Constance Lavergne

One of my favourite things about my weekly trekk on the Eurostar is to savour my free copy of Wired UK whilst munching breakfast at 7 am. Always a good source of inspiration and a great way to bluff my way through dinner-parties (not that I attend that many). Last month I particularly liked the article by David Eagleman, one of their lead columnists. David is also a neuroscientist and a very talented author.

So what was the point of his column ? That our civilisation, unlike others that have fallen before, will remain vibrant and relevant and won’t give ways to those phenomenons that have ruined the Roman or Egyptian Empires in the past, namely natural disasters, resource depletion, economic meltown (ahem…), disease, poor information flow (big up to you WikiLeaks… – see previous post) and corruption.

Well then, how will the Internet reduce the threat of societal collapse ? Eaglmean gives six very good reasons, not all of which we can agree with but most definetly grounded.

“1 – Epidemics can be deflected by telepresence.” If its true that “working telepresently can inhibit microbial transmission by reducing human contacts”, then the divide between digital haves and have nots will also be an additional factor of health inequality. Teleworking to my fruit stall in Islamabad market ? I think not. He also mentions epidemics and diseases as being one of the reason why the Roman Empire and native americans civilisations had collapsed. My understanding was that Cortez and Curtis pretty much did the job, but I might have been misinformed.

2 – Live-saving information gets disseminated more quickly. His point here is that as “news stories are increasingly becoming user generated nets of up-to-the-minute information”, the internet now carries news faster than TV networks. Therefore if the Pompeians had had the Internet in 79AD, they could easily have marched 10 km to safety, well ahead of the lava flow from Mount Vesuvius. If you live in a volcanic area, better have the broadband connection on all day. Except if you live somewhere where phone lines take 10 years to get built. Then you need to get a 3G phone, which will probably cost you a whole herd of goats. Or pigs. Or whatever you can trade it for.

“3 – Discoveries are retained and shared” - here he cites the example of many libraries that burned, starting with the one in Alexandria. Not only can we store our information in multiple locations, thus reducing the risk of losing all our data, but crucial information gets disseminated shared and co-improved in a matter of weeks, sometimes even days. I’m not sure I’d like to hear 3 euros could  save my child from malaria and not enough people bother to give them where it represents a tiny fraction of their budget if I were, say, sudanese.

“4 – Tyranny is mitigated” Propaganda vs. free speech. The chinese internet firewalled-garden. Saqineh’s appeal. Tweets and mobvideo from Teheran. WikiLeaks. Need we say more ? Maybe I should recommend my minister for Digital Economy to read Wired UK.

“5 – Human capital is vastly increased” - this is something I experience every day of my working life. My colleagues are I are now tasked to do things in matter of weeks that would have taken half a year to do two, maybe one, decades ago ; gathering reports and data only take a few searches and emails. Talking to key stakeholders accross the world can be done in a blink ; I can videoconference them from the bus if I need to. Cross checking info with colleagues ? version controlled data sheets. Same goes for the final reports, send a draft, it will come back to you annotated, enriched by collective knowledge.

The only downside is : since its so much faster and collective, you get more to do, scatter your brain accross multiple projects (this definitely being the millenium of women ! ) and end up doing more breadth, less depth. I sometimes feel unconfortable giving back projects that contain a lot of data to back them up but not enough real, strategic, ”blue ocean” thinking. The feeling doesn’t last long as I am already on my next one…

All it takes to learn nowadays, is enough motivation to get yourself into InfoSeekers mode and dig out knowledge from the big beehive that spans from WikiPedia to the MIT’s Open Library. Except of course, if you’re female, 12 years old, afghan and never went to school.

“6 – Energy expenditure will be reduced” -  ha. Thats the point I contest most. Servers farms and computers suck up huge amounts of energy. Multiplied work load (see point 5) also mean increased travels as video conferences and emails do not truly replace the efficiency of working face to face. All I have to do is look at my air miles stacking up to realize that. True, paperless offices will save entire forests, enabling us to use the woods instead to build our houses (more energy efficient I have been told) or grow soy for bio fuels or just keep them there as a planetary lung. But this in my view still needs to be demonstrated.

In conclusion, Western civilization will certainly extand its tenure thanks to the Internet but if it forgets the billions of hungry, angry people on the other side of the digital divide  who want a share of it,  might well still face extinction the same way Rome went : by forgetting how incredibly motivated the people outside the borders are if feeling unfairly left out.

A good reading on this is the Annals by Tacitus, who foresaw the doom of the Roman Empire for precisely those reasons. Or, if you want to read more by David Eagleman, his book : “Why the Net matters : How the Internet will save civilisation” is released this month exclusively as an app on iPad.