Don Tapscott
Writing the twentieth-anniversary edition of my 1994 book The Digital Economy was a sobering experience. The book was very positive about the “promise of the Internet” and, to be sure, the Net has brought about many great innovations.
But the book had a small section about The Dark Side—things that could go wrong. Re-reading it 20 years later I was shocked to see that every danger I hypothesized had materialized.
Our privacy has been undermined. The digital economy has created a system of “digital feudalism,” wherein a tiny few have appropriated the largesse of this new era of prosperity. Data, the oil of the twenty-first century, is not owned by those who create it. Rather, it’s controlled by an increasingly centralized group of “digital landlords,” who collect, aggregate, and profit from the data that collectively constitutes our digital identities.
Exploiting our data has enabled them to achieve unprecedented wealth, while at the same the middle class and prosperity are stalled.
In 1994 I had hoped that the Internet would create new industries and jobs—and it did for a while. But today technology is wiping out entire industries’ employment, and the imminent threat of structural employment is fueling unrest. Trucking, one of Canada’s largest sources of employment, will likely be automated within a decade. Digitized networks enable outsourcing, offshoring, and the coordination of labor at a global scale. Within the second era of the digital age—one centered on blockchain technologies, machine learning (ML), artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, and the Internet of Things (IoT)—many core functions of knowledge work, many companies and industries, are in jeopardy.
Yes, we see a new wave of entrepreneurism globally, but our regulations were designed for the industrial economy and hamper success.
The increased transparency enabled by the Internet has also revealed deep problems in society. Canada is learning the truth about the horrific history of our indigenous peoples who, in turn, now have tools to speak out and organize collective action. We also understand deeply how climate change threatens civilization on this planet and people, especially young people who will suffer most, and who are now organizing to reindustrialize the country and the world.
I had hoped the Internet would bring us together as societies and improve our democracies. But the opposite has occurred. Algorithms expose us solely to information and perspectives that confirm our biases. The upshot has been more fractured and divisive public discourse, and democratic institutions are eroding before our eyes as trust in politicians is at an all-time low. Populist rhetoric becomes more appealing in these conditions, and many are vulnerable to scapegoating and xenophobia. The upshot is that there is a crisis of legitimacy of liberal democracy.
To borrow from Paddy Chayefsky, people everywhere are “mad as hell and not going to take it anymore.” As such they have become vulnerable to populism, xenophobia, and scapegoating minority ethnic groups, races, and religions. Centrist parties are in rapid decline and extremist right-wing parties from Hungary and Poland to France and Germany are on the rise. Perhaps as unthinkable as the success of Donald Trump is the rise Bernie Sanders, an avowed socialist who has come in second to Joe Biden and the Democratic Party establishment in winning a democratic presidential nomination. The unfolding story is one of growing discontent, with the deepening economic crisis and the establishment that created it.
Conversely, the next era of the digital economy could bring an age of prosperity, with new networked models of global problem solving to realize such a dream. For the last 40 years we’ve seen the rise of mainframes, mini-computers, the PC, the Internet, mobility, the Web, the mobile web, social media, the cloud, and big data.
In this next era, new technologies are already infusing into everything and every business process. In addition to AI, ML, and IoT, we have predictive analytics, additive manufacturing, autonomous drones and vehicles, and precision medicine enabling entirely new types of enterprise. Foundational to these innovations is the technology underlying cryptocurrencies—blockchain.
To meet these new challenges, the time has come for every country to reimagine its social contract—the basic expectations among business, government, and civil society.
When countries evolved from an agrarian economy to an industrial one, we developed a new social contract for the times—public education, a social safety net, securities legislation, and laws about pollution, crime, traffic, and workplace safety—and countless nongovernmental organizations have arisen to help solve problems.1
It is time to update these agreements, create new institutions, and renew the expectations and responsibilities that citizens should have about society. I’ve spent considerable time working on a framework for such a new social contract and have come to some pretty far-reaching conclusions.
We need new models of identity, moving away from the industrial-age system of stamps, seals, and signatures that we depend on to this day. We need to protect the security of personhood and dismantle the system of digital feudalism. Individuals should own and profit from the data they create. We need new laws for the operation of autonomous vehicles, robots, drones, and technology in our bodies.
Our basic expectations of work are shifting, but our systems designed to support workers have not. Gone are the days when workers might expect to do the same job or work in the same field for their whole careers. Students today are preparing for unprecedented lifelong learning, with the knowledge that technology will likely require them to reimagine their role in the workforce.
In the face of new models of work, we must update our educational institutions to prepare for this kind of lifelong learning and establish a universal basic income to support transition periods, providing a foundation for entrepreneurialism and investing in the potential of our populations.
We must adopt new models for citizen engagement in our government. In AI and blockchain we have found one such model, with the possibility of embedding electoral promises into smart contracts. Meanwhile, it enables secure outlets for online voting and other forms of direct democracy using the platforms voters use every day.
Networks enable citizens to participate fully in their own governance, and we can now move to a second era of democracy based on a culture of public deliberation and active citizenship. Mandatory voting encourages active, engaged, and responsible citizens.
It’s also time for business leaders to participate responsibly—for their own long-term survival and the health of the economy overall. Even—or especially—in a time of exploding information online, we need scientists, researchers, and a professional Fourth Estate of journalists to seek the truth, examine options, and inform the ongoing public discourse. We each have new responsibilities to inform ourselves in a world where the old ways are failing.
Are these expectations overly ambitious or even utopian? I think not. To quote Victor Hugo, “nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come,” and the challenges facing our economic and political institutions today warrant such a change.
The challenges of our era demand audacious solutions. Now more than ever the world needs fresh thinking for new digital age.
That’s why I am delighted to write this foreword to Cyber Republic—an extraordinary book by George Zarkadakis. Democracy is in deep trouble. Legitimacy is the idea that you may disagree with whoever is in power, but you think the system is a good one. But more and more people are challenging democracy itself, including Donald Trump who says voting is “rigged” and the center of democracy in the United States is a “swamp.” Youth voting in many countries is at an all-time low, and according the 2020 Edelman trust barometer, trust in governments has never been lower in modern history.2
It’s time for change. George makes the case effectively with deep research, strong argumentation, and vivid examples. He calls for a rethinking of our systems of democracy and of the social contract itself. Like me, you may not agree with everything in the book, but you will find it enormously stimulating and helpful.
There is a “demand pull” to reinvent democracy, amid the current crisis and the new requirements for government. As George persuasively points out, there is also a “technology push” coming from the second era of the digital age—the age of intelligent machines.
It’ my hope that many will read the book and that it will help us to catalyze a global discussion. Read on, debate, and take action!
Don Tapscott is the author of 16 books about the digital age, most recently Blockchain Revolution, with his son Alex, with whom he cofounded the Blockchain Research Institute. He is an Adjunct Professor at INSEAD, the Chancellor Emeritus of Trent University, and a member of the Order of Canada.