Reality bytes
Anthony Giddens and Matthew Taylor discuss what the digital revolution means for both institutions and individuals
Follow Anthony and Matthew on Twitter @AnthonyGiddens @RSAMatthew
MATTHEW TAYLOR: The digital revolution has led to us adopting a whole new set of ways of being that we didn’t necessarily choose. Are we now living in a world where we are just at the mercy of whatever the latest technological shift is, or is it possible for us to be able to stand back, shape the stuff that makes our lives better and leave behind the stuff that doesn’t?
ANTHONY GIDDENS: The digital revolution is like a huge global wave breaking through people’s lives. This is probably the fastest period of technological innovation in human history in terms of its speed and global scope. When it was first invented, the telephone took around 75 years to reach 50 million users. The first iPhone came on the market in 2009, smartphones generically a little earlier; today there are more than two billion smartphones in the world. Cutting-edge technology has never gone directly to the poorest regions on such a level in the way mobile phones have. There are now more mobiles per capita in Africa than any other continent. These transformations are being driven by the internet, of course, but also, crucially, by supercomputers and robotics.
A moving connection between these three is what is transforming our lives. A smartphone is more powerful than a supercomputer of 30 years ago — and such a computer used to occupy many metres of floor space.
If you go to a strange city, you don’t need to ask where a restaurant is. You can just find it, using GPS. Migrants fleeing from Syria into Europe are using smartphones to find their way, keep in touch with others and even check what the authorities in different EU countries are doing. They take and send photos along the way.
TAYLOR: This technology is facilitating new possibilities and forms of expression, but have we no ability to stand back from it and question if it really makes our lives more meaningful?
GIDDENS: I don’t think the digital revolution is a superficial phenomenon, where you get addicted and it leads you to a superficial form of life. You’ve got the whole world’s knowledge in your pocket. People can become more knowledgeable than ever and do things they couldn’t before. A smartphone, computer or iPad gives you awesome algorithmic computing power. We can live a ‘just-in-time’ life in a way that would not have been possible even a couple of decades ago. The same is true on an institutional level. These are deeply structural changes, affecting everything from the economy to politics. It’s like the industrial revolution — not yet as profound, but happening at a far quicker pace.
TAYLOR: The industrial revolution gave rise to institutional and political reforms as a response to the conditions it created, and its possibilities. What is the equivalent for the digital age that enables us to put human ends at the heart of what’s going on?
GIDDENS: The digital revolution is plainly affecting politics deeply already, although a lot of work needs to be done to track exactly how. In most democratic countries there is widespread disillusionment with established political parties, and mistrust of political leaders. They are seen as remote from the ordinary citizen. And they are, compared to the immediacy of the digital world. The book Disaffected Democracies, by Susan Pharr and Robert Putnam, charts all of this out very well on a statistical level for 18 different democratic states. So these changes are structural. I’m not saying the digital revolution is the only thing causing them, but it’s definitely one of them. With a smartphone you can feel empowered where you didn’t previously; you can, for example, check up on any politician you want to.
And orthodox politics is indeed creaky and slow compared to the immediacy of the digital world — which has become the everyday world for most citizens. We have to find some new modes of democratic representation that reflect the desire for more direct involvement and transparency in decision- making by elites. So far, experiments with e-democracy, citizens’ juries and referenda haven’t proved terribly successful, so there’s a structural gap at the heart of politics, which is unsettling. When it overlaps with the general feeling that you’ve lost control of the wider world, you can see why politics is becoming a lot more fragmented.
TAYLOR: Do you see any signs of institutions — particularly political and democratic institutions — adapting to this world? In a more parochial context, what do you make of the rise of Mr Corbyn and the movement he represents?
GIDDENS: Corbyn and the movement that has grown up around him are an unstable mix of the old and the new — 1970s radicals mixed up with a new internet digital-based generation, some of whom have been attracted into politics for the first time. As such, it seems to me pretty unstable. Nevertheless, it is also a call to action for more moderate forces on the left, who must use it as an opportunity for a thorough strategic rethink. Coming to terms with the digital revolution will have to be part of that, although only one element of a much more wide- ranging enterprise.
But there is also a huge economic dimension to this revolution. It seems almost certain that it will transform large chunks of the labour force and, with it, welfare and education. A large swathe of manual, white-collar and professional jobs look vulnerable to a combination of supercomputing power and robotics. So we’ve got to track these trends and work out their implications, not just for the economy but for welfare too. Without detailed analysis, there is no hope of developing effective policy.
Around 20 years ago, I played a part in the reconstruction of the centre-left, subsumed under the label ‘the third way’. That notion was widely misunderstood, especially by critics on the left. It was not a form of neoliberalism or a succumbing to the dominance of the market. On the contrary, the point was to develop a form of political theory and practice that went beyond traditional, top-down socialism on the one hand, and market fundamentalism (ie neoliberalism) on the other. Nor was it a superficial exercise in spin. It was driven by deep intellectual roots and involved collaboration between researchers from a range of different countries. That collaborative intellectual effort was crucial to the period of success that centre-left parties enjoyed in different parts of the world. We tried to identify the changes at work in the industrial countries and elaborate a policy response to them guided by progressive values. Today, those on the centre-left need to engage in a similar process of profound rethinking, in a very different context from that period, even if some themes remain the same — including the need for a wide-ranging critique of neoliberalism, coupled with a renewed defence of the public sphere. I’m at one with at least some of the themes pursued by Mr Corbyn, even if he hasn’t so far elaborated policies that have much purchase on them.
For all its talk of occupying the centre ground, the current government is pursuing a radical austerity agenda and a destructive one. The structural consequences are damaging and must be confronted. Isn’t there a paradox when a country has to get two state-controlled overseas companies to build its nuclear power plants because it has lost the skills to do so itself? We used to be the cutting edge of those technologies. Sometimes you do need to protect certain kinds of regions and industries. Once you’ve lost the skills you will struggle to get them back again. Long-term structural investment cannot be created by a blind faith in the vagaries of the marketplace. However, we must look ahead rather than back to a lost past in working out a response to these issues.
TAYLOR: We’ve never had global corporations with the power of the likes of Facebook and Google before, and leaders such as Mark Zuckerberg and Sergey Brin aren’t constrained or held to account. When it comes to extreme inequality, should the goal be to make the super rich accountable and bring them back towards everyone else, rather than allowing this elite that is potentially able to hold the rest of the world to ransom?
GIDDENS: We want the leaders of the global corporations to have a social conscience, that’s for sure. Enlightened business leaders can play a very constructive role in the contemporary world — think how positively Bill Gates has responded to that challenge. Mark Zuckerberg has recently pledged to give away 99% of his wealth, although no one is quite sure exactly how he plans to do that. However, they are in a minority. Nations and transnational groups must work together to constrain the activities of global companies where they seek to escape regulation. The G8 and G20 can have a big influence here. We cannot stop trying to find more effective modes of global governance. In some ways they become more possible than in the past.
Extreme inequality is a huge political issue, locally, nationally and globally. Cutting a swathe through that must be one of the main preoccupations of a reconstituted left; Thomas Piketty and others are entirely right about that. Among other areas of concern, it is crucial to make progress in curbing the role of tax havens in creating global inequality. The digital revolution should help advance the cause here. Now that most money has become electronic it is harder for the super rich to hide their fortunes from scrutiny. The International Consortium of Journalists has done pioneering work here.
TAYLOR: Daniel Bell’s phrase — when he said that more and more in the modern world, the nation-state is too small for the big problems in life and too big for the small problems – keeps coming to mind. He said it 50 years ago, but it’s truer now than it has ever been. When it comes to global institutions, clearly we want those that will work towards giving a voice to everyone. But when it comes to the digital revolution, what is the normative dimension to this?
GIDDENS: It was prophetic and, as you say, as timely today as when he first coined it. At the same time, the nation-state doesn’t disappear. Many people have made that mistake. At one point a few years ago I had on my shelf a dozen books called ‘The End of the Nation-State’ or something similar. I took a very different view. For the first time in history, the nation-state has become a more or less universal form — the last of the empires disappeared with the collapse of the Soviet Union. At the same time, it is subjected to the stresses and strains of which Bell spoke — the pressures of decentralisation and regional identities on the one hand, and its relative impotence in a globalising world on the other. That is why collaboration between states will be so important for the immediate future, fractured and difficult though it is.
We are moving into a difficult and potentially dangerous period of world history. The digital revolution, as I have stressed, is very mixed in its consequences. In combination with other major trends in world society, it is helping create what I call a ‘high-opportunity, high-risk’ society — a crucial concept in my eyes. We have opportunities today that were wholly unavailable to earlier generations. In the course of my work on the digital revolution, I have been tracking its likely impact on medicine and healthcare. The overlap between supercomputers and genetics — each of which essentially deals with information — is promoting huge advances in medical diagnosis and treatment. The opportunity side of the digital revolution is gigantic. But so are the risks, which overlap with other fundamental problems we face in the 21st century such as climate change, the unrelenting growth in the world’s population, the existence of nuclear weapons and other factors. Most great innovations in history begin and end in war and the digital revolution is no exception.
TAYLOR: David Deutsch argues that all problems are problems of knowledge. The only response to dangers created by knowledge is to create even better knowledge, which enables you to manage those risks. Do you think that’s right?
GIDDENS: No, I don’t. I think the risks are real, and we may not be able to cope with them. Knowledge can be put to nefarious purposes as well as socially beneficial ones. We’re in a ‘don’t know’ world, in terms of risk. Risk and opportunity intermingle in ways that are difficult to predict — knowledge and innovation always cut both ways.
This article originally appeared in the RSA Journal Issue 4 2015
