February 2000  Visions

 By Blake Harris | Editor

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION - Time Line: Government for a New Economy By Blake Harris

Leadership: Redefining for a Digital Age By Blake Harris

John and Nana Naisbitt: Unintended Consequences By Blake Harris

World Poverty: The Fundamental Challenge for the Future By James D. Wolfensohn

David Agnew: Searching for New Models of Governance By Blake Harris

 

 

 

John Naisbitt has been heralded as one of America's leading thinkers on the future. He is the recipient of 12 honorary degrees, is a former executive with IBM and Eastman Kodak, and also served as a presidential appointee in the Kennedy administration and as a special assistant to President Lyndon Johnson. Previously, Visions talked with John Naisbitt as he was beginning work on a new book. That book, High Tech, High Touch: Technology and Our Search for Meaning, co-authored with his daughter Nana Naisbitt and Douglas Philips, has now hit the streets. Visions revisited John and Nana to explore what they learned in writing the book. In John's own words, the book turned out far differently than he first envisioned because the research began to reveal previously unseen pitfalls in America's new high-tech focus.

Q: In your new book, High Tech, High Touch, you talk about the way America is intoxicated with technology. Can you explain what you mean by this?

John: That might be too strong a word. Intoxication, by the dictionary definition, also means wildly excited. And I think we can certainly say that people in the United States are wildly excited about technology; so much so that we sort of mindlessly, in some cases, go from upgrade to upgrade without thinking about it. And our plea in the book [is that] we are not against technology, we just think that people ought to be more reflective about it. And also think about the possibility of unintended consequences.

Nana: As a society we now tend to turn to technology for any solution, as if technology is the end-all and be-all solution. A rather funny example is that we even turn to technology to solve problems caused by technology. For example, there was a researcher at St. Luke's Roosevelt Hospital in New York who was studying obesity in children. He developed something called a TV cycle, where in order to get the screen to go on, the kid had to sit there and peddle. It decreased television viewing and caused the kids to lose weight, but it is ironic to turn to technology to solve a problem rather than simply turning off the television.

John: And going outside - what a concept!

Q: The example of privacy also comes to mind, and the notion that technology may be the only effective way to safeguard against new kinds of privacy invasion.

Nana: Or, another example, filters to cut out the junk e-mail.

John: So we see one layer of technology being placed upon another, and along the way, technology promises to save us time. And really, it takes our time. The more technology we employ, the more people are running around saying they have no time. We certainly have less and less time for high touch, which includes the integration of technology into meaningful human experience, an understanding of new technologies through the human lens of the cultural, artistic and spiritual dimensions of humankind, and all those things that give real meaning to being alive.

Nana: And we have less time for any real reflection.

Q:In the book, you say that while we are intoxicated by technology's pleasures and promises, we also turn our backs on technology's consequences and then wonder why the future seems so unpredictable. You mention Marshall McLuhan and the need to evaluate the relevance and consequences of technologies. In the past few years, I've heard many government leaders say that it is now impossible to predict the future, that technology is changing too fast. In this context, how do we go about assessing the consequences of the technologies we are using?

John: I think a very good example is computers in education. It is almost as if, if you put that great technological icon, the computer, in the classroom, that solves everything. We are all concerned about the receding qualities of education, or the perceived receding qualities of education. So we now think, give a kid a computer and that will take care of it. President Clinton is advocating that all classrooms be on the Internet and so forth. But how many people are asking, "How will the computer actually help children to learn?Ó Because it seems to me that the whole purpose of education is to learn how to learn. Is the computer going to teach kids to learn how to learn? In fact, it tends to do the opposite. It is a closed system. It is a point-and-click system and really doesn't deal with or stimulate the creative or intuitive side. So we have said that if you put a computer in the classroom, that's okay, if you know how that is going to contribute to education. But also, how about a poet in every classroom? Of course that's a metaphor. But now in the U.S. we are robbing energy and funding to give to the computer at the expense of music and the arts and those things the metaphor of the poet represents.

Nana: One of the unintended consequences of the Industrial Revolution was a lot of pollution in our waters. It took a long time for people to recognize that pollution was a problem. But now we have lived long enough with advanced technology, and we should be wise enough to begin anticipating possible unintended consequences, to really keep an eye on the technology as it's deployed so that we constantly review it and revise standards. And in that sense, it is not unpredictable. It becomes much more manageable. Look what has happened now with genetics. Some scientists, theologians and artists are beginning to say, "We need to understand the real consequences of these technologies before we use them. So let's talk about them now.Ó I'm tired of hearing that the future is unpredictable. I worked at a company where that was kind of the bylaw: "Unless you are out there being the most innovative company in the world, it is all going to pass you by.Ó Because the future is completely unpredictable, we just have to innovate like crazy to keep up.

Q: John has had a very good track record in recognizing the undercurrents of transformation, what he called "megatrends.Ó What he was saying 20 years ago about the future still stands up, which is relatively rare. How do we improve our ability to see the consequences, to see the eventual effects of the technologies we are using? Is there a methodology here?

Nana: One of the things that we are advocating is that there be far more public forums or public debates, something that we are actually going to be organizing to include theologians, artists and policymakers.

John: If you have interdisciplinary discussions and if you have enough people from enough different fields, the questions, the issues and the subtleties will surface. And they are otherwise pretty invisible in something as technical as genetic engineering. And if no one else sponsors these discussions, or even if someone else is sponsoring them, it is a great opportunity for government to be the enlightened party here and to bring together scientists and theologians and artists and people from all walks of life to talk about the issues.

Nana: On issues of technology, governments generally listen mostly to scientists who often can't set the broader context. The scientists are shaped and formed by their own disciplines. They certainly don't set the context of who we are, who we want to become and how we are going to get there. They tend to see things in the context of what is possible and what the promises of this new technology are. But they don't typically raise the real ethical concerns. They may raise some, but they don't really offer a broad range of ethical concerns, nor do they usually reflect the more philosophical or theological concerns.

Q: Part of that is the idea that we need to decide what kind of world we want to create using these new technologies, rather than simply letting technological possibilities dictate the future.

John: And we can do that by involving people who understand the technologies and can explain them to us, which helps to dissipate the whole thing about the hidden or the mysterious. And then we can think in a public-policy way about what we want to support or champion or prevent. So I think governments, almost by default, could do something very useful here by organizing public discussions about new technologies like genetic engineering.

Q: Going back to the idea of our intoxication with technology, in your book you list some very specific symptoms that perhaps give a better understanding of what you mean by this.

Nana: First I would just like to say that we did not go into this project with a preconceived notion. We didn't say, "We are intoxicated with technology, and let's prove it.Ó

John: Actually, as we wound up this process, we were a little concerned that the publisher might check to see what the book proposal said. The book was a 180 degree reverse of the proposal.

Nana: And we all came into it with very different biases. Of the three of us, John tended to be the most pro-technology. He really equated technology with progress. I tended to be the skeptic about technology, and [co-author] Douglas [Philips] was the most facile with it. We were not happy to discover that America was intoxicated with technology. We were not happy to discover that we really now accept violence as normal, one of the symptoms of the intoxication. Most of the symptoms we discovered through the method of content analysis, which John championed in Megatrends. And we extended that methodology to include the popular culture of television, but principally magazines - because the ads in there coincide with the ads on TV and everywhere else - and the articles these magazines ran. But we truly let the research reveal certain patterns without any preconceived notions, and these patterns were often disturbing when one really looked at them.

Q: The issue of violence as a symptom of technological intoxication is a good one to look at - the way in fact we have become desensitized to violence. We think high levels of violence are normal and an inevitable part of modern life.

Nana: Looking at the big picture, it is also curious that the Europeans, for example, are much more able to look at this book and nod their head, and say, "Oh, this is so true,Ó and see in themselves where this applies to their culture.

John: Not as strongly maybe as it does in the States.

Q: But they are much more conscious of the points you are making?

John: Yes.

Nana: It is also easier for them to look critically at America than it is to be American and look critically at America.

John: Going back to Marshall McLuhan, we use that wonderful quote about the fish in the book. He didn't know who first discovered water, but it certainly wasn't the fish. And you know, in this country, people are so immersed in this that they can't see it.

Q: It just occurs to me, in terms of violence in entertainment, the usual argument against it has been that it leads to more violent behavior. That is a very difficult case to make as an absolute. But the other factor, which really never has been looked at as a primary problem as far as I'm aware, is the way that violence in entertainment desensitizes us to violence. That in fact might be the biggest problem, that we consider high levels of violence as a normal or natural part of human society.

John: Absolutely.

Nana: Though there are a lot of studies that do reputedly prove that violence in the media does lead to violent behavior. There are a lot of people who don't want to believe that. We go into the case of the Littleton killers in the book. They sent out signals for about a year to adults all around them, saying, "We are going to commit some sort of terrible mayhem.Ó And systematically, these adults ignored the signs because they were soaked in the violence.

John: The signals were so "normal.Ó

Q: On the Internet, if you look at the "hacker culture,Ó you definitely get a keen sense that images carried in the media, and that includes the Internet itself, greatly affect how these kids look at the world around them.

John: So one symptom of technological intoxication is that we accept that violence is normal. Another is that we blur the distinction between real and fake. Technology is so good, and is getting so good at simulating almost anything, it is becoming increasingly difficult to tell what is real and what is fake. And in such a culture, from the movies to auction houses, what really becomes attractive is authenticity. People really want authenticity, and that spills over into people and politicians as well.

Q: Another symptom you mention is the quick fix. Democratic governments have always been prone to the quick fix. To get elected again, politicians naturally favor anything that is going to give the impression of immediate results, because this will help them get re-elected. Long-term consequences, on the other hand, often tend to be ignored until a crisis looms. If the quick fix is also a symptom of technology intoxication, then as government and government processes become even more centered around technology, the tendency to look for the quick fix might become increasingly problematic.

Nana: That is an excellent synopsis. That is absolutely right. Technology now conditions us to believe that we can get something instantly.

Q: Which brings us back to the subject of accurately assessing long-term consequences of the technologies we deploy. We didn't see, for instance, that the automobile would devastate inner cities.

John: Or the connection between the introduction of telephones and the death of the art of letter writing.

Q: Examples abound that clearly teach us that we have rarely understood the full consequences of any new innovation. Is there anything that would counter government's tendency to look for the quick high-tech fix?

Nana: One thing, one purpose of the book, is to raise our awareness and to raise a new consciousness. We believe we have addressed why are we in the state that we are in. In writing this book we really had to become clear on where our society is today. It is very much like when John was asked by President Lyndon Johnson to explain the effect of the Great Society legislation he was enacting. John felt that he couldn't do that unless he understood what was happening today.

John: And I couldn't understand what was happening. It was so complex.

Nana: And so you discovered a method, not by trying to predict the future, but by trying to understand the present. Very few people have the luxury to sit back and understand the present. But that is critically important today. We discovered in writing this book that it was important that we change our cultural mindset about technology. If we do that successfully, and if our readers change their minds about that, then every way they look at technological processes will be different.

John: That is a very good way of putting it.

Q: Really, what you address in terms of the symptoms are some of the downsides of the technology we are using. Can you comment on those liabilities in governance? How do we have to start changing governance to better deal with the new technology-driven social realities?

Nana: Well, one thing we really advocate is government's role in protecting our children from media violence as a specific example.

John: We do have laws that say children are a special consumer category. They cannot buy cigarettes. They cannot buy alcohol. But we let them buy and ingest violence. The people selling this violence hide behind the First Amendment. But there are exceptions to the First Amendment, which we point out in the book. First Amendment rights do not allow you to falsely cry "fireÓ in a crowded theater. Well, we say that these electronic games and especially the levels of violence in them are poisoning the souls of our children. And that this should not be First Amendment-protected, just as crying "fireÓ in a crowded theater is not First Amendment-protected.

Q: So you see a much stronger role for government in this regard?

John: We think it needs a three-pronged attack. It requires legislation, litigation - and that usually comes from the private sector, although governments do sue - and education. School systems can really become involved in what is sometimes called media literacy.

Nana: What the government has started to do in America, and what city governments have done in just the past year, really since Littleton, which has proved to be a far bigger watershed event than we ever anticipated.

John: Although we called it that.

Nana: American cities have begun suing gun manufacturers because of they believe that gun advertising is done in such a way as to excite crime. I can't remember what their legal argument is exactly. But these gun manufacturers have the technology to create smart guns, yet they are not doing it.

Q: This whole idea of protection and the role of government in regulating things is a very fundamental issue that we are just now grappling with on a number of fronts. We so often hear that the alternative, letting the market regulate itself, might be better. America's current approach to Internet privacy is an example.

John: But here with media violence, I think we have the exception. And this has a long history. The most fundamental reason for government is to protect its citizens against the armies of other governments. That is absolutely core and has been there from the beginning of history. So in a sense, this has an incredible legacy: to protect the life and well-being of citizens.

Q: And protecting across the board, rather than protecting particular interests that might have money or power.

John: Absolutely.

Nana: There is, for instance, a huge issue involving protection of privacy and the misuse of genetic information.

John: Now that is serious. I think the software is going to outwit many of the other privacy issues, such as people looking at your credit rating. But protection of genetic information is serious.

Q: You talk about in your book about the sequencing of DNA and make the point that this technology will permanently alter our understanding of man himself. So this is one area where it is vital that we anticipate the consequence of technology.

John: Yes.

Nana: There is a lot of concern over the American government's approach to genetically modified agricultural products. We are assuming any product is safe until it is proven unsafe. The Europeans, on the other hand, are taking exactly the opposite approach. They are only allowing them once it has been proven safe. My personal view is that we are marching ahead much too quickly when it comes to genetically modified agriculture. We certainly don't want to mindlessly march into genetically modifying human beings. Even the scientists, for instance, say that the gene pool does not belong to any individual. The genetic pool belongs to all of society and it belongs to future generations as well. That makes genetic medicine a very different category of medical treatment. So we have to be especially careful. Again, I don't think our government leaders understand how powerful these technologies are.

John: While we were in Europe, we viscerally experienced how concerned the Europeans are with genetically modified agricultural products, a concern that I don't share. But when it really sinks in that we have begun to go down the path of genetically modified human beings, you can imagine their response. And in that case, it is certainly a legitimate consideration.

Q: So again, part of the solution involves a lot more discussion from many different quarters.

John: And it is totally legitimate for governments to assert leadership in doing just that.

Nana: We believe that with broad-based dialogue, we can really begin to shape wise, thoughtful public thinking about cloning or genetic enhancement. Government can take a leadership position here, educating itself and educating the public. And they can go into this with the idea of discovery rather than with some preconceived notion. They can ask what the implications of these technologies are and collectively begin to shape where we think these are most prudently applied, where we think they are dangerous.

John: I think that it is very important that governments educate themselves.

Q: The underlying theme of the book, at least for me, seems to be the fundamental question, "What does it mean to be human?Ó

John: Absolutely. That's the question for the next century.

Q: And it seems to me that this is much more than a philosophical question. It is an issue that lies at the heart of changes ahead for government in the United States and elsewhere. All our concepts of society, and our ideals about the kind of society we want for the future spring out of our notion of what it is to be human, and the rights and obligations associated with that.

John: And in that regard, just ponder this: As the scientists complete the cracking of the DNA code and map out the human genome, they will have a book, as it were, on the physicality of our being. They will know everything about the flesh and bones of the body parts. What they will not have a book on is our souls or our spirituality. So what people are going to do is to hold onto that more and more and think about that more and more in that context - what does it mean to be human?

Nana: And this is also at a time when computers are increasingly being built to "think.Ó Machines have already taken over our physical labor as human beings. And now they are starting to take over our mental labor. There are science-fiction movies like "The MatrixÓ that point to our fear of computers being smarter than we are. That, along with the scientists being able to explain physical life itself, really heightens that question of what it means to be human. And we believe that it is going to be the overriding question for the next century.

Q: And that ties into questions about participation in the new global economy by developing nations. These nations are seeking to participate as equals. And as has been said before, technology does tend to level the playing field a lot more. So this whole question of what it is to be human somehow includes the associated right to flourish and prosper through one's own honest efforts. And this becomes more possible as business moves to an electronic or digital base.

Nana: You are absolutely right. But there is an underlying assumption there that technology will make us all rich, that technology is the solution. We have spoken to various people who have worked in various third-world countries who have seen exactly the opposite, that technology is brought in as the solution, but it is not supported. It is misfit with that particular culture at that given time and so it is ill-conceived. I think it is dangerous to proceed with the notion that technology equals progress and to believe all that is promised by technology.

Q: Well, we do tend to see technology, especially the Internet, as the new engine for wealth creation. What we often don't do, however, is define wealth in human terms. The wealth of a society is made up of much more than just money. The culture and art, which you talk about in your book, is a part of our wealth.

John: That is the part that I would emphasize.

Q: Governments are seeking to embrace new technologies as solutions to a lot of problems. An overriding concern of governments is that citizens are increasingly dissatisfied with their government, or they are skeptical, to say the least, and don't feel represented. Governments are looking to Internet-based technology not just to deliver services more cheaply and efficiently, but beyond this, as a possible way to win back greater participation, public support and appreciation. In terms of electronic government, what would you caution governments about?

John: There is an almost hilarious example with Celebration, the Disney World artificial town. They are really wired. They say, for instance, that to attend the town hall meeting, you don't even have to go to the meeting. You can get it all on the computer and do it online. Yet what's needed in a technologically saturated or intoxicated zone is exactly the opposite of that. What is needed is for people to go to the meeting and to be with each other.

Nana: One example of this is Chicago. The police force found that they had completely lost touch with their neighbors and with the neighborhoods they were patrolling. And this created such a distance that many people no longer trusted the police. So what they did is get rid of the cars and put cops on bicycles. What a difference that has made! That is an example of being aware of where technology distances us.

John: Absolutely.

Nana: And that is another of the symptoms we discuss in the book; that we increasingly live our lives distanced and distracted. Technology can distract the electorate and it can also distract the legislators from what their constituencies really want.

Q: So a fundamental question is what these technologies really do to community.

Nana: There is a lot of discussion about virtual community and the Internet. But what you have on the Internet are groups who have a shared interest. That's undeniable, and there are a lot of good things done and a lot of information that can be passed. But that is not community. The company I previously worked with did a whole study on what community is. They basically came up with six attributes of community and then applied these to various things like the Internet. And it failed miserably. One way to look at it is simply that communities have a shared sense of purpose, not just a shared sense of interest. I don't share the same interests as my neighbor at all. But I share a sense of place. I share a sense of well-being. If the technology distances and distracts, then governments need to take steps to counter that by doing what will help to create a stronger sense of community, a stronger sense of shared purpose. And high tech isn't necessarily the answer. High touch is also desperately needed.

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