Technological Myopia

Peter Edwards

Singapore-ETH Centre

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us…..

Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

Technological utopia

• Innovate at all costs

Tianjin Eco-city (Sino-Singapore Tianjin Eco-city Development and Investment)

or doomed through technology?

• Strong AI could bring an end to humanity (Stephen Hawking)

• The fruits of technology are growing economic inequality, rapid population growth and resource depletion (Safa Motesharrei, NASA)

• Climate change, biotechnology, nanotechnology, etc.

Eg Yuval Noah Harari. Homo Deus: a Brief History of Tomorrow

1. Green revolution

• Starting in the 1960’s, yields of rice and wheat increased through new varieties, fertilizer and mechanization

• Over 30 years, yields increased in different countries three- to five-fold

• 1970 Norman Borlaug awarded Nobel peace Prize –credited with saving over one billion lives

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010

Yield(tonnes/ha)

Year

China

Indonesia

Bangladesh

Rice yields

Estimated population densitiesUNEP GRID

HigherYields

Urban-ization

Growth

GR

a virtuous cycle

migration

Schneider et al. 2015. A new urban landscape in East-Southeast Asia, 2000-2010. Environmental Resea srch Letters

Rural areas• Ageing rural work force• ‘Remittance landscapes’

supported by income from cities• Lack of maintenance• Excessive fertilizer use• Reduced land-use intensity• Abandonment• Loss of environmental services• Agricultural expansion elsewhere

Urban areas• Land for urbanization

• Flooding/subsidence

• Open nutrient cycles

• Transport/storage losses

• More meat and dairy

• ‘Diabesity’

• Malnutrition

HigherYields

Urban-ization

Growth

LessE.S.

Over-/under-

nutrition

Poll-ution

Wealthinequality

Moreland for

agriculture

2. Oral Contraception

• 1957 – first oral contraceptive approved as a treatment for menstrual disorder and infertility

• 1960 – ’the pill’ approved for contraceptive use in USA

• An instant hit; by 1967, 6.5 million women in USA we using oral contraceptives

• Today used by > 100 million women throughout the world

A social revolution

• Enabled women to plan their future

• Increasing professional training and careers

• Cohabitation up; marriage down; divorce up

• Increasing proportion of single households

• Delay in child bearing

• Increase in permanent involuntary childlessness

A social revolution

• Rapid declines in fertility rates in many countries

• Ageing and even declining populationsde en es fr it ja ko nl pl pt ru zh

Population: 5.696.0005.696.000

Population Pyramids of the W or ld from 1950 to 2100Population Pyramids of the W or ld from 1950 to 2100

SingaporeSingapore20162016100+

95-99

90-94

85-89

80-84

75-79

70-74

65-69

60-64

55-59

50-54

45-49

40-44

35-39

30-34

25-29

20-24

15-19

10-14

5-9

0-4

2.5%2.5% 5%5% 7.5%7.5%

Male Female

de en es fr it ja ko nl pl pt ru zh

Population: 80.682.00080.682.000

Population Pyramids of the W or ld from 1950 to 2100Population Pyramids of the W or ld from 1950 to 2100

GermanyGermany20162016100+

95-99

90-94

85-89

80-84

75-79

70-74

65-69

60-64

55-59

50-54

45-49

40-44

35-39

30-34

25-29

20-24

15-19

10-14

5-9

0-4

2.5%2.5% 5%5% 7.5%7.5%

Male Female

Populationpyramid.net

I argue that the change in fertility is essentially irreversible—the genie of efficient contraception has been let out of the bottle and cannot be reinserted.

Michael Murphy 1993

3. The Internet

• 1960’s-70’s Packet switching networks developed in various US and UK laboratories

• 1982 Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) introduced as standard networking protocol on the ARPANET

• 1989 World Wide Web invented by Tim Berners-Lee working at CERN

• 1991 WWW made available to public

The Internet

• 2017 Number of users reaches 3.58 billion

The ineluctable logic of the internet

Cisco.com

Distributed information, universal access, decentralized control: the ineluctable logic of the internet

• ‘Friction-free’ business – shedding direct employment and selecting from multiple providers of activities and services (egcleaning, distribution, marketing) (David Weil, The Fissured Workplace)

• New business models – by-passing traditional corporate models, eg airbnb

• Deconstructing money, eg bitcoin

Impacts: Business and employment

• Changing employment – 40% of US workforce will be freelancers by 2020

• Changing work - co-working and co-creation

• Decreasing job security and loss of labour protection, including pensions

Impacts: Business and employment

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Infrastructure before the IoT

• Massive and centralized• Extremely expensive• Long planning times, long lifetimes• Over-designed – can’t afford to fail• Low resilience – vulnerable to

catastrophic failure• Promote resource consumption - waste

materials, water, longer travel times • Promote trend towards large cities

Linggiu Reservoir

Malaysia

Source: TODAY

Hinkley Point,

UK

Fukushima,

Japan

Impacts: Infrastructure

Infrastructure in the IoT era

Information-age Infrastructure• Unlock reserve capacity using sensors

and new diagnostic tools – cyber civil infrastructure

• Mix of centralized and decentralized systems

• Better use of resources – Industry 4.0, district energy systems, smart transport, etc.

• Lower capital costs and greater flexibility

• Threat to business models of large utilities

• Reduced trend towards large-scale urbanization (?)

Infrastructure in the IoT era

• Cyber-crime – financial fraud, IP theft, extortion , sabotage, drug trafficking, espionage etc (estimated at $455 billion / year)

• Terrorism – use the internet to share information, coordinate attacks, raise funds, and recruit

• Threats to social cohesion – people select the media they use to support their own worldview, exposing themselves only to opinion-reinforcing information

• In many democracies attitudes towards opposing parties have shifted from mild negativity to outright hostility

• Overdependence and risk of catastrophic failure

Problematic impacts

• Highly disruptive: consequences profound and still unfolding

• Most consequences were not foreseen• Winners and losers – the benefits and

disadvantages are passionately contested• In each case, the new technology has become

the new reality; easy to lose sight of causality• Each revolution has served an economic growth

agenda

Three system changers

Why myopia?

• Developers have narrow focus on cause and effect – more food −> less hunger

• Innovators are optimists• There is a presumed right to enjoy the

benefits of one’s invention• Commercial interests may exert pressure to

focus only on immediate effects, eg GMO technology

Why myopia?

• We don’t know how to assess the wider impacts – inadequate methods

• System complexity makes forecasting difficult

• Non-ergodic nature of consequences makes forecasting impossible

The precautionary principle

• Fisheries• Mad cow disease• Asbestos• Lead in petrol• Systemic insecticides• Etc.

Late lessons from early warnings:

science, precaution, innovation

Summary

EEA Report No 1/2013

ISSN 1725-9177

Twelve Late lessons:

1. Acknowledge and respond to ignorance and uncertainty2. Provide long-term environmental and health monitoring3. Work to reduce blind-spots and gaps in knowledge4. Reduce interdisciplinary obstacles 5. Ensure regulations reflect real-world conditions6. Scrutinise both claimed benefits and risks7. Evaluate alternatives8. Use ‘lay’ and local knowledge 9. Consider assumptions and values of different social

groups10.Maintain regulatory independence11.Reduce institutional obstacles to learning and action12.Avoid ‘paralysis by analysis’

EEA. 2001, Environmental Issues Report No 22

• System changers are not new - bronze, iron, gunpowder, plough, steam engine, electric light, internal combustion engine -

• but adoption rates are now much faster• so the consequences can take us by

surprise.• In a crowded, interconnected world it is

important to anticipate disruptive change.• At least some consequences of system

changers are, in principle, predictable.

Watch out for system changers