ABCtech #71 20SEP16 Consumer or Contributor

ABCtech #71 20SEP16 Consumer or Contributor

Thank you for sharing your comments, completing surveys and attending events exploring the social and economic impact of emerging technologies on Alberta. We’ve never felt more relevant as the forces and sources of change continue, with profound personal, professional and social implications.

Stay-tuned as we are about to release your views and the survey results on: 1. The Future of Professions, 2. Alberta’s Economic Resilience – the SURVEY closes September 31st, and prepare for 3. “Creating the new Alberta – Vision & leadership” Convention on November 26th in Red Deer.

The following 2 editorials are complimentary, both musing on how we and technology are shaping the future. Comments are welcome.- Editor

Editorial – David Boroditsky, Emergence By Design Inc.

Words matter. What we call things matter. They frame and shape, in subtle and not so subtle ways, how we perceive and understand the world.

There are many words that are applied to groups of people. Today the word ‘consumer’ is used almost exclusively in place of ’citizen’, suggesting that the primary relationship between the individual and our society is an economic one. Personal and public interests conflict. Our personal contribution to society is based on what we make, and what we purchase.

Consuming is transactional: one party pays, one party provides. Citizenry is participatory: we all belong, we all participate. Our collective well-being requires us to be citizens, not consumers.

This view is at odds with the past few decades of practice, but since we like to frame things in economic terms, we citizens need to stop thinking of ourselves as consumers of Canada, but rather more accurately as the shareholders of Canada. It is our responsibility to participate and be engaged in the operations of Canada, not just the passive consumers of what Canada makes.

Editorial – Esir Pretne, Alberta Council of Technologies Society

“Innovation” – toward what end? Nothing like an economic crisis to sober up a few – if not a lot, of “leaders”, who professed that prosperity in Alberta – and Canada, was a given and forever. This great reckoning is in itself a gift as young and old, in Alberta and Canada, ponder several current and emerging realities:

1. Carbon-based, natural resource economies are unstable as carbon is a worldwide commodity whether in the form of wheat or meat, fibre or timber, oil or gas;
2. In the pursuit of happiness mankind is disrupting the carbon cycle consuming the capacity of the environment to sustain life as we have known it;
3. Knowledge-based economies are vulnerable to both the emergence of AI and educated clients becoming informed consumers forcing professions to adopt – and ultimately compete, with nanosize AI devices that know and connect everything;
4. The sharing-economy is destabilizing many established, overly expensive and under-performing services and a revaluation of their markets;
5. Continuous learning and innovation, the merging of arts and science, are the foundation of the emerging – market driven, creative economy;
6. The personalization of public/professional, services is inevitable: a) Medicine – through wearable monitors and ultimately cell and genetic therapy stirring a re-valuation of life and the implications of its further extension; b) Education – through learning apps stirring the reform of curriculum and the rise of life-long service options, c) The practice of law and accounting, engineering and manage-ment consulting, competing with certified public kiosks;
7. Governments championing community innovation/enterprise, the off-loading of services, and an increase in the role of government in market monitoring and intervention;
8. The increase in “consumer” interests is at the expense of “public” interests, resulting in a decrease of “trust” in public media, professions, and institutions.  Services are more personalized and customized; competition, innovation and private options flourish. Automation emerges as a response to mass demand;
9. A dumbing down of society and a decline in public interest with the off-loading of intelligence – as machines decide

Anticipate, as mankind explores its origins and future, its “best” DNA is decoded, encoded and broadcast at the speed of light to Goldilocks planets – irradiating the universe, in the hope of being reconstituted and starting all over again.