Technology innovation must first pass a basic litmus test of evolutionary integrity before it is splattered around the world as undeniable gospel.
As a technologist, entrepreneur, 4xCEO, board director, (former) part-time venture partner (turned innovation economist by fate), I believe technology can be a tremendous source of good in the world. Not even in the rather simplistic and limited way, the zest for technology is often described or fanned after. For technology has the incredible potential to improve the higher-order issues facing humanity fundamentally. If we manage to direct technology to serve nature’s evolutionary requirements, that is.
You see, the primary issue facing humanity is:
As the most intelligent of major species on earth we are on a trajectory to live the shortest.
Think about that statement for a moment. A dinosaur with much less intelligence and interest to tinker with world-order lived about 400 times longer than we will. A sea turtle, we in good karma attempt to “rescue” from the beach, has managed to live 25 times longer than humanity already. So, why does a species like humanity, with a well-developed brain, more intelligence than any other species, and a unique ability to reason to develop foresight score so low on an evolutionary scale of longevity?
In the words of Brother John, the real problem is because we are afraid to take ourselves on. We are scared to hold ourselves to standards of excellence nature eventually bestows on us. Instead, we are stuck holding on to stale and outdated manmade systems in denial of our evolutionary obligations, systems in direct conflict and incompatible with nature’s law. An outcome of our “wild-west” implementations of technology has proven to exacerbate.
You see, technology innovation is nothing more than the creation of manmade systems using the tools of technology. Technology systems that ought to embrace the rules of evolution for us as a species to benefit from, yet as you can see from the chart above, do not conform to nature. In fact, in its current infantile form, technology merely expedites and exacerbates our evolutionary denial — a perilous predicament, leading not to a strengthening but expedited atrophy of humanity.
Let me give an example:
Facebook, like most other social networks, praised to glory, deploys a static monism, with an undemocratic rulebook for interactions between people from across the world, in violation of freedom to each his own, designed by a 20-year old dictator in control of its rulebook, running a system that plays hooky with the sovereignty of nations and the privacy of participants, all while being leeched, fed, directed and controlled by the propaganda of advertising dollars. Social media, in its current form yielding purpose-built socialism.
How is a technology in such vehement denial of nature’s law good for the world, one must ask? (and I asked Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg publicly; no answer).
My point is, technology can serve humanity, but only when technology learns to adhere to the fundamental principles by which, we now know, evolution deploys its rule. Over the last 8-years, I have developed a new operating system for humanity technology must adopt to raise its stakes of evolutionary integrity, excellence, and relevance.
In the meantime, I suggest you do not put your eggs or future in a technology basket. Learn to live without specific technologies until those systems support the fundamental socioeconomic principles to prolong humanity. Interact on your terms. Your success will not depend on your conformance but on your defiance of the technology systems attempting to hold you hostage.
