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At the heart of today’s corporate dialogue lies a fascination with artificial intelligence. This topic, now ubiquitous in industry discussions, signals yet another transformative wave in technology. For those of us who have spent decades in IT, this moment is a profound reminder of our field’s constant evolution.
It began with the PC/Windows revolution, followed swiftly by the dawn of the internet at the millennium’s turn. The emergence of the Social, Mobile, Analytics, and Cloud (SMAC) revolution in the 2000s further disrupted the status quo with “Being Digital” becoming the mantra. Now, this decade, we find ourselves immersed in Artificial Intelligence (AI). Each of these transitions formed the foundation for the technologies shaping our present and future.
Reflecting on these three decades, one constant emerges: the staggering pace of technological change. In just thirty years, technology has evolved from a facilitator to an integral part of our lives, impacting society profoundly. AI is poised to permeate every aspect of our existence, revolutionizing tasks from business operations to infrastructure maintenance. Simply put, we now are in the center of this revolution, one poised to become the single accelerant of progress in history. The coming decade will be defined by a wave of powerful, fast proliferating technologies. Driven by overwhelming political and commercial incentives, these technologies will help address our global challenges and create vast amounts of wealth- but at the same time they will also create an upheaval on an unimagined scale.
As we stand on the brink of this revolution, it’s evident that we’re not fully prepared, nor do we possess all the answers.
In this article, I aim to explore the societal implications of this rapid change. Major shifts, whether technological or otherwise, inevitably bring disruptive consequences that echo throughout society. By examining these impacts, we can glean insights into the broader implications of our evolving world.
While our current technology may be unprecedented in its power and pervasiveness, it’s not the first time new technologies have ushered in massive disruptive change. We’ve encountered similar revolutions throughout history. By examining past technological breakthroughs, we can draw lessons applicable to our present challenges.
One of the major disruptive technological breakthroughs was Johannes Gutenberg’s fifteenth century discovery of movable type printing that led to the birth of mass printing. The network of printers that sprang up all across Europe after Gutenberg’s breakthrough ended the monopoly of information that the clergy and the nobility had exploited in pursuit of power. Mass Printing led to free movement of ideas that fired the reformation, spread the Renaissance and the scientific revolutions of the past 500 years would not have been possible without that one invention.
However, far from today’s image of this period being an almost magical time, this period must have been anything but magical for those living through its changes. The discovery and rebirth that gave the period its name viz Renaissance period were, by their very nature, destabilizing to the patterns of everyday life. Free flow of ideas created commercial opportunities which in turn stimulated more debate and ultimately Old structures gave way to new things such as the separation of church and state, new forms of Government, birth of a new middle class which formulated its own set of laws and customs.
Four Centuries passed before the next great technological transformation appeared. This time, it was a pair of twin inventions; the railroad and the telegraph. Never before had people been able to travel or communicate over long distances than a horse could gallop. Together, these two inventions compressed distance and time and, in the process, upended centuries of stability, transformed economies and redrew the map of the world. In the process they pulled both products and people from their land and birthed the Industrial revolution. This transformed the landscape, remade cities and disrupted the lives of millions and in the process led to Imperialism, communism and Fascism.
This involuntary imposition of technology driven change disrupts the status quo and uproots the many anchors of previously provided stability and security. Throughout our understanding of earlier technological changes, opposition was rampant as tradition was upset by economics and social insecurity.
The current AI-led transformation presents both opportunities and challenges. While it enhances productivity and convenience, it also raises concerns about personal freedom, job displacement, privacy, and market dominance.
Contrary to romanticized notions of our era’s uniqueness, past revolutions have brought similarly rapid changes across various facets of life. The societal responses, characterized by angst and upheaval, mirror those of earlier eras. Therefore, it’s imperative to draw our lessons from history as we navigate today’s technological landscape as the challenges that the previous generations encountered are more or less similar to what we are facing today.
These pieces are being published as they have been received – they have not been edited/fact-checked by ThePrint.