What Should We Be Worried About?

TECHNOLOGY MAY ENDANGER DEMOCRACY

HAIM HARARI

Physicist; former president, Weizmann Institute of Science; author, A View from the Eye of the Storm: Terror and Reason in the Middle East

Science is the source of numerous cures for medical, social, and economic issues. It is also an incredibly exciting and beautiful intellectual adventure. It leads to new technologies, which change our lives, often for the better. Could these technologies endanger the foundations of liberal democracy? This may sound crazy. Yet we should all worry about it. It is a real threat, which should concern every thinking person, if he or she believes that science can advance humanity and that democracy is the least bad system of governance.

A serious mismatch is gradually developing, step by step, between two seemingly unrelated issues: the penetration of science and technology into all aspects of our life, and liberal democracy as practiced throughout the free world. Intrinsically, science and technology are neither good nor bad; it is how we use them that may lead to far-reaching benefits or negative results. Their applications, often planned and deliberate, are sometimes unintended and accidental. The developing conflict between the consequences of modern technology and the survival of democracy is unintended but pregnant with great dangers.

Let us count seven components of this brewing trouble:

First, a mismatch of time scales. Many issues tackled by decision makers are becoming more complex—multidisciplinary, global, multigenerational. Education systems, research policy, social security, geopolitical trends, health insurance, environmental issues, retirement patterns—all have time scales of decades. The time lag from discussion to decision, execution, and consequences is becoming longer, thanks to our growing ability to analyze long-term global effects and to more years of education, work, and retirement for the average person. On the other hand, the time horizon of politicians is always the next election—anything between two and seven years. Modern technology, while producing longer time scales for the problems, creates instant online popularity ratings for reigning office holders, pressing them for short-term solutions. We live longer, but think shorter.

The second component is another type of time mismatch. Twitter, texting (or SMS, in European jargon), Internet comments or “talkbacks,” and similar one-liners make the old superficial 60-second TV news item look like an eternity. But real public issues cannot be summarized by micro sound bites. This encourages extremism and superficiality and almost forces politicians to express themselves in the standard 140 characters of Twitter, rather than in 140 lines, or 140 pages of a decent position paper. The voting public is exposed only to ultra-brief slogans, while a younger generation is becoming homo neo-brevis: the next evolutionary phase of the human race, with a brief attention span, affinity for one-liners, and narrow fingers for the smartphone.

The third issue is the growing importance of science literacy and quantitative thinking for decision makers. Today’s world introduces us to energy issues, new media, genetic manipulations, pandemic flu, water problems, weapons of mass destruction, financial derivatives, global warming, new medical diagnostics, cyberwars, intellectual property, stem cells, and numerous other transformations that cannot be handled by people who cannot comprehend scientific arguments accompanied by simple quantitative considerations. Unfortunately, the vast majority of senior decision makers in most democracies lack these rudimentary abilities, leading to gross errors of judgment and historic mistakes that will affect many generations to come. We need scientifically trained political decision makers.

The fourth is the fact that electability to high office requires talents unrelated to those required for governing and leading. Major countries often elect senior office holders with credentials that would normally not get them a job as the CEO of a minor company. The democratic process starts not with a proper job description but with an ability to charm TV viewers and appear either as “one of the guys” or as a remote, admired prince (or, even better, both). TV and other electronic media make sure that most voters never see the real person but only an image on the screen, augmented by all possible add-ons. A talent for speech delivery, including the ability to read from a teleprompter while appearing to improvise, is more crucial than experience, familiarity with global issues, and leadership.

The fifth danger is the mad rush for “transparency,” enhanced by immediate Web dissemination of all revealed items. It is almost impossible to have a proper frank high-level discussion, weighing outside-the-box options before rejecting them, toying with creative ideas, and expressing controversial views, when every word spoken may appear within days on the screens of a billion computers and smartphones, summarized by one sentence and often out of context. It is impossible to write an honest recommendation letter or a thorough well-balanced evaluation of an organization or a project when confidentiality is compromised and public disclosure is idolized. Small wonder that talented and experienced people with proven abilities in other fields shy away from entering politics, when “transparency” threatens to destroy them. One fears that future elected and appointed senior officials will have to post the results and pictures of their latest colonoscopy on the Web in the name of transparency.

The sixth component, also amplified by technology, is the public desire for freedom—of speech, the press, information, academic discourse, and all the other freedoms guaranteed by a proper democracy. These, as well as other human rights, are indeed the pillars of democracy. But when carried to unacceptable extremes they may lead to grave distortions: Incitement for murder or genocide is allowed; pedophilia is acceptable; disclosure of life-endangering national security information is fashionable; equal time for creationism and evolution is demanded; protecting terrorists’ and murderers’ rights is advocated more vigorously than defending victims’ rights. Numerous other outlandish situations never meant to be covered by basic human rights emerge. Although technology itself has not created these situations, the brevity of messages and their fast and wide dissemination, together with the ability to transmit all of the above across borders from backward dictatorships into democracies, turn our sacred human rights and civil freedoms into double-edged swords.

Finally, the seventh pillar of the sad mismatch between modern technology and democracy is globalization. Political boundaries may define a state, a country, or a continent. But every political unit must have a certain set of rules. Country A can be an exemplary democracy and country B a dark dictatorship. If there is very little cross-talk between their societies, both regimes may survive and live by their own rules. Globalization helps to spread progressive ideas into dark political corners, but if in Germany the denial of the holocaust is a criminal offense, and a satellite transmission from Iran can reach directly every house in Germany, we have a new situation. If modern technology allows fast and efficient money laundering, performed by numerous international banks almost at the speed of light, we have a new challenge. If the world tries to make international decisions and treaties by majority votes of countries most of which have never experienced anything remotely similar to democracy, it enforces global antidemocratic standards. We also observe an enhancement of illegal immigration patterns, cross-boundary racist incitement, international tax evasion, drug trafficking, child labor in one region producing goods for another region that forbids it, and numerous phenomena amplified by the fast mobility and modern communication offered by today’s technology.

To be sure, all of these seven points have been with us for years. We have often had short-sighted leaders, complained about superficial TV coverage of complex issues, observed scientifically illiterate leaders moving blindly in a labyrinth of technical issues, elected inexperienced good-looking politicians, demanded a reasonable level of transparency, exaggerated the application of honored constitutional principles, and believed in connecting with other nations on our planet. But modern technology has changed the patterns of all of these and amplified a dangerous lack of balance between our ideals and today’s reality.

As someone who believes in the enormous positive contribution of science and technology for our health, food, education, protection, and understanding of the universe, I am in great pain when I observe these features, and I believe we should be truly worried. The only way to cope with the problem is to allow the structure of modern liberal democracy to evolve and adapt to the new technologies. That has not begun to happen. We do not yet have solutions and remedies, but there must be ways to preserve the basic features of democracy while fine-tuning its detailed rules and patterns so as to minimize the ill effects and allow modern science and technology to do more good than harm.