The Seductions of the Infosphere

There is absolutely nothing wrong with technology.

It almost always does what it is designed to do. And when it doesn't, it can either be fixed or it is discarded for a better alternative.

But just as we wrestle with the productivity paradox and express frustration at our inability to coax the most out of our investment in such awesome tools, so our problem with technology's influence is not with the hardware or software or the combination thereof, but with our own laziness. Our willingness to surrender to its seductive charms, as the following article explains.

'Here, let me do that for you,' it says. And 'ok, sure,' tends to be our response. This presents something of a  challenge for individuals and their societally aggregated mass because a functioning economy and the democracy it supports requires sentient participants. But it is a real threat to those who manage and, especially, those who lead.

Data is no substitute for judgment. Scale no alternative for organization. Speed no replacement for wisdom. Managers have to manage and leaders have to lead. Technology can supplement but it cannot supplant. At least not yet. JL

Charles Handy comments in Harvard Business Review:

We are being sedated by software. But efficiency is not the same as effectiveness. Doing things well is not the same as doing the right things.
The infosphere, as Luciano Floridi calls it, is the combination of the internet and computer technology that is revolutionizing our lives and work. He carries the intriguing title of Professor of the Philosophy and Ethics of information at the University of Oxford implying that the revolution is as much about issues of morality, identity and meaning as it is about technology.
The infosphere is an exciting prospect offering myriad new prospects for wealth and work creation, most as yet undiscovered. The idea of better lives for all is, of course, alluring. But there are few unmixed blessings in this world so we need to have a care lest we lose some of the best of ourselves in this new era. Today’s technologies would like to reclassify us as bundles of data—be they words, numbers, or images—that the infosphere can process more easily. For example, the computer on the help line may call me by my first name, but it’s really interpreting me as one more piece of data, not me as I know myself, complete with likes, prejudices, fears, and hopes. This kind of algorithmic society , with its programmes and routines, will take the stress out of life—but also much of its meaning if we let it.
This meaning is rooted in our consciousness, which cannot be coded or made into data. Nor can the virtues of beauty, truth, or goodness, which you recognize when you see them but cannot adequately measure or define. Love, trust, loyalty, and judgement—the essentials of our human relationships – are also immune to sensible quantification. Trying to codify them is pointless. But will what cannot be measured eventually not matter? And over time be thought not to exist? Could an algorithmic society reduce us to no more than bundles of data, trundling through life, pushed and pulled this way and that? Yes—if we continue to be seduced by the ease that it offers.
We are immersed in many programs of the algorithmic society. Much of them we never see because they are embedded in the things around us, easing, but also controlling, our lives. There lies the rub, or at least one rub. “We are being sedated by software,” the President of Britain’s Cartographic Society said, worried that the young would no longer be able to read a map, because they could instead rely on GPS and their satnav. Soon we won’t need to know how to read, cook, drive a car, or remember anything, as long as we know our ID and password—and even these will eventually be called up by putting your eyeball to a monitor.
Unfortunately not all of this data is what it seems to be: concrete facts safely lodged somewhere. Much of it is evanescent and rainbow-like, here for a while before ultimately fading away. For example, when a website is updated, the information that was there before is gone, forever. Even Google recommends that we print out any special photographs lest they disappear or we are unable to retrieve them a few years later. In other words, the data and technologies we use to structure our lives and make them easier aren’t always reliable. Any secrets we committed to those old floppy discs will remain secrets forever once we lose the means to access them. We may need printed documents and real books and strong memories after all. A self-driving car is magic until the operating system freezes. 3-D printed food is fine until the power goes out.
The algorithmic organization, too, is already here, at least in part. It’s built on the theory that the more work that can be routinized and programmed in advance, the more efficient the organization will be. But efficiency is not the same as effectiveness. Doing things well is not the same as doing the right things, as Peter Drucker used to emphasise. The latter requires judgement, vision, and often courage—qualities that cannot be programmed. Even the best software cannot deal with the unexpected or the unusual. We all have experienced the frustration of the computerised help line that has not anticipated our particular problem and sends us around in endless circles searching for an answer. Efficiency gets rid of choice wherever it can. Organisations tend to like that. And so, it seems, do we.
Already, Amazon and its ilk tell us what we would like to read, wear, eat, and watch. It is all too easy to go along with their suggestions. Many are familiar with the story of the store, Target, that was able to identify that a woman was pregnant based on the contents of her shopping basket, and then helpfully sent her suggestions for maternity wear. (This was fine, until they sent similar suggestions to a teenage girl whose father was unaware of her pregnancy.)
A world awash with data allows little privacy. Your mobile phone, even when turned off, can tell others where you are and whom you have been calling or texting. New television sets can record your conversation and send it away. Fibre optic cables underground can detect any movements without our knowledge.
When all our private habits can be observed, analysed, and dissected, we will have no secrets, even from ourselves. Who are we when others know us better than we do? The ever-present danger is the power that this gives to organizations, including the ones for whom we work. Is our world going to be out of our control, and who will control the controllers? That is the challenge faced by those who foresee a so-called singularity when computers start to think for themselves.
So where does this leave us? Rejoicing in the wonders of the infosphere and exploring its potential (I hope), using it while not becoming enslaved by it, and remembering our humanness, specialness, and all that cannot be reduced to data. We must remain the masters of our creations, not their puppets.