Could Coronavirus Save America’s Future?
COVID-19 will change America and our world. The human tragedy and pain will be very real. The economic hardships — especially for Americans with the least to fall back on — will be catastrophic. And yet, it is what we do in response to tragedy and events beyond our control that defines us.
Our world and sense of self and community will be forever changed by the suffering and hardship COVID-19 is going to inflict. Let’s be clear: we will talk about America as Pre-COVID and Post-COVID.
But COVID-19 will force dramatic changes that can — if we respond constructively — create the potential for America to emerge a more equitable and economically prosperous nation.
We need to mitigate. And part of how we do that is to plan, build, and empower Americans.
In the same way that the Nazi scourge forced us to bring women into the workforce and the impending unemployment and housing shortage facing the nation after World War II created the G.I. Bill, COVID-19 has created the space for our society and economy to correct course and grow into something so much greater than we were last month.
The Nazis represented some of the worst of human potential, and the war they began was catastrophic and nothing anyone would have wished. But it forced America to double its workforce and take an unimagined leap forward in national education, unlocking amazing innovation, exponential growth, and building an economic capability that led the world for two generations. This moment can be the same if we use it to harness the passions and true value being created by each of us daily through data — the same data that is currently being used primarily to capture our attention and sell us shoes, diapers, and video games.
Over the last few days, we have experienced an unprecedented freeing of human capital that eclipses even our soldiers returning home after World War II. This is all happening during a point in history where technology has unlocked an unprecedented ability for members of our society to connect and contribute without physical interaction.
No one would have hoped for COVID-19, but it has created a moment of unimagined opportunity to unlock the potential of our populace in the new digital age. There has never been a better opportunity or greater need to speed development of systems and thought around crowdsourcing and develop better ways to measure and recognize the value of individuals pursuing their passions and supporting the common good.
America (and the world) needs to start harnessing that potential and rethinking who we the people are.
In the digital space, we are not consumers, or even users. Each individual is a data creator and co-collaborator in whatever algorithmic solution our data and behaviors are teaching AI.
We are at a moment where we can and must shift the direction and value-measures of those solutions. For much of the past decade, we have allowed ad-driven algorithms and monopolistic control of the internet and data systems to begin creating a world where humans are reshaped by technology. COVID-19, like the Nazis, should necessitate a repurposing of tools where technology and data empower and help to better unlock human potential.
Time and again in our work at Public Democracy, we have seen the power of the people (as reflected in their data) to unlock deep truths and uncover paths to meaningful impact. As we have written about previously, we have come to understand that behavioral data is not a collection of 1s and 0s or just a better way to sell things. Behavioral data represents a repository of human intent and intuition. And the better data sets that go beyond attention metrics to instead measure commitment and what people truly value are best understood as collections of billions of moments of hope, connection, agency, and belief.
There is great power in that data, but only because it reflects the even greater power and value and potential in our modern society that we have been failing to harness.
If you have privacy concerns or fear about the direction tech has been taking our society, you need to help claim this moment. As we have written previously, the antidote to attention-metric driven fear is agency and a sense of contribution and belonging.
Furthermore, one of the greatest things we have to fear in this moment is fear itself, and all of us need a way to avoid panic and despair. As we shelter in place, we need to find a way to feel productive and ideally work in common cause with our neighbors in support of the common good.
People need something to do right now and a way to feel they matter and are making a difference, and parents have got to figure something do with their kids for the next month (at least)!
Binge streaming Netflix will get old pretty quick.
So imagine this instead:
- We start unlocking the massive unrealized and currently-dormant human potential through crowdsourcing and service-driven solutions.
- We use technology and the processing power we could never have dreamed of even a decade ago to better understand what individuals care about and to connect them to opportunities to pursue those passions in support of the common good.
- We develop better ways to track, measure, and ultimately reward and tangibly recognize those contributions.
Our leaders are talking about a trillion-dollar stimulus, which is mostly focusing on stabilization. Part of that (or at least part of the next one) should go toward recognizing the true value that so many in our society create every day. Government and foundations need to immediately invest in building new economic opportunity through crowdsourced solutions and social contributions that allow everyday Americans to pursue their passions in support of the common good.
There is great power in data, but only because it reflects the even greater power, value, and potential in our modern society that we have been failing to harness.
Let’s consider just one possibility. Over the next month, Americans could easily repair all the trails in our national parks, all in a CDC-complaint, socially distant way. The data created to sell more Starbucks lattes and vacation package also tells us who uses parks and who cares about nature. We have the capability to find landscapers who are now out of work and live nearby. Heck, we can even identify all the dedicated gym enthusiasts who need a good full body workout now that their classes are cancelled.
Think about all of the researchers, scientists, and professors who can no longer go into their offices or labs. There is so much investment that they have put into their educations, and now is the time to apply that intellect and expertise to this problem, with wartime-level focus.
We need government and industry to open up all the COVID-19 data sources that are being generated in real time and find ways for people to contribute insights and identify connections and solutions.
As we have learned at Public Democracy time and again, when there are holes in the data that prevent machines from tying all the pieces together, human intuition is key to bridging gaps and identifying where new data is needed. And ironically, the best humans to see those connections are those who aren’t experts, engineers, or public health officials whose very expertise prevents them from imagining the unknown and untried.
Foldit should be a part of every high school’s remote learning curricula and popping up wherever people who fit the its skill profile go online. And more schools need to immediately begin using crowdsourcing platforms (like iDISPLA, which we’re partnering with and just launched as a resource for classrooms in Virginia two weeks ago) to give students a path to learn and socialize in ways that matter and contribute.
Churches (and other faith communities) can use the first time in American history that we aren’t gathering together on Sunday mornings to encourage an exploration of how we can better minister during the 167 other hours of the week. Digital tools have started to unbind community from the confines of time and space, and that creates more opportunities to minister and care during the moments of individual need, fear, and hope — whenever and wherever they are…and perhaps also to find a better way to worship a God who is in all places and all times yet chose to name himself as existence in the present moment.
And small things can make a difference too. The day after we found out my kids will be home for the foreseeable future, we sat down as a family and finally built the bluebird boxes I’d cut the wood for two years ago. Will that fix COVID-19? No, but we made the world a little better, and it’s adorable to watch my four year-old with a hammer. We are all going to need more of those moments in the weeks and months ahead.
And, remember, the little things add up, both emotionally and communally. Every highway in America should be adopted and cleaned of all the cigarette butts and trash. If human encroachment on nature played a role in COVID-19, we can use this time do to a million somethings to undo a little of that damage.
We can add to knowledge and help digitize our communal understanding. American could digitize our entire history in the coming month if a fraction of people forced to stay at home became National Archives digital archivists. Individuals who invest time and passion into fantasy leagues could be harnessed to gain a better understanding of sports and strategy. We could complete the project of digitizing all of the written journals of Antarctic explorers who recorded massively detailed climate findings.
But the real key, which we do need the tech community to participate in, is finding ways to measure and ultimately start rewarding that impact. Two years ago, Public Democracy explored ways to do this with our own Values Data through blockchain. This isn’t an easy process, but data is the first asset in human existence that has a value not tied to scarcity. Data becomes more valuable the more it is used and the more it is unified in that use.
Data privacy matters, but it is also the wrong framework through which to view this asset . We would never talk about wages or patents in terms of privacy. Data is a reflection of human insight, will, time, and resources. We must figure out better ways to measure individual contributions to this human asset that allow individuals to directly share in its value.
We need to figure this out for COVID-19, and we need to figure this out because of what the Fourth Industrial Age is going to do to our current workforce and understanding of human capital. Again, AI and technology should not and cannot replace humans. It needs to empower all of us (not just those with STEM education and lots of money) to follow our passions and individual talents to contribute more to society. And the contributors deserve a share in the wealth that data and those contributions generate.
I don’t have all the answers. That’s kind of the point. We need to move through this moment together and pull the best insights and work and skills of the crowd to use.
Opening up Pandora’s Box released evil and pestilence on the world. But remember this: It also set free Hope. There are opportunities hidden amid this coming chaos and growing fear that can be what define America’s future. We need to act now and plan for the future to make the most of them.
