In the recent past, we have seen companies and governments around the world collect increasing amounts of personal and other data. This has been justified with better customer experience and with security issues, e.g. the need to fight organized crime and international terrorism. However, statistical investigations do not confirm that mass surveillance is more efficient in identifying and preventing terrorism than conventional means.1 In fact, all individuals who have recently committed terror attacks in Europe were known before to be potentially dangerous extremists.2 Nevertheless, the attacks have not been prevented. Therefore, can mass surveillance ever serve the declared purpose? And if not, why is it so energetically pursued?
Recently, it has become increasingly clear that personal data about everyone of us is not only collected for the sake of personalized advertisements, services and products,3 but also politically used in various countries. The keyword here is «Big Nudging», i.e. the combination of methods from behavioral economics («nudging») and Big Data to manipulate the attention, opinions, decisions, and behaviors of people.4 The more data is available about us, the easier it becomes to manipulate us subconsciously, i.e. without our awareness. It is suggested that this method would be used to make us behave in a healthier and environmentally friendly way, but the method has also been applied to manipulate other public opinions and elections.5 Politics has started to notice the danger of this approach, which enables new kinds of propaganda and misinformation, while it also undermines social cohesion by means of the «filter bubble effect».6 Furthermore, it reduces critical thinking, which makes people vulnerable to populist and extremist opinions.
Despite its power, Big Nudging is not as effective as hoped in reaching its health- and environment-related goals.7 Therefore, companies and countries like China have started to introduce Citizen Scores that rate peoples» behaviors, including the links they click in the Internet.8 These scores will then determine the interest rates of loans offered, health benefits, travel visa, or jobs one might get. In such a way, it is easy to create a «digital nose ring» to make citizens do certain things. As a consequence, the use of Big Nudging and Citizen Scores will increasingly reduce the freedom of decision-making of citizens and with this, the ability to control their own lives. It recently becomes clear that this approach can be highly invasive: We are told to do 10,000 steps every day. The calories and kinds of food we eat become increasingly measured. The accumulated information might be used to decide who is entitled to get certain kinds of health services and who not. Since gene sequencing is cheap and gene editing is possible (e.g. with the Crispr CAS-9 method), experts, furthermore, think about eliminating diseases by «selective breeding».9 Various countries have also built detainment camps for millions of people,10 in order to be able to manage pandemics, future disasters, and social uprisings. The refugee camp in Idomeni is a sad example of how such camps may be operated.11 Taking all of this together, there are currently many signs of an upcoming new totalitarism12 – a digitally empowered political regime that would be highly privacy-invasive and potentially more dictatorial than any political regime we have seen in the past.
One reason for this development seems to be related to a serious misunderstanding of what Big Data can accomplish. Since Chris Anderson’s claim that «the data deluge makes the scientific method obsolete», the idea has spread that one could optimize the world and rule it like a benevolent dictator, if one just had enough data.13 It sounds extremely plausible that «more data is more knowledge, more knowledge is more power, and more power is more success». In the meantime, however, Data Scientists have realized that there are many traps one can fall into.14 These are not only related to the limitations of Big Data analytics (e.g. the fact that correlations do not mean causality and that more data imply more spurious patterns15 – the well-known over-fitting problem). It is also related to the fact that data volumes grow faster than processing power and systemic complexity grows even faster than data volumes.16 Therefore, good theories are needed to decide what subset of data should be processed and how. Furthermore, there is no scientific method to determine the right goal function: should it be gross domestic product per capita (GDP) or sustainability, power or peace, happiness or life expectancy, or anything else? In modern complex societies, the common answer to this dilemma has been pluralism. We should not give up on it, because this would make our society more vulnerable: pluralism allows for diversity, which is the basis of high innovation rates, collective intelligence and societal resilience (it hedges risks and can better cope with uncertainty).17
I am writing all this, because democracies worldwide have repeatedly been questioned18 and come under pressure.19 In Europe, we have seen this in Hungary, Poland, France, and Turkey, but also elsewhere.20 In fact, it is now possible to build data-driven versions of well-known historical political systems: fascism 2.0, communism 2.0, feudalism 2.0, capitalism 2.0, and democracy 2.0. Our societies are at a crossroads (or, scientifically speaking, at a tipping point). As a consequence, we should make up our minds and take a conscious decision. We need a public debate to determine the path we want to take. In the following, I will try to sketch some implications of the various data-driven models mentioned above.
Communism 2.0 – some are calling it the Big Mother Society: This system is pursuing a benevolent dictator approach, trying to optimize the state of society. The «caring state»,21 which engages in Big Nudging, clearly has elements of this. Communism 2.0 imposes values, norms, and forms of life on people. Communism 2.0 engages in a centralized, top-down planning of the use of resources. In this process, the goals are set by the government. In many cases, this includes the re-distribution of resources from certain elites to a broader public. However, communism 2.0 undermines competition, innovation and entrepreneurship, thereby reducing the amount of resources available, ending up in a desolate economic situation that requires the government to ration resources.
Feudalism 2.0 – the Big Other Society (called surveillance capitalism by some people):22 This system amasses huge amounts of customer data and basically turns citizens into products. The system is based on the accumulation of resources and power in the hands of a small business elite, which is said to be in favor of an efficient use of resources («economies of scale»). However, there are also undesirable side effects such as the misuse of power, relatively low innovation rates, and too-big-to-fail problems (as we have seen them in the financial sector).
In some economic sectors, the accumulation of resources and power has created quasi-monopolies. Typically, the related monopolists, oligarchs or plutocrats demand the right of breaking the rules23 (which is often framed as «creative destruction») and to determine the rules of the future.24 Some of Silicon Valley’s IT giants openly admit that they consider democracy an «outdated technology».25 It appears that they want to replace it by a new, data-driven, world-spanning operating system26 to overcome the limitations of nation-based politics.27
1.
The perfect storm: Resource shortages and other crises ^
The «Limits to Growth» and Global 2000 studies particularly stressed that there was an impending oil shortage and an overpopulation problem. By the end of the 21st century, our planet would host significantly less people (more than one billion people less than during the period of highest population, which is expected to occur around the year 2030). Back in 1973, during the first oil crisis, many public roads were closed during weekends (for example, in Germany). However, since then it appears to the naive consumer that the problems have been solved. In many areas of the world, energy consumption has even doubled. In fact, we are not yet running out of oil, but problems are expected to occur as soon as the global production rate of oil goes down or oil production gets less efficient, i.e. more energy and effort is required to get it out of the soil.37 The implications become clear when considering that most of our economy today depends on oil. It fuels production processes and transportation worldwide. It is used to produce plastic and other materials. It is required to produce fertilizer, i.e. it is needed for global food production. In fact, the world population has increased by a factor of 6 in the past 150 years as a result of the oil-based economy. So, if we would run short of oil or have to use less of it (e.g. to mitigate climate change), a large number of people might die,38 which explains why nobody wants to talk about this. And oil is not the only problem.39
In other words: our current system is broken, it will not work much longer. Attempts to cement the outdated world order of the 20th century with secret agreements may be highly counterproductive for the future of our world.56 To keep people in check and society under control, governments have built powerful surveillance and control system. We may also see a rationing of resources. Such a system would correspond to Communism 2.0 (if organized by governments) or Feudalism 2.0 (if organized by multi-national corporations). In more serious scenarios, a nine- or ten-digit number of people could die from hunger, disease or war. The scenarios discussed in connection with future resource shortages are depressing and sad. It is increasingly obvious that our economy will run in an evolutionary dead end, if we go on as before. We can certainly not allow this to happen, given that the lives of so many people are at stake. Before I explain, how we can mitigate our problems by means of democracy 2.0 and capitalism 2.0, I will discuss, how we got ourselves into so much trouble that we must probably talk of a «systemic failure».
2.
Why our socio-economic system fails ^
Today, more than a billion people have more comfortable lives than kings used to have just a few generations ago. Thanks to the access to global resources and rationalization, the economy grew and grew. The public media helped to produce the culture of materialism and consumerism, which made it happen. In fact, our economy had to grow, because it builds on loan-based investments that require lenders to pay an interest rate to the banks. Banks had to take an interest rate to make money and exist. Scientists and engineers invented as told within the framework of the current system. They largely worked on subjects, which allowed them to raise third-party funding: subjects that companies cared about.
Politics has already prepared for this: by investing in surveillance systems, weapons and detainment camps, but also in new kinds of propaganda and censorship systems to keep people in check – every one of us (using big nudging, social media filters, and social bots,62 for example). The Sustainable Development Agenda of the United Nations does not sufficiently distance itself from such measures. In fact, the Agenda 2030 calls for «strong institutions».63 One should keep in mind, however, that strong institutions can be very harmful, if power falls into wrong hands or inappropriate actions are taken.64 For example, in a state of emergency, it often happens that measures not legitimated by the public, by science or previous success, are applied, but it is impossible to prevent them.
3.
Future scenarios ^
4.
The way out: There is a better, alternative future ^
My point is: we should engage in systemic pluralism and should be much more experimental. In fact, with virtual worlds and multi-player online games, we have now the technologies to make large-scale experiments with many different kinds of systems before we implement them. For example, financial systems serve to coordinate the use of scarce resources, i.e. to decide who will get how much of what resource. However, there are many different coordination systems that can accomplish this task, and probably many better ones. The current system matches supply and demand on average, but not in detail. As a consequence, we have both, hunger and obesity in the world, which is bad for billions of people. Mechanisms used to decide about organ transplants or to run smart grids are much more sophisticated in matching supply and demand – they do it in a context-dependent and fair way. It is important, however, to ensure that these mechanisms are transparent and fair.
The exact framework will still have to be sorted out. From my point of view, doing this now is much more important than establishing free trade and service agreements. The last decades have shown that more efficient production and big solutions, which generate the greatest revenue, do not fix the world.72 We have rather to engage in diverse, mutually complementary solutions, which requires the creation of an information, innovation, production and service ecosystem. As small and medium-sized enterprises are the backbone of thriving economies,73 it is necessary to revitalize them. Remember that the most diversified economies thrive most.74 It is also becoming increasingly clear that the civil society can play a much bigger role in addressing the challenges of the future. For example, citizen science75 and the maker community76 (using 3D printers and other cheap technologies to produce complex products locally themselves) are important developments in this direction.
Last but not least, young generations appear to be different from previous generations in a number of relevant points: They seem to value a meaningful job more than making a steep career. They have already a larger degree of networked thinking. Friends and family tend to be more important to them than becoming rich. Owning private property is less relevant to them than access to good services. All in all, they are probably adaptable to our future. Moreover, we see new types of companies, which are organized in a bottom-up way and outperform classical, top-down organized competitors.77 In other words, a new economy, a new society is emerging in front of our eyes. We are about to step into a new era: a digitally empowered, participatory market society.78 However, as we do not have much time to accomplish this transformation, we must now create a suitable framework for the digital society and make the necessary steps quickly.
5.
What can now be done ^
Big Data and Artificial Intelligence (AI): If properly used, these technologies can help to identify inefficiencies and better solutions. However, there are a number of potential pitfalls one needs to pay attention to, otherwise one may produce more harm than good.79 It is also important to realize that even superintelligent systems will not solve all problems of the world (for example, problems related to friendships, social capital, culture, unemployment or peace).
Innovation: Given that we have not seen enough innovation to solve the impending resource issues, we need to massively improve on responsible innovation. All obstacles have to be kept out of the way.
I think these changes are necessary and justified, given that we are talking about the future survival of a lot of people. We also need to engage in mass innovation. Therefore, it is recommended to support citizen science, the maker community, and similar initiatives that are committed to open data, open source, open innovation, etc. For example, an international «Culturepedia» project could identify the success principles underlying the diverse cultures of the world and operationalize them. This would allow people from all over the world to learn from each other and to combine their success strategies in entirely new ways such that better solutions to existing problems would be generated.
6.
Democracy 2.0 and capitalism 2.0: the perfect couple ^
7.
Summary, discussion, and outlook ^
In contrast, the self-organization approach attempts a flexible adaptation to the actual local needs. In our approach,102 traffic flows control the traffic lights rather the other way round. This is based on simple rules that promote the coordination of neighboring traffic lights. In other words: we do not limit the solution space – we let the system evolve according to its needs and encourage coordination by the kinds of interactions implemented between the traffic flows and the neighboring traffic lights.
Last but not least, it must be realized that centralized information systems may be unsustainable on the long run. Cybercrime causes a damage of around 1 trillion dollars per year and is exponentially increasing. 112 Adding more devices to the Internet increases its vulnerability. CIA chief Clapper considers the Internet of Things to be the greatest threat to the USA.113 In fact, there is no 100 percent security anywhere. The US military has been hacked, the Pentagon, the White House, the German Bundestag, and probably every company, too. The idea that systems (particularly learning ones) can be made 100 percent secure if we just control them more and more is a dangerous illusion – and tends to end in a loss of freedom and security.114 Therefore, we may need a new security paradigm oriented at resilience, which could be inspired by the human immune system: even though this is attacked by bacteria millions of times every day, we live more than 70 years on average. Remarkably, the immune system is decentrally organized, which ensures that there is no single point of failure. For this and other reasons, the Nervousnet platform will be a decentralized system. Error and attack tolerance have been guiding principles since the creation of the Internet – we should not forget about this.
8.
Heading towards the illuminated age ^
- Business models and policies that do not comply with human dignity and human rights should be banned.
- Underused resources should be opened up for use for a reasonable compensation. For example, sharing economy platforms can offer opportunities to improve the use of underused resources. Furthermore, new solutions should be pursued to reward people and companies for innovative solutions and creative products.
- A centrally managed one-size-fits-all approach will not be diverse enough to create the innovation rates, collective intelligence and societal resilience needed. One should, therefore, support international interdisciplinary initiatives developing new solutions to impending crises, based on both, competition and collaboration.115 In this connection, a Culturepedia project, climate olympics and similarly engaging formats might be fruitful.
- One should support the ability of people to help themselves and each other. Big Data, Artificial Intelligence, innovation and production should be democratized by supporting open data and open innovation. Furthermore, one should catalyze an information, innovation, production and service ecosystem by requiring or rewarding interoperability. Then, SMEs, NGOs, citizen scientists and the maker community could better contribute to solving the problems of the world, based on the principle of glocality («think global, act local»).
- One should build «democracy 2.0» («digital democracy»), which requires suitable platforms for online deliberation and eGovernance. Such platforms can now be created. They can help to bring the best knowledge and ideas together, which is key to master the challenges of the future. (They may also integrate Artificial Intelligence technology.) «Pluralistic» solutions that are acceptable from diverse perspectives have the advantage that they can serve multiple purposes and functions. The parliament could decide for, say, one, two or three of such solutions, giving communities a choice to implement a locally and culturally fitting solution. This approach would reach a good balance between standardization and diversity.
- Last but not least, one should build «capitalism 2.0» by adding a «socio-ecological finance» system to our current financial system, where various new currencies measure social and environmental impacts and attribute a certain value or cost to them. This socio-ecological finance system would provide a new, multi-dimensional incentive and exchange system, enabling to support the self-organization and coordination in complex dynamical systems such as our economy and society. If suitably specified, socio-ecological finance will foster a circular and sharing economy, which implies the more efficient use of scarce resources and a good quality of life for many people. The system will allow everyone to earn money by crowd-sourcing (e.g. by measuring environmental impacts). Taxes for public investments can be automatically created as well. Capitalism 2.0 offers many dimensions to «do well». It also considers non-material value. Finally, as the approach takes externalities into account, it can effectively support environmental care and social cooperation (including peace between cultures) while supporting individual and entrepreneurial freedom.
Furthermore, rather than maximizing gross domestic product (GDP) per capita, many nations around the globe may maximize happiness, soon. The «economics of happiness»116 shows that people actually do not need a lot of material resources to be happy: water, shelter, information access, and a meaningful life. The latter requires a society built on values and trust; it requires friendships, opportunities for personal self-development, a good health system, and social security.
- Respect: Treat all forms of life respectfully; protect and promote their (mental, psychological and physical) well-being.
- Diversity and non-discrimination: Support socio-economic diversity and pluralism (also by the ways in which Information and Communications Technologies are designed and operated). Counter discrimination and repression, prioritize rewards over punishment.
- Freedom: Support the principle of informational self-determination; respect creative freedom (opportunities for individual development) and the freedom of non-intimidating expression.
- Participatory opportunities: Enable self-determined decisions, offer participatory opportunities and a choice of good options. Ensure to properly balance the interests of all relevant (affected) stakeholders, particularly political and business interests, and those of citizens.
- Self-organization: Create a framework to support flexible, decentralized, self-organized adaptation, e.g. by using suitable reputation systems.
- Responsibility: Commit yourself to timely, responsible and sustainable actions (or omissions), by considering their externalities.
- Quality and awareness: Commit yourself to honest, high-quality information and good practices and standards; support transparency and awareness.
- Fairness: Reduce negative externalities that are directly or indirectly caused by your own decisions and actions, and fully compensate the disadvantaged parties (in other words: «pay your bill»); reward others in a fair way for positive externalities.
- Protection: Protect others from harm, damage, and exploitation; refrain from aggressive or war-like activities (including cybercrime, cyberwar, and misuse of information).
- Resilience: Reduce the vulnerability of systems and increase their resilience (e.g. through decentralization, self-organization and diversity).
- Sustainability: Promote sustainable systems and long-term societal benefits; increase systemic benefits.
- Compliance: Engage in protecting and complying with these fundamental principles.
To summarize the above even more briefly, the most important rule is to increase positive externalities, reduce negative ones, and ensure fair compensation. This might be considered as an operationalization of the golden rule: Behave in such a way, as you would expect it from others, if affected by that decision (where «others» also includes the environment and ecosystem around us). Shall we give it a try?
Prof. Dr. Dirk Helbing, Department of Humanities, Social and Political Sciences (ETH Zurich/TU Delft).
- 1 The effectiveness of predictive policing: Lessons from a randomized controlled trial, Journalist’s Resource (6 November 2014), http://journalistsresource.org/studies/government/criminal-justice/predictive-policing-randomized-controlled-trial (all internet sources have been last visited on 25 April 2016); Kai Biermann, Predictive Policing – Noch hat niemand bewiesen, dass Data Mining der Polizei hilft, ZEIT Online (29 March 2015), http://www.zeit.de/digital/datenschutz/2015-03/predictive-policing-software-polizei-precobs; Ellen Nakashima, NSA phone record collection does little to prevent terrorist attacks, group says, The Washington Post (12 January 2014), http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/nsa-phone-recordcollection-does-little-to-prevent-terrorist-attacks-group-says/2014/01/12/8aa860aa-77dd-11e3-8963-b4b654bcc9b2_story.html?hpid=z4; see also http://web.archive.org/web/20150211220452/http://securitydata.newamerica.net/nsa/analysis.
- 2 Sascha Lobo, Die Mensch-Maschine: Tiefgreifendes, strukturelles, multiples Staatsversagen, Spiegel Online (30 March 2016), http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/netzpolitik/sascha-lobo-ueber-is-terror-ueberwachung-ist-die-falsche-antwort-a-1084629.html.
- 3 Frank Pasquale, The Black Box Society: The Secret Algorithms That Control Money and Information (Harvard University, 2015); Mnih Volodymyr et al., Human-level control through deep reinforcement learning, Nature 518 (2015), pp. 529–533; Kai Schlieter, Die Herrschaftsformel: Wie Künstliche Intelligenz uns berechnet, steuert und unser Leben verändert (Westend, 2015); Thomas R. Köhler, Der programmierte Mensch: Wie uns Internet und Smartphone manipulieren (Frankfurter Allgemeine Buch, 2012).
- 4 Dirk Helbing et al., Digitale Demokratie statt Datendiktatur, Spektrum der Wissenschaft 1/2016 (17 December 2015), http://www.spektrum.de/news/wie-algorithmen-und-big-data-unsere-zukunft-bestimmen/1375933; see also the podcast of the event «Wie verändert die digitale Revolution unsere Demokratie?», https://www.volkswagenstiftung.de/aktuelles/aktdetnewsl/news/detail/artikel/muendige-wege-durch-den-datendschungel/marginal/4954.html; Dirk Helbing, Societal, economic, ethical and legal challenges of the digital revolution: From big data to deep learning , artificial intelligence, and manipulative technologies, in: Jusletter IT 21 May 2015.
- 5 Robert Epstein/Ronald E. Robertson, The search engine manipulation effect (SEME) and its possible impact on the outcomes of elections, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA 112 (2015), E4512–E4521; see also Jonathan Watts/David Agren, Hacker claims he helped Enrique Peña Nieto win Mexican presidential election, The Guardian (1 April 2016), http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/mar/31/mexico-presidential-election-enrique-pena-nieto-hacking; Joachim Laukenmann, Wie digitale Medien Wähler manipulieren, Sonntagszeitung (10 April 2016), http://www.sonntagszeitung.ch/read/sz_10_04_2016/gesellschaft/Wie-digitale-Medien-Waehler-manipulieren-59964; Rafael Schupisser/Schweiz am Sonntag, Roboter würden SP wählen – oder: Warum Twitter eine Gefahr für die Demokratie ist, Watson (21 February 2016), http://www.watson.ch/International/Social%20Media/558554953-Roboter-würden-SP-wählen---oder--Warum-Twitter-eine-Gefahr-für-die-Demokratie-ist.
- 6 Clio Andris et al., The rise of partisanship and super-cooperators in the U.S. House of Representatives, PLoS ONE 10(4): e0123507 (2015). Rising social polarisation, populism and extremism are concerning phenomena of our time, and they can be interpreted as social cascading effects in a overly connected world (see Dirk Helbing, Globally networked risks and how to respond, Nature 497 (2013), pp. 51–59); taxing links to reduce over-connectivity and resulting systemic risks may help.
- 7 Jonathan Rowson, Nudge is not enough..., Guardian (19 July 2011), http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/jul/19/nudge-is-not-enough-behaviour-change.
- 8 Jay Stanley, China’s nightmarish citizen scores are a warning for Americans (5 October 2015), https://www.aclu.org/blog/free-future/chinas-nightmarish-citizen-scores-are-warning-americans.
- 9 New CRISPR technology can be used to make designer babies (7 January 2016), http://www.news-medical.net/news/20160107/New-CRISPR-technology-can-be-used-to-make-designer-babies.aspx; see also Kemal Atlay, Gene-editing poses ethical questions, The Saturday Paper (16 April 2016), https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/2016/04/16/gene-editing-poses-ethical-questions/14607288003113.
- 10 See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FfkZ1yri26s and http://info.publicintelligence.net/USArmy-InternmentResettlement.pdf.
- 11 See https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2016/04/greece-refugees-detained-in-dire-conditions-amid-rush-to-implement-eu-turkey-deal/ and http://www.amnestyusa.org/news/press-releases/amnesty-international-releases-new-report-on-refugee-crisis-pushes-obama-to-do-more.
- 12 Frank Schirrmacher (ed.) Technologischer Totalitarismus (Suhrkamp, 2015).
-
13
Dirk Helbing, Society is not a machine, https://www.edge.org/response-detail/26795. Note that it is often said that one needs a benevolent dictator, when decisions are time-critical and finding consensus would take too long. However, a benevolent dictator can easily make mistakes, particularly in a complex world. If the benevolent dictator is powerful, such mistakes will be big and affect the existence of millions of people. Therefore, I suggest that different solution approaches should be tried out in various places, as the federal and subsidiarity approaches suggests, and that these experiments should be scientifically evaluated to spread and (co-)evolve the best solutions. In a complex world, such a pluralistic approach is more promising for humanity to master difficult
times than applying big solutions to all. By the way, such a pluralistic approach has just been used by the Daimler AG to identify good strategies for the future, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpuz8x-6BDA. - 14 David Lazer et al., The Parable of Google Flu: Traps in Big Data Analysis, Science 343 (2014), 1203–1205; Dirk Helbing, Thinking Ahead – Essays on Big Data, Digital Revolution and Participatory Market Society (Springer, Berlin, 2015).
- 15 For an entertaining illustration of the problem see the book by military intelligence analyst Tyler Vigen, Spurious Correlations (Hachette, 2015)
- 16 Dirk Helbing, What the digital revolution means for us, Science Business (12 June 2014), http://www.sciencebusiness.net/news/76591/What-the-digital-revolution-means-for-us.
- 17 Dirk Helbing/Evangelos Pournaras, Build Digital Democracy, Nature 527 (2015), 33–34, http://www.nature.com/news/society-build-digital-democracy-1.18690.
- 18 Tony Blair, Is Democracy Dead? The New York Times (4 December 2014), http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/04/opinion/tony-blair-is-democracy-dead.html; Harald Welzer, Die Demokratie – ein Auslaufmodell, Die Welt (2 August 2008), http://www.welt.de/welt_print/article2332799/Die-Demokratie-ein-Auslaufmodell.html; Jakob Tanner, Demokratie – ein Auslaufmodell?, Tagesanzeiger (19 July 2015), http://www.tagesanzeiger.ch/schweiz/standard/Demokratie-ein-Auslaufmodell/story/20251334; Michael Safi, Have millennials given up on democracy?, The Guardian (18 March 2016), http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/mar/18/have-millennials-given-up-on-democracy.
- 19 In his remarks by at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on 30 April 2016, President Obama said: «[…] this is […] a time around the world when some of the fundamental ideals of liberal democracies are under attack, and when notions of objectivity, and of a free press, and of facts, and of evidence are trying to be undermined. Or, in some cases, ignored entirely. And in such a climate, it’s not enough just to give people a megaphone. […] that’s why your power and your responsibility to dig and to question and to counter distortions and untruths is more important than ever.» See https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2016/05/01/remarks-president-white-house-correspondents-dinner. Also see above, footnote 13.
- 20 Harald Welzer
- 21 Richard H. Thaler/Cass R. Sunstein, Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness (Penguin, 2009).
- 22 Shoshana Zuboff, Big Other: Surveillance Capitalism and the Prospects of an Information Civilization, Journal of Information Technology 30 (2015), 75–89. It is a well-known problem that even bottom-up organisational approaches tend to turn into feudalistic structures eventually (see the Iron Law of Oligarchy, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_law_of_oligarchy). This has also be found for Wikipedia (see http://www.sciencealert.com/wikipedia-is-basically-just-another-old-fashioned-bureaucracy-study-finds). To counteract this tendency, various measures can be taken, including: decentralization, separation of roles, limited office periods, democratic elections, random elements, multi-dimensionality/diversity/pluralism, mechanisms avoiding too much accumulation of resources and power, division of power/checks and balances, participatory approaches, shared values, accountability, and transparency. Such elements should be built into the system («democracy by design»).
- 23 I.e. applicable laws or even the constitution
- 24 To give a simplified picture, a lot of innovation happens in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and is bought by big businesses, which then scale up promising solutions to cheaply produce for a global market («economies of scale»). While this division of labor makes sense, it is less clear how helpful standardization is in this context. If tailored to the needs of a few big companies, then this creates disadvantages for SMEs and reduces the diversity of solutions. Requiring transparency, openness, and the removal of obstacles to interoperability and innovation seems to make more sense. Another issue is the following: to expand quickly, big businesses focus on products and services generating the highest revenues (say, 20 percent). Other products and services, even if profitable, are often not provided. SMEs, but also non-government organizations and citizen engagement are, therefore, needed, to create and offer products and services, which are desirable, but less profitable or require even an investment. Such products and services are important for a thriving society as well. In other words, big business can efficiently satisfy the basic needs of millions or billions, but this alone will typically not create a high quality of life. For this, a close-knit information, innovation, production and service ecosystem is needed, which is highly differentiated and diverse. SMEs are indispensable.
- 25 The complete quote is: «Die Demokratie ist eine veraltete Technologie. [...] Sie hat Reichtum, Gesundheit und Glück für Milliarden Menschen auf der ganzen Welt gebracht. Aber jetzt wollen wir etwas Neues ausprobieren.» Another quote from Larry Page is: «Es gibt eine Menge Dinge, die wir gern machen würden, aber leider nicht tun können, weil sie illegal sind. Weil es Gesetze gibt, die sie verbieten. Wir sollten ein paar Orte haben, wo wir sicher sind. Wo wir neue Dinge ausprobieren und herausfinden können, welche Auswirkungen sie auf die Gesellschaft haben.» See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCtBdVpUY08 and Christoph Keese, Silicon Valley: Was aus dem mächtigsten Tal der Welt auf uns zu kommt (Albrecht Knaus, 2014). One such place beyond the rule of national law is CERN. It has built something like a Crystal Ball for society, which uses predictive analytics, but also predictive programming technologies («big nuding»), and machine learning approaches (Artificial Intelligence). See Peter Welchering, Die Software vom Cern spielt Orakel, FAZ (25 April 2016), http://www.faz.net/aktuell/technik-motor/computer-internet/einsatz-der-cern-prognose-software-im-alltaeglichen-bereich-14184322.html; Chris Merriman, CERN: The gulf between machine learning and AI, The INQUIRER (29 July 2015), http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/feature/2419669/cern-the-gulf-between-machine-learning-and-artificial-intelligence. It is now important to create a scientific, ethical and governance framework, which is pluralistic, interdisciplinary, transparent, and accountable, to prevent improper use of these technologies.
- 26 Adrian Lobe, Google will den Staat neu programmieren, FAZ (10 October 2015), http://www.faz.net/aktuell/feuilleton/medien/google-gruendet-in-den-usa-government-innovaton-lab-13852715.html; Katherine Noyes, Forget Trump and Clinton: IBM’s Watson is running for president, PC World (8 February 2016), http://www.pcworld.com/article/3031137/forget-trump-and-clinton-ibms-watson-is-running-for-president.html.
- 27 Thomas Schulz, Die Weltregierung: Wie das Silicon Valley unsere Zukunft steuert, Spiegel (4 March 2015), http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/spiegel-cover-story-how-silicon-valley-shapes-our-future-a-1021557.html.
- 28 Theda Skocpol/Morris P. Fiorina (eds.) Civic Engagement in American Democracy (Brookings, 1999); Aaron Smith, Civic engagement in the digital age, PewResearchCenter (25 April 2013) http://www.pewinternet.org/2013/04/25/civic-engagement-in-the-digital-age/; Essop Pahad, Political Participation and Civic Engagement, Progressive Politics Vol 4.2 (1 July 2005), http://www.policy-network.net/uploadedfiles/publications/publications/pahad-final.pdf.
- 29 Timothy D. Sisk (ed.) Democracy at the Local Level, Chap. 3 (2010) http://www.idea.int/publications/dll/; Nico Stehr, Climate policy: Democracy is not an inconvenience, Nature 525 (24 September 2015), 449–450.
- 30 Dirk Helbing, Interaction Support Processor (2015), https://patentscope.wipo.int/search/en/detail.jsf?docId=WO2015118455.
- 31 Elon Musk: «I think the best defense against the misuse of AI is to empower as many people as possible to have AI. If everyone has AI powers, then there’s not any one person or a small set of individuals who can have AI superpower.» See http://www.kurzweilai.net/musk-others-commit-1-billion-to-non-profit-ai-research-company-to-benefit-humanity.
- 32 As a side effect, the concept of the «homo economicus» will increasingly be replaced by the concept of «homo socialis». See the Special Issue on Homo Socialis, Review of Behavioral Economics, Vol. 2 (2015), http://www.nowpublishers.com/article/Details/RBE-0032.
- 33 Cesar A. Hidalgo et al., The Product Space Conditions the Development of Nations, Science 317 (2007), 482–487.
- 34 Dirk Helbing, The Automation of Society Is Next: How to Survive the Digital Revolution (CreateSpace, 2015).
- 35 Donella H. Meadows, Limits to Growth (Signet, 1972); Donella H. Meadows et al., Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update (Chelsea Green, 2004).
- 36 Gerald O. Barney, The Global 2000 Report to the President, http://www.geraldbarney.com/G2000Page.html; Gerald O. Barney, Global 2000 Revisited, http://www.geraldbarney.com/G2000Revisit.html.
- 37 This is sometimes phrased as «peak oil» problem.
- 38 Roy Scranton, Learning to Die in the Anthropocene (City Lights, 2015).
- 39 Bundesamt für Umwelt BAFU, Umweltzustand: Globale Megatrends, http://www.bafu.admin.ch/umwelt/12492/12803/index.html?lang=de, see also http://visual.ly/born-2010-how-much-left-me.
- 40 I am convinced that public awareness and involvement must be largely increased, if we want to be able to come up with better solutions.
- 41 Sid Perkins, Climate change could eventually claim a sixth of the world’s species, Science (30 April 2015), http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2015/04/climate-change-could-eventually-claim-sixth-world-s-species.
- 42 Damian Carrington, Are food prices reaching a violent tipping point, The Guardian (25 August 2011), http://www.theguardian.com/environment/damian-carrington-blog/2011/aug/25/food-price-arab-middle-east-protests; Yaneer Bar-Yam/Greg Lindsay, The real reason for spikes in food prices, Reuters (25 October 2012), http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2012/10/25/the-real-reason-for-spikes-in-food-prices/.
- 43 Danny King, Tesla Model S fined for excessive emissions in Singapore, AutoBlog (8 March 2016), http://www.autoblog.com/2016/03/08/tesla-model-s-fined-for-excessive-emissions-in-singapore/.
- 44 See, for example, http://www.focus.de/gesundheit/news/gefaehrliche-krankheit-ein-dorf-lebt-in-angst-krebs-ist-die-einzige-todesursache_id_5443253.html.
- 45 Dramatisches Insektensterben, NABU (13 January 2016), https://www.nabu.de/news/2016/01/20033.html.
- 46 Justin Lahart, Did the oil price boom in 2008 cause crisis? The Wall Street Journal (3 April 2009), http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2009/04/03/did-the-oil-price-boom-of-2008-cause-crisis/.
- 47 Demographics: What variable best predicts a financial crisis? (16 July 2010), http://andrewgelman.com/2010/07/16/demographics_wh/.
- 48 Financial crisis of 2007-08, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_crisis_of_2007-08.
- 49 Nick Hanauer: Beware, fellow plutocrats, the pitchforks are coming (12 August 2014), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2gO4DKVpa8.
- 50 Inequality hurts economic growth, finds OECD research (12 September 2014), http://www.oecd.org/newsroom/inequality-hurts-economic-growth.htm; Carter C. Price, Why inequality harms economic growth (11 December 2014), https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2014/12/why-inequality-harms-economic-growth/; Phillip Inman, IMF study finds inequality is damaging to economic growth, The Guardian (26 February 2014), http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/feb/26/imf-inequality-economic-growth.
- 51 Larry Elliott, Richest 62 people as wealthy as half of world’s population, says Oxfam, The Guardian (18 January 2016), http://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/jan/18/richest-62-billionaires-wealthy-half-world-population-combined.
- 52 Stéphanie Thompson, The digital revolution could destroy the middle class, warns Joe Biden, World Economic Forum (21 January 2016), https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/01/the-digital-revolution-could-destroy-the-middle-class-warns-joe-biden/; «Middle-class Joe» Biden tells Davos bosses to look after workers, Fortune (20 January 2016), http://fortune.com/2016/01/20/joe-biden-davos-workers/.
- 53 For Germany, this effect sums up to 125 billion EUR, see http://www.focus.de/finanzen/news/ezb-hat-den-bogen-ueberspannt-wegen-niedrigzins-deutsche-sparer-haben-100-milliarden-euro-in-fuenf-jahren-verloren_id_5442246.html; other numbers speak even of 327 billion EUR, see http://m.welt.de/finanzen/geldanlage/article153466283/Niedrigzins-kostet-Deutsche-327-Milliarden-Euro.html.
- 54 Thomas Fricke, Aufstieg der Rechtspopulisten: Schaut auf die Banken, Spiegel (15 April 2016), http://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/aufstieg-der-rechtspopulisten-liegt-an-der-finanzkrise-kolumne-a-1087139.html.
- 55 Paul Mason, The end of capitalsm has begun, The Guardian (17 July 2015), http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jul/17/postcapitalism-end-of-capitalism-begun; Carolin Haentjes, Der Kapitalismus ist am Ende, Der Tagesspiegel (6 April 2016), http://www.tagesspiegel.de/kultur/paul-mason-im-hkw-berlin-der-kapitalismus-ist-am-ende/13412300.html.
- 56 Of course, international trade and service agreements can make a lot of sense, but they may also amplify existing problems and inequality, too: if the roles of customers and citizens are not strengthened, such agreements will reduce the likelihood of new solutions and accelerate the accumulation of formerly public or widely spread property and power in the hands of a few big companies, promoting Feudalism 2.0. This seems to be one of the great public concerns against the CETA, TTIP and TISA agreements, besides the possible weakening of democracy as well as social, environmental, and legal standards. Note that replacing the precautionary principle for new products by a risk management approach, as it is demanded by the USA (see http://www.greenpeace.org/eu-unit/en/News/2016/TTIPleaks-confidential-TTIP-papers-unveil-US-position/), has at least two drawbacks: (1) It often takes decades from the first evidence of a serious product risk until this finding has been established as a widely recognized fact; during this long time period, much harm can occur. (2) If risk management is combined with big and often global solutions, a mistake can easily become a big mistake, from which it may be hard to recover (such as the overuse of carbon-based energy resources).
- 57 I would like to call this pyramid of needs into question: information, friendship and solidarity experience all-time heights in harsh times, too.
- 58 Hannes Grassegger, China auf der Zunge, ZEIT ONLINE (15 November 2013), http://www.zeit.de/wirtschaft/2013-11/china-auf-der-zunge-essen-kochen; Gesundheitsrisiko: Europol findet Rekordmenge gefälschter Lebensmittel, Spiegel (30 March 2016), http://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/service/europol-findet-rekordmenge-gefaelschter-lebensmittel-a-1084739.html.
- 59 In a letter dated 22 July 2009 to the Queen of England, the British Academy also came to the conclusion that even well-intended behavior may lead to systemic failure: «When Your Majesty visited the London School of Economics last November, you quite rightly asked: why had nobody noticed that the credit crunch was on its way? [...] So where was the problem? Everyone seemed to be doing their own job properly on its own merit. And according to standard measures of success, they were often doing it well. The failure was to see how collectively this added up to a series of interconnected imbalances over which no single authority had jurisdiction. [...] Individual risks may rightly have been viewed as small, but the risk to the system as a whole was vast. [...] So in summary [...] the failure to foresee the timing, extent and severity of the crisis [...] was principally the failure of the collective imagination of many bright people to understand the risks to the systems as a whole.» See http://wwwf.imperial.ac.uk/~bin06/M3A22/queen-lse.pdf.
- 60 The minimization of the use of costly resources («rationalization») is driven by the desire to maximize revenues. However, the impact on human, social, and environmental resources, particularly public ones, is often neglected.
- 61 The exploitation of celestial bodies is planned, but is not possible yet.
- 62 Joachim Laukenmann, Wie digitale Daten Wähler manipulieren können, Die Welt (20 April 2016), http://www.welt.de/wissenschaft/article154572957/Wie-digitale-Daten-Waehler-manipulieren-koennen.html; see also Joachim Laukenmann, Wie digitale Medien Wähler manipulieren, Sonntagszeitung (10 April 2016), http://www.sonntagszeitung.ch/read/sz_10_04_2016/gesellschaft/Wie-digitale-Medien-Waehler-manipulieren-59964; Christian Meier/Jennifer Wilton, Social bots: Maschinen übernehmen die Macht im Internet, Die Welt (11 April 2016), http://www.welt.de/wirtschaft/webwelt/article154223388/Maschinen-uebernehmen-die-Macht-im-Internet.html.
- 63 UN Sustainable Development Goals, http://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/peace-justice/.
- 64 Warnings of the totalitarian potential also come from elected parliamentarians in various countries, see e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sES6_OXPwOU; further information about the Agenda 21 and Agenda 2030 can be easily found in various YouTube channels.
- 65 Marc Elsberg’s book «Blackout» illustrates how such cascading scenarios might unfold. For scientific analyses of cascade effects see Dirk Helbing/Hendrik Ammoser/Christian Kühnert, Disasters as extreme events and the importance of network interactions for disaster response management, in: Extreme Events in Nature and Society (Springer, 2010), pp. 319–348.
- 66 A similar system, called Karma Police, exists in Great Britain, see Ryan Gallagher, Profiled: From radio to porn, British spies track Web user’s online identities, The Intercept (25 September 2015), https://theintercept.com/2015/09/25/gchq-radio-porn-spies-track-web-users-online-identities/.
- 67 Depending on the implementation, the resulting system might be considered as socialism 2.0 or social market economy 2.0.
- 68 Ben S. Bernanke, What tools does the Fed have left? Part 3: Helicopter money, Brookings (11 April 2016), http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/ben-bernanke/posts/2016/04/11-helicopter-money.
- 69 The utilitarian approach measures the value of everything in units of money. It has lead to a one-dimensional optimization, as science and politics and other societal institutions are increasingly influenced by business interests. The related lack of a multi-faceted approach has significantly contributed to the increasing dysfunctionality of many societal institutions, i.e. their difficulty to fix the problems society is faces with. For example, the resulting system does not seem to serve the majority of people well anymore, as elaborated below.
- 70 Bertelsmann Stiftung (ed.), To the Man with a Hammer – Augmenting the Policymaker’s Toolbox for a Complex World (Bertelsmann, 2016).
- 71 Dirk Helbing, Qualified Money – A Better Financial System for the Future (2014), http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2526022 and Dirk Helbing, Interaction Support Processor (2015), https://patentscope.wipo.int/search/en/detail.jsf?docId=WO2015118455.
- 72 The issue with big solutions is that, if it (later) turns out that they have serious drawbacks or side effects, then there is a big problem, potentially a global-scale one. Diversity hedges such risks and ensures that there are alternatives, in case one solution fails.
- 73 See above, footnote 52.
- 74 See above, footnote 33.
- 75 Chris Coons, The government wants you to help it do science experiments, Wired (30 September 30), http://www.wired.com/2015/09/government-wants-help-science-experiments/; see also https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/senate-bill/2113.
- 76 A Nation of Makers, https://www.whitehouse.gov/nation-of-makers; see also http://www.nationofmakers.org/.
- 77 Examples are presented in this movie (in German): https://vimeo.com/157724336, https://vimeo.com/157708354.
- 78 See above, footnote 34.
- 79 See above, footnotes 14 and 17, and Dirk Helbing/Jeroen van den Hoven, Responsible IT innovation: How to digitally upgrade our society?, preprint (2016); Autonomous weapons: An open letter from AI & robotics researchers, http://futureoflife.org/open-letter-autonomous-weapons/; Dirk Helbing, Machine intelligence: Blessing or curse? It depends on us!, Telekom (1 March 2016), https://www.telekom.com/company/digital-responsibility/304108.
- 80 Ami Sedghi, How much water is needed to produce food and how much do we waste? The Guardian (10 January 2013), http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2013/jan/10/how-much-water-food-production-waste.
- 81 Andrew Urevig, New study finds recycled Phosphorus could fertilized 100 percent of U.S. corn, Ensia (15 January 2016), http://ensia.com/notable/new-study-finds-recycled-phosphorus-could-fertilize-100-percent-of-u-s-corn/.
- 82 At least one third of food is wasted today, a maximum of two thirds is used. Therefore, if we can avoid wasting food, the world can eat at least 50 percent more than today without increasing food production.
- 83 «Generation Beziehungsunfähig»: Darum macht Tinder süchtig, Huffington Post (7 April 2016), http://www.huffingtonpost.de/2016/04/07/beziehung-tinder-suechtig_n_9632410.html.
- 84 Holoportation technology is presented in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7d59O6cfaM0.
- 85 The first holographic smartphone is presented here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4tM5qJFsXeM.
- 86 Dirk Helbing, Countering climate change with climate Olympics (4 January 2014), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TaRghSuzBYM,
- 87 I am aware that this position on patents on copyrights is controversial, but a policy change is overdue and already happening: Tesla has opened up many of its patents. Google and others have open-sourced their Artificial Intelligence software. The recent US court rulings on Google Books supports «fair use» of intellectual property. The trend to open innovation is clearly visible.
- 88 Large companies are often weak in terms of innovation (basically, because they are not flexible enough and «new ideas are the enemies of existing ones»). This is the reason why big business tends to buy innovative small and medium-sized enterprises. However, this takes some of the best ideas from the market, and makes them inaccessible to others. Sometimes these innovations are not used at all but just locked away. Such a situation is not in the public interest and does not use resources efficiently. By the way, even though Alphabet (formerly: Google) pursues a phenomenal number of highly ambitious projects in the Google [x] lab, it cannot considered to be a counter-example: over 90 percent of Google’s revenues are made with one single product: personalized information and ads.
- 89 Scott E. Page, The Difference: How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups, Firms, Schools, and Societies (Princeton University, 2008).
- 90 Netflix Prize, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netflix_Prize; see also the previous reference.
- 91 It may seem surprising that making «compromises» with minorities would improve the overall system performance. However, the reason is well understandable. In a complex optimization problem, there is typically one solution which is best for a given goal function (perspective). However, there are often many solutions that reach 95% of the best possible performance. Among these solutions, there will be some solutions, which also perform well from other perspectives (goal functions). In other words, when a system is not over-optimized in a single dimension, there is potential to meet many different interests and needs. In this way, the solution will create opportunities for many, which creates large socio-economic benefits.
- 92 As of today, the parliament will usually decide for one option only with a 50 percent majority, but it over-standardizes the world (reduces necessary diversity), which disadvantages a large number of companies and people.
- 93 In the finance 4.0 system, different kinds of money would be created by crowd sourcing (e.g. by measuring environmental impacts). This money would then «evaporate» and rise up to the top, whereby it passes all levels of society and benefits all of them.
- 94 Will Steffen et al., Planetary boundaries: Guiding human development on a changing planet. Science 347 (2015). http://science.sciencemag.org/content/347/6223/1259855.full-text.pdf+html, p. 736.
- 95 See above, footnote 39.
- 96 Note that most innovations happen in a bottom-up way, and many of them «by accident».
- 97 Dirk Helbing, Economics 2.0: The natural step towards a self-regulating, participatory market society, Evol. Inst. Econ. Rev. 10(1) (2013), pp. 3–41.
- 98 Carl B. Frey/Michael A. Osborne, The future of employment: How susceptible are jobs to computerisation?, Oxdord Martin (2013), http://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/downloads/academic/The_Future_of_Employment.pdf.
- 99 The usefulness of superintelligent algorithms is limited not only by the data available, but also by the complexity of the system. Complex dynamical systems that need high levels of innovation, such as our economy and society, require decentralized bottom-up approaches to perform well.
- 100 Stefan Lämmer/Dirk Helbing, Self-control of traffic lights and vehicle flows in urban road networks, J. Stat. Mech. P04019 (2008); Stefan Lämmer/Reik Donner/Dirk Helbing, Anticipative control of switched queueing systems, Eur. Phys. J. B 63 (2008), pp. 341–347.
- 101 Stefan Lämmer/Dirk Helbing, Self-stabilizing decentralized signal control of realistic, saturated network traffic (2010), http://www.santafe.edu/media/workingpapers/10-09-019.pdf; further publications are available here: http://stefanlaemmer.de/?content=Publikationen; for internal reports contact dhelbing@ethz.ch or traffic@stefanlaemmer.de
- 102 See above, footnotes 100 and 101.
- 103 Dirk Helbing et al., How individuals learn to take turns: Emergence of alternating cooperation in a congestion game and the prisoner’s dilemma, Advances in Complex Systems 8(2005), pp. 87–116.
- 104 This is known from the competition between capitalism 1.0 and communism 1.0. Note that, in times of scarcity and rationing of resources, black markets emerge, which try to compensate for a lack of flexibility.
- 105 Dirk Helbing, Dynamic decision behavior and optimal guidance through information services: Models and experiments, in: Michael Schreckenberg/Reinhard Selten (eds.), Human Behaviour and Traffic Networks (Springer, 2004).
- 106 Rui Carvalho et al., Resilience of natural gas networks during conflicts, crises and disruptions. PLoS ONE 9(3): e90265 (2014).
- 107 Dirk Helbing/Tamás Vicsek, Optimal self-organization, New Journal of Physics 1 (1999), 13.1–13.17.
- 108 Dirk Helbing/Stefan Lämmer, Method for coordination of competing processes or for control of the transport of mobile units within a network, https://www.google.com/patents/US8103434.
- 109 Rod Beckstorm, What if a hacker caused a large-scale Internet outage, WEF (12 June 2012), https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2012/06/what-if-a-hacker-caused-a-large-scale-internet-outage/; Matthias Schüssler, Die unterschätzte Gefahr eines Internetblackout, TagesAnzeiger (12 April 2016), http://www.tagesanzeiger.ch/digital/internet/Die-unterschaetzte-Gefahr-eines-Internetblackout/story/30794811.
- 110 Sonnenforscher warnen vor dem «Big One», Der Bund (8 April 2016), http://www.derbund.ch/wissen/natur/sonnenforscher-warnen-vor-dem-big-one/story/25117391; Geoffry Reeves, The space weather threat...and how to protect ourselves, HUFFPOST Science (19 April 2016), http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lab-notes/the-unpredictability-of-s_b_9721612.html.
- 111 In this connection, determining who financially supports populist movements is strongly advised.
- 112 Elinor Mills, Study: Cybercrime cost firms $1 trillion globally, CNET (29 January 2009), http://www.cnet.com/news/study-cybercrime-cost-firms-1-trillion-globally/; Jana Rooheart, Cyber crime to reach $2 trillion by 2019, business.com (19 April 2016), http://www.business.com/internet-security/cyber-crime-to-reach-2-trillion-by-2019-what-can-we-do/.
- 113 Kelsey D. Atherton, Clapper: America’s greatest threat is the Internet of Things, Popular Science (9 February 2016), http://www.popsci.com/clapper-americas-greatest-threat-is-internet-things.
- 114 Benjamin Franklin: «Those who surrender freedom for security will not have, nor do they deserve, either one.» http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/140634-those-who-surrender-freedom-for-security-will-not-have-nor.
- 115 Social and cultural diversity is as important as biodiversity for human survival. It hedges risks with respect to unexpected events, which will surely happen at a high rate as we undergo the transformation from the service society to the digital society and from the carbon-based economy to a low-carbon economy. How to reduce conflict under these stressful conditions in a highly diverse world? The idea is to familiarize people with other points of view (which corresponds to breaking «filter bubbles»). The relevant scientific experiment was performed by Muzafer Sherif, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Realistic_conflict_theory#Robbers_cave_study. In essence, it has been found that big challenges requiring team work can overcome tensions between different groups, see also https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37QvponcEDc from minute 13. Real-world success stories of this approach are the European exchange program between cities and for students (Erasmus), which have managed to overcome post-war sentiments and establish a basis for peace in Europe. Now, this approach can be scaled up to global scale. Using Virtual Reality (VR), one can enable people to put themselves into other peoples» shoes and understand their perspectives. VR can help to overcome cultural barriers and support international collaborative projects. The advantage of this approach is that it can create social cohesion across national boundaries while allowing for diverse approaches. In a sense, Virtual Reality technology, if used in this way, may be seen as a tool to speed up the evolution of other-regarding preferences, i.e. to turn homo economicus into homo socialis, who has the ability to consider the points of views of others.
- 116 Bruno S. Frey, Happiness: A Revolution in Economics (MIT Press, 2010); Rudolf Hermann, Glücksforschung: Die dänische Theorie des Glücks, NZZ (2 April 2016), http://www.nzz.ch/lebensart/gesellschaft/die-daenische-theorie-des-gluecks-1.18720975. Evidence of the psychological literature, specifically self-determination theory (SDT), implies that the following factors largely contribute to happiness: social inclusion, competence, and experience of autonomy; for a related review see Richard M. Ryan/Edward L. Deci, On Happiness and Human Potentials: A Review of Research on Hedonic and Eudaimonic Well-Being, Annual Review of Psychology 52, 141–166 (2001), http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/full/10.1146/annurev.psych.52.1.141.
- 117 See above, footnote 34.