Luciano Floridi calls it the infosphere, the combination of the internet and computer technology that is revolutionizing our lives and work. \u00a0Floridi carries the intriguing title of Professor of the Philosophy and Ethics of information at the University of Oxford;<\/p>\n
intriguing because it suggests that the revolution is as much about issues of morality, identity and meaning as it is about technology and what the new infosphere can do, both for us and to us.<\/p>\n
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The infosphere is an exciting prospect, one that offers a myriad of new prospects for wealth and work creation, most of them as yet undiscovered. \u00a0The alluring idea of better lives for all is not inconceivable. \u00a0But there are few unmixed blessings in this world and we need to have a care lest we lose some of the best of ourselves in this new era. \u00a0Shakespeare had it right when he had Hamlet extoll our humanity; \u201cwhat a piece of work is man\u201d.<\/p>\n
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The new technologies would like to reclassify that piece of work as a bundle of data, be they words, numbers or images. \u00a0That way he or she can be more easily managed by the systems of the infosphere. \u00a0The computer on the help line may call me by my first name but that is just one more piece of data, not me as I know myself with all my likes, prejudices, fears and hopes. The algorithmic society, with its programmes and routines, will take the stress out of life but also much of its meaning, if we let it.<\/p>\n
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Consciousness has not been coded, cannot be made into data. \u00a0Nor can beauty, truth and goodness; the traditional virtues. \u00a0Try to turn them into data and you destroy them. \u00a0You know them when you see them but cannot measure them nor define them. \u00a0Love and trust, loyalty and judgement, the essentials of all relationships in private life and in organizations are also immune to sensible quantification. \u00a0What cannot be measured will then not count, indeed may in time be thought not to exist. \u00a0We will be no more than that bundle of data, trundling through life, pushed and pulled this way and that. \u00a0Could the algorithmic society reduce us to that? \u00a0Yes, if we let it, seduced by its ease.<\/p>\n
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We are already immersed in many of the programmes of the algorithmic society. \u00a0Much of it we never see because it is embedded in the things around us, easing but also controlling our lives. There lies the rub, or one rub. \u00a0\u2018We are being sedated by software\u2019 said the President of Britain\u2019s Cartographic Society, worried that the young would no longer be able to read a map, relying instead on the GPS and their satnav. \u00a0Soon we won\u2019t need to know how to read, cook, drive a car or remember anything \u2013 as long as we know our ID and password and even these will be called up by putting your eyeball to a monitor.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Unfortunately not all the data is what it seems to be; facts safely lodged somewhere. \u00a0Much of it is evanescent, rainbow like, there for a while then fading away. \u00a0When a website is updated what was there before is gone, forever. \u00a0Google recommends that we print out any special photographs lest they disappear or we are unable to retrieve them a few years later. \u00a0Any secrets on those floppy discs will remain secrets forever once we have lost the means to access them. \u00a0We may need our memories after all, and printed documents and real books.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The algorithmic organization, too, is already here, in parts. \u00a0In theory, the more work that can be routinized and programmed in advance, the more efficient the organization will be. \u00a0But efficiency is not the same as effectiveness. \u00a0Doing things well is not the same as doing the right things, as Peter Drucker used to emphasise. \u00a0The latter requires judgement, vision and often courage, things that cannot be programmed. \u00a0Even the best software cannot deal with the unexpected or the unusual. \u00a0We all have experienced the frustration of the computerized help line that has not anticipated our particular problem and sends us round in endless circles searching for an answer. \u00a0Efficiency gets rid of choice wherever it can. \u00a0Organizations tend to like that. \u00a0So, it seems, do we.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Already Amazon and its ilk tell us what we would like to read, wear, eat and watch. \u00a0It is all too easy to go along with their suggestions. There was one store that was able to identify from a woman\u2019s shopping basket when she was pregnant and would helpfully send her suggestions for some suitable maternity wear. \u00a0That was fine until they sent the suggestions to a teenage girl whose mother was unaware of her pregnancy and not amused. \u00a0A world awash with data allows little chance of privacy. \u00a0Your mobile phone, even when turned off, can tell others where you are and whom you have been calling or texting. \u00a0New television sets can record your conversation and send it away. \u00a0Fibre 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. \u00a0Who are we when others know us better than we do? \u00a0The ever-present danger is the power that this gives to organizations, including the ones for whom we work. \u00a0Is our world going to be out of our control, and who will control the controllers? \u00a0That is the challenge faced by those who foresee a so-called singularity when computers start to think for themselves.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
So where does this leave us? \u00a0Rejoicing in the wonders of the infosphere and exploring its potential, I hope, using it but not enslaved by it, remembering our humanness, our specialness, all that cannot be reduced to data. \u00a0We must remain the masters of our creations, not their slaves.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
About the author:<\/strong><\/p>\n Charles Handy is a social philosopher and writer. He’s been an oil executive, an economist, and professor at London Business School in his long and distinguished career. His new book is The Second Curve: Thoughts on Reinventing Society<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Luciano Floridi calls it the infosphere, the combination of the internet and computer technology that is revolutionizing our lives and<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":""},"categories":[144],"tags":[99,110],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.druckerforum.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/889"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.druckerforum.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.druckerforum.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.druckerforum.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.druckerforum.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=889"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.druckerforum.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/889\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":923,"href":"https:\/\/www.druckerforum.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/889\/revisions\/923"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.druckerforum.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=889"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.druckerforum.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=889"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.druckerforum.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=889"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}