What’s at stake today: The happiness of my generation

For most people experiencing the Industrial Revolution, that experience was pretty shit. For most people it meant leaving their villages and moving to a vast, impersonal, dirty, and sick city like London. For most people it meant either working themselves (and their children) to death, trying desperately to find work, or drinking themselves into a coma. (And quite often it was a combination of all three)

We are — again — facing a revolution.

The internet has sped up communication from waiting for a letter for weeks to waiting for a text for seconds. At the same time, means of production have gotten cheaper and faster. Influence has gotten increasingly decentralised; and companies are struggling to keep up.

“Making horses try to run as fast as cars will break them.”

In an attempt to cope with these changing conditions we thought it would be enough to work harder. To do what we have always done, just faster. But there is no way of making a horse run as fast as a car. In fact, making horses try to run as fast as cars will either break them, or break you. Similarly, there is no way of making an industrial operation, that is based on linear value-added chains, work fast enough to cope with what we are seeing today.

“We need to replace the value-added chain with a system of parallel processing.”

Linear value-added chains are made to be as efficient as possible in non-changing conditions. Optimising them for speed is a game of diminishing returns. A game that both the rider (companies) and the horse (us) will lose. So what’s at stake today, is both the happiness of my generation, and the survival of today’s economic players.

Instead of working harder, we need to replace (or append) the linear value-added chain with a more agile system based on collaboration, parallel processing and distributed, individual agency. Only then will we have a chance to enable both our happiness and economic survival.

To keep updated on how this might be achieved, follow Unchain|ed.

Special thanks to Kristina Kirova and Hongwei Tang for their invaluable input and feedback!