2022: Creating a Lexicon of Future
Q is for Quandary
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A state of not knowing what to decide; a state of difficulty or perplexity; a state of uncertainty, hesitation or puzzlement. ~ Wikitionary
Modern Quandary: Should we reshape society because we can?
If you need drugs to keep you alive, your access to medicine depends on which insurance you can afford, or perhaps on winning the “postcode lottery”. That trend is set to accelerate with the advent of medicine explicitly designed to extend life (see “A cure for ageing is near but you probably can’t afford it“). If it is costly, the rich will get to live longer than the poor; if it is cheap, the demographic challenges of greying populations will be exacerbated. Which option — if either — should we aim for?
This is by no means the only epic moral quandary we face as we enter 2017. In fact, they loom everywhere. Should a would-be autocrat be free to broadcast falsehoods directly to millions over social media? Who should design the logic underpinning life-and-death decisions made by self-driving cars (see “Give your car a conscience: Why driverless cars need morals“)? Should a government be able to eavesdrop on every electronic communication its citizens make?
What’s notable about these questions is a word that’s falling out of public debate: “should”. In recent years, most of the running has been made by “can”. Creating the ability to do something has become conflated with the right to do it. This is in many respects a good thing: New Scientist has long advocated controlled innovation and experimentation as a route to a better world for everybody.
But unbridled innovation leads to social upheaval. Politicians and regulators, dazzled by the pace of innovation and seduced by the megabucks that follow it, have in many areas allowed innovators to “move fast and break things”, trusting that common sense and market forces will ensure nothing important gets too badly broken along the way. That trust would appear to have been misplaced. As this attitude has spread from digital technology to transport, healthcare, the environment and beyond, consensus has begun to break down about fundamental precepts of our societies: the equality of human lives, the value of work and wages, the nature of free speech, and so on. ~ New Moral Codes
