is More to Come:​ New Rewards, Virtual Worlds 192
9.​18 Appendix 1:​ How Selfish Are People Really?​ 193
9.​18.​1 Ultimatum and Dictator Games 193
9.​19 Appendix 2:​ A Smarter Way of Interacting, not Socialism 194
References 195
10 The Economy 4.​0 197
10.​1 We Can, We Must Re-Invent Everything 198
10.​2 Personalized Education 198
10.​3 Science and Health, Fueled by Big Data 199
10.​4 Banking and Finance 201
10.​5 In the Wake of Big Data, the Pillars of Democracies Are Shaking 202
10.​6 Industry 4.​0 203
10.​7 New Avenues in Production, Transportation, and Marketing 204
10.​8 Where Are We Heading?​ New Forms of Work 207
10.​9 Everyone Can Be an Entrepreneur 208
10.10 Prosumers—Co-Producing Consumers 208
10.​11 Top-Down Versus Bottom-Up Organization 209
10.​12 Allowing Diverse Resources to Come Together Quickly 212
10.​13 Towards a More Resilient Society 213
10.​14 A New Kind of Economy Is Born 214
10.​15 Emergence of a Participatory Market Society 216
10.​16 Supporting Collective Intelligence 217
10.​17 Preparing for the Future 218
10.​18 Appendix 1:​ Re-Inventing Innovation 219
10.​18.​1 Micropayments Would Be Better 221
10.​19 Appendix 2:​ Multi-Dimensional Value Exchange 222
10.​19.​1 We Could All Be Doing Well 222
References 223
11 The Self-Organizing Society 225
11.​1 Cybernetic Society Versus Synergetic Society:​ Why Top-Down Control Will Fail 227
11.​2 Omnibenevolence Doesn’t Exist—It’s an Illusion, Despotism 228
11.​3 Time for a New Approach 229
11.​4 How to Make the “Invisible Hand” Work 231
11.​5 The Secrets of Self-Organization 232
11.​6 Cultures as Collections of Invisible Success Principles 233
11.​7 Locality as Success Principle of the Universe 234
11.​8 Cities as Agents of Change 235
11.​9 City Olympics to Improve the World 236
11.​10 Just a Thought:​ Regions Rather Than Nations?​ 237
11.​11 How to Manage Our Future:​ Some Proposals for Immediate Action 237
11.​12 Let’s Get Started! 244
11.​13 Appendix 1:​ Where Might the Digital Revolution Take Us?​ 245
11.​14 Appendix 2:​ Future Governance:​ Options Rather Than Compromises 247
References 248
12 Digital Democracy (Democracy 2.​0, 3.​0, 4.​0) 249
12.​1 The “Benevolent Dictator” Is Dead 249
12.​2 The Concept of Digital Democracy 253
12.​3 Participatory Resilience 257
12.​4 Beyond Smart Cities 259
12.​5 “City Olympics” 261
12.​6 Open Everything, Making, and Citizen Science 263
12.​7 Open Source Urbanism 265
References 267
13 Democratic Capitalism 269
13.​1 The Failing Financial System 269
13.​2 Democratic Capitalism 272
13.​3 A Better Tax System 274
13.​4 Universal Basic Income 275
13.​5 From Participatory Budgeting to Crowd Funding for All 276
13.​6 A New Monetary System 277
13.​7 Participatory Steering Boards 279
13.​8 Socio-Ecological Finance System 281
References 283
14 Summary:​ What’s Wrong with AI?​ 285
14.​1 AI on the Rise 285
14.​1.​1 AI as God?​ 286
14.​1.​2 Singularity 287
14.​1.​3 Transhumanism 288
14.​1.​4 Is AI Really Intelligent?​ 289
14.​1.​5 What Is Consciousness?​ 291
14.​2 Can We Trust It?​ 292
14.​2.​1 Big Data Analytics 292
14.​2.​2 Correlation Versus Causality 292
14.​2.​3 Trustable AI 293
14.​2.​4 Profiling, Targeting, and Digital Twins 294
14.​2.​5 Data Protection?​ 294
14.​2.​6 Scoring, Citizen Scores, Superscores 295
14.​2.​7 Automation Versus Freedom 297
14.​2.​8 Learning to Die?​ 299
14.​2.​9 A Revolution from Above?​ 300
14.​3 Design for Values 301
14.​3.​1 Human Rights 301
14.​3.​2 Happiness Versus Capitalism 302
14.​3.​3 Human Dignity 303
14.​3.​4 Informational Self-determination 304
14.​3.​5 Design for Values 306
14.​3.​6 Democracy by Design 306
14.​3.​7 Fairness 308
14.​3.​8 Network Effects for Prosperity, Peace and Sustainability 309
14.​4 Appendix 1:​ Success Principles for Our Future 310
References 312
Epilogue 315
Further Reading 319
About the Author 323
Reference 325