Building Digital Societies of Tomorrow

How can we avoid compromising on our values in digital worlds?

Over the last 30 years, the diffusion of internet has broken down barriers and caused a proliferation of digital societies. This acceleration in cultural evolution is causing unprecedented progress in education, technology, economy… However, there are also important drawbacks to this Digital Cambrian Explosion and traditional institutions are ill-equipped to address them. Because change is the only thing that can keep up with change, good design is how we maintain human values deep into the future.

Global Digital Societies were born with the Internet

Once upon a time, in 1984, there were 2 scientists in sunny Palo Alto, California. Their name were Sandy and Len. At the time, they loved each other, but alas they were kept separate. Separate in different buildings.

Between them a there was a dragon, a monster — The monster of technology-yet-to-be. That’s the kind of monster that makes you scream: “It’s 2020, why doesn’t everyone fly around in electric cars already!!! …Or at least can we have an intranet site that works? Pretty please??”.

The 2 buildings of Sandy and Len had modern communication systems, but they used different protocols, so…