We’ve Outsmarted Ourselves, lI

"Ready, Fire, Aim," is a way of life. Humankind rarely considers the implications of its advancements

Since the internet debuted in the mid-nineties, I have spent a lot of time thinking about the ways in which we have outsmarted ourselves. Technological advances like the Internet, social media, and now, artificial intelligence, always present us with the challenge of understanding both the short- and long-term implications of the intended, but mostly unintended, consequences of great leaps in technology.

Often, our reach has exceeded our grasp.

For example, the internet gave us the ability to suddenly be in contact with the entire world on a person-to-person basis. Connection is essential to the human condition. The desire for it has been the driving force behind every communication technology from cave drawings and smoke signals to satellites and smart phones.

Our great hopes for the internet have mostly been realized: the positive impact on medicine, telecommunications, banking, and just about everything else, are nothing short of stunning. But because it was new and unstudied, its downside took years to become apparent. Enabling everyone on the planet to have unfettered and unfiltered access to everyone else came with unexpected (we are so naïve!) expressions of hatred and exclusion that were amplified quickly and intensely.

When social media came along, the dream of a “citizen’s democracy” fueled by “citizen journalists” where every voice was heard, portended great things to come. No one realized it would also enable every mom’s-basement dwelling troll in fuzzy slippers to reduce its positive and serious impacts. It unlocked a lot of hate. There’s no doubt it’s always been there, but until Facebook, Twitter, and their ilk, that hate was neatly contained in a drunk uncle’s Thanksgiving rants and a few John Birch Society billboards.

Goodness knows what AI will mean years from now. Will there be any white-collar jobs left? Will the machines do away with our messy selves? Even the experts—especially the experts—are scared by the unknown, unanticipated, and unintended consequences of artificial intelligence.

A different sort of example lies in the ruins of what was once the greatest engineering company in history. Boeing’s transition from a well-respected aeronautical engineering company to a financial engineering company is complete. They’ve gone from being the envy of every other entrant in the airframe manufacturing business to the bane of the industry in a few short years. (An NBC reporter referred to them as an “airline” company. No wonder people don’t trust the media.)

In its original Seattle incarnation, quality control was a point of pride. Boeing led the industry in design and manufacturing, all of which was in-house. Leaving the engineering and manufacturing core of the company behind in 2001, private equity-funded management moved to Chicago and didn’t accidentally lose control; they promoted disintegration by outsourcing manufacturing to third parties and newly incorporated subsidiaries broken off from the mother ship. What made economic sense was anathema to safety.

Through greed and/or imagined efficiencies, Boeing outsmarted itself.

Having lived through a similar (although deadly only to the artform, not actual people) transition from a creative-engineering environment to a financial-engineering one in the broadcast business, the pattern was recognizable, and left me forlorn.

As a broadcast owner and consultant, I spent nearly 40 years traveling every week to clients’ stations. I lived in Atlanta because its Eastern Time Zone, warm weather airport allowed me nonstop access to virtually every city in the U.S., and every major city in the world via hometown airline, Delta.

Delta, for its part, has mostly eschewed financial engineering and remained a company focused on its core mission. The flying public regularly rates Delta’s service highly.

Delta lost confidence in Boeing years ago, as demonstrated by its decision to throw its lot in with Airbus, Boeing’s most serious rival in commercial air transports. They phased out the B-737, and canceled a big B-787 Dreamliner order in 2016 in favor of Airbus models. (Delta owns half of Virgin Atlantic, and Boeing’s Dreamliner in Virgin Atlantic livery is as close as Delta gets to Boeing’s state of the art airplane).  

Whether we were better off without penicillin, indoor plumbing, or electricity is not in question, but most technological advancements are fraught with unintended consequences. That vaccines have become such a divisive issue (there were some naysayers when the polio vaccines hit the market, but the near-total eradication of the disease ultimately quieted them) is but one expression of the backlash that now accompanies just about every innovation. Thanks, internet!

I am not anti-tech. I just think we should expend as much effort considering the implications of radical innovation as we do in rushing new, disruptive, products to market. Knowing the nature of innovation and its unintended consequences should lead us to the creation of speculative models of societal impact before an innovative technology achieves mass adoption…or we’ll continue to outsmart ourselves.

©2024 Jon Sinton