In an era where global change processes seem unstoppable and unmanageable, social scenarios are increasingly complex; with inextricable interwoven not only between local politics, geopolitics, information, globalization, ecology, finance and economics, but also the parallel exponential development of a technology increasingly interconnected with the evolution of the entire population of Earth and with its dynamic equilibrium.
In that respect, it is imperative to ask a question: where are we going, not only in the short but also in the medium and long term?
The answer to the question could be read in the book written by Khanna's spouses: the original title, "Hybrid Reality. Thriving in the Emerging Human-Technology Civilization". Translated into Italian by Code Edizioni with the title "The hybrid age. The power of technology in global competition".
On the cover the contents of the book are summarized as follows:
"Ayesha and Parag Khanna, fully describe the scope of this phenomenon and its disruptive effects: the current human-technological civilization has attained such a level that it is also a strategic process that acts on a global scale and is redesigning maps of economic power and reciprocal influences between nations and continents. In short, we are witnessing the emergence of a new geopolitical balance in which the role of a state within global competition is now defined more by the level of technological innovation than by military or economic power. We are entering a hybrid age, where the man-machine relationship will no longer be just a simple co-habitation, but a real co-evolution. "
And here's how the two American authors of Indian origins synthesize the focal point of their reflection:
"A new era requires a new lexicon. Will it still make sense to talk about 'mobile' telephony when all phones are 'mobile', if not even implanted within us? Will the term 'evolution' be able to describe our relationship with technology, or should we talk about human-technological co-evolution? '
Their thinking is best explained in some quotes of the book, which are reported below.
The dawn of the hybrid era. "Today we are at the frontier of the information age: we are in the hybrid age, a new socio-technological era that emerges as technologies blend with each other and human beings with these, two processes that take place in simultaneous ". "From the use of technology to the sole purpose of dominating nature, we are moving to transform ourselves into a structure ready to be shaped by technologies, integrating them within us physically. We not only use technology: we absorb it. Therefore, in the hybrid age, human nature ceases to be a distinct and immutable truth ".
Human-technological co-evolution. "As explained by Brian Arthur of the Santa Fe Institute, and Kevin Kelly, an expert in digital technology and culture, technology has its own evolutionary models that combine and configure themselves in increasingly complex ways to adapt to new circumstances. Biological and technological evolution are manifestations of a very profound scientific principle that the mathematician Adrian Bejan calls constructive law, according to which all of our systems are naturally predisposed to become more complex and facilitate the flow of their components. "
Geotechnology. "The dominant paradigm for explaining global change in the hybrid age will be the geotechnology. The role of technology in shaping and reshaping the prevailing order, and in accelerating the changes between orders, forces us to rethink the intellectual supremacy of geopolitics and geoeconomics ”. “The shift towards a geotechnological paradigm will force us to abandon concepts of geopolitics that have been considered fundamental for centuries. The first concerns orders of magnitude: 'the bigger, the better it will no longer necessarily be true. The second concept to be reconsidered concerns authority. Centralization loses ground in favor of diffusion ”. "Instead of petro-states, the hybrid age will be driven by city-centered info-states."
La Technik. "The German term Technology it incorporates not only the technologies but also the skills and processes that affect them (in English - and in Italian, editor's note) - there is no adequate word able to capture this complex interplay between man and technology). There Technology it combines the scientific and mechanical dimension of technology (determinism) with a necessary interest in its effects on men and on societies (constructivism). There Technology it is therefore the technological quotient of civilization. If geotechnology has to do with power, the Technology it has to do with adaptability ". In the following pages, the authors indicate what they are the companies that show they currently have the best Technology; the names are revealing: Japan first, since it is the country that most welcomes robots in their daily lives, and then Singapore, Finland, Israel, India and the USA.
"The struggle to achieve TechINK it could become the new global class struggle: those who derive from technology gain and quality of life against those who remain perpetually behind the dominant standards ".
The emergence of generativism. "The basic principle that in the hybrid reality will transform our most important social systems is the generativismo. Generative systems have a practically inexhaustible capacity to connect users and allow them to create new values and new products. The two best examples of generativism are language and internet ". "Technology represents a drive crucial to generativism when its fruits are modular and easily recombinable, adaptable by people for their own purposes. In the hybrid age generativism will fuel paradigmatic changes in all the major social systems "and here the authors list and summarize the contents of the five central paragraphs of the book:" the school system will pass from acquisition to the creation of knowledge; the sanitary one, from the care of the person to his empowerment; the economy, from predetermined values to values generated by users; there governance, from centralized power to a more widespread authority; and the order of magnitude of civic life, from nation to city. "
Instruction: Death of the pedigree. "With the world of information at hand, the industrial model of education as a memorization of facts becomes increasingly redundant." "The new generative learning system will be peer-to-peer in the sense that it will see a direct exchange between students, as well as between students and teachers, parents, communities, and technology." "We will increasingly see 'Mon-IT' (Montessori Institute of Technology) schools, which blend exploration and curiosity into the world of the Montessori method with the rigorous MIT research techniques. They will play 'serious games' at all ages. "
Work: The value of each of us. "Employment is no longer followed by economic growth, especially because intelligent machines have become an integral part of the workforce. Are we going to a world with more specialization and less work? " Even though, the authors further argue, "there are all the symptoms of the birth of a shared economy where consumption and property are giving way to use and collaboration. Temporary access to cars, homes and work spaces requires interdependence and trust among the perfect strangers; yet it has become a sustainable economic model as well as a pillar of trade that is accelerating the transition to new kinds of self-defined groups. "
Medicine and biology: From therapy to body enhancement. "At a certain point, the combination of bioengineering, optogenetics and neuroprosthetic could turn man into a cyborg with regenerative parts that make it immune to aging and disease." "The rich will be able to buy the status of a new super-species, and the gap between possessors and genetic zeroers could become more important than our current economic inequalities. The "human body shop is already open". But anyway, "no one is able to control the ethical and economic implications of these enormous medical and genetic innovations," including those arising from the accumulation of large medical data in clouds and archives that are growing worldwide, in the public and in the private, "because progress is too fast, too slow governments and incalculable costs."
Power networks: The dissemination of authority. "The strength of a company is increasingly dependent on data redundancy and creative dissent, namely the freedom of each individual to engage in constructive hacking that reveals vulnerabilities and possible solutions from the crowdsourcing.
Geopolitics: A new dimension: the rise of the city. "The 21st century will not be dominated by the United States, China, Brazil or India, but by the city. Already today only 600 city generate three-quarters of the world economy. Urban generativism is fueled by the spread of interconnected infrastructures and data platforms, as well as by authorities and citizens who organize and exploit their data to create more reactive political institutions, dynamic economies and efficient services. Intelligent cities are therefore the 'info-states' of the hybrid age, which leverage new technological sectors to outclass their respective nations in terms of Technology, becoming autonomous knots of the world economy. "
—
Interesting is the study of interaction / interference between often opposing states, thanks to the use of technology. Can a massive hacker attack tending to destabilize the security of a state, or the real and subliminal manipulation of information, can be compared to a real war attack? Can a State that has suffered the attack respond with the customary instruments of international law? Are the rules of international law also valid in space?
Questions to which we cannot give exhaustive answers and which make the confrontation of superpowers fertile in these "immaterial" environments. Environments of conquest where the only effective weapon is technological knowledge, that of the highest level, that knowledge and skills that few superpowers will have, considering the indefinite and continuous investments required, in order to keep up with the uncontrollable speed of the "hybrid" era .
By Massimiliano D'Elia