The Seductions of the Infosphere

Seductions

Here is an excerpt from an article written by Charles Handy for Harvard Business Review and the HBR Blog Network. To read the complete article, check out the wealth of free resources, obtain subscription information, and receive HBR email alerts, please click here.

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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.

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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.

Note: This post is one in a series of perspectives by presenters and participants in the 7th Global Drucker Forum, taking place November 5-6, 2015 in Vienna. The theme: “Claiming Our Humanity — Managing in the Digital Age.”

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Here is a direct link to the complete article.

Charles Handy is a longtime contributor to HBR and the author of more than a dozen books. His new book is The Second Curve: Thoughts on Reinventing Society.

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