Progress, for whom? An open letter to innovation leaders

If you’re involved in technology and are reading this article on Medium, it’s likely that you sit in a generally liberal, progressive, moderate, diverse, optimistic, affluent metropolis — the likes of Melbourne, Silicon Valley, London, and Berlin — wondering what the effect of Trump’s administration will be on technological progress.

Instead of looking at that impact and how to mitigate against any possible future wrongdoings of a Trump administration, we need to more importantly begin reflecting on the conditions leading to this election outcome, which we have helped cultivate.

It’s not a popular opinion amongst my fellow left, but sexism and racism didn’t win this election for Trump, even if the unfortunate truth is that this kind of bigotry is entrenched in the psyche of many. Claiming so is counterproductive to solutions thinking. In reality, this latest election was won by suburban outliers, country towns, and a broader American middle class who were targeted with campaign messages designed to inflate economic anxieties and related resentments.

This result should be a wake up call to us all that there is an incredible disconnect between places like Silicon Valley, and many capital cities — all up in arms about the result—who had forgotten to pay attention to the rest of America. Robotics, automation, offshoring, globalisation and other factors are eroding American jobs, and the value of those jobs… this was an inevitable result, which until now has not been apparent.

That’s not to say robotics, automation, offshoring and globalisation should halt. Quite the contrary. There’s a future ahead of almost unimaginable prosperity for all humans, where we resign our role as economic agents and live peacefully on this planet — and others — finding dignity in creativity and philosophy, instead of “work” as we know it today. But between now and then, it has become abundantly clear that we need to think harder and longer about how to combat the ill effects of our ever-fastening run toward that finish line, or the race might be called off early.

The above chart is a reflection of just how incredible globalisation has been as an equalising force for the planet. With an explosion of Asian economic growth, fewer people now live in poverty than ever before in history, despite our population being at a record high. Child mortality — being deaths under the age of 5 — is the lowest it has ever been, as is homicide and death by preventable illness.

No matter what our parents tell us, no, it was not better in their time. We live in the best time that there has ever been. Yet, even with longer lives globally and higher comparative incomes in developing nations, the developed world’s middle class isn’t seeing the same rise of opportunity. We’ve reached a tipping point, and they’re seeing opportunity diminish. The realities of our new economy mean almost nothing to those once employed by the automotive industry, to coal miners, or soon truck drivers as they’re replaced by autonomous vehicles.

It’s easy to say “you need to continually upskill and reskill, to pursue self learning.” But not everyone is an entrepreneur or academic in spirit or mindset, and they shouldn’t have to be. Many people are busy trying to raise their children and keep up with their mortgage — often far away from our dense city centres. Our pursuit of innovation is relentless, it’s human nature after all, but with every incredible transformation delivered to the world around them, the people that elected Trump only become more fearful; their concerns become exacerbated. They are not a part of that transformation, they are increasingly the remnants of what existed before it.

Shortly after the election result, a snide comment appears out of California: “Silicon Valley lives in a bubble, unlike the rural farmers who take time out of each day to consult a broad cross-section of Americans.” Amusing, somewhat, but completely missing the point. The rural farmers aren’t deciding the future of urban lives at all, let alone without careful consideration. They are not the catalyst for change — we are, the burden is on us.

As a technologist, an optimist, a progressive moderate-left, this is a hard pill to swallow. It’s hard to admit there’s something wrong here, that in fact it’s us who have been ignorant. I’m here to say that we have a problem. If we don’t start to have deeper and more meaningful conversations about what happens as rural jobs disappear and the world of yesteryear is dismantled — partly our own doing — that there may be more Trumps around the world rising to power to represent those alienated by inward looking political and media establishments.

Politically, the left is also missing the point. In doing so, they’re enacting the same kind of ignorance and insular thinking that they so decry in the right, and in white middle America. We need to admit this result is partly our fault, but that we can be a part of the solution. A friend, Andy Aldahn, wrote it best: “When the left caricatures the uneducated, underpaid $30,000/yr man as a privileged deplorable racist if he fears his job sent offshore or if he fears Islamic terrorism coming to his city, then they played some part in pushing that voter away. If they call him a privileged irredeemable sexist if he doesn’t think exactly in their brand of university gender politics then they pushed that voter away.”

To reiterate, this was, in the end, an inevitable result. If not Trump in this election, someone like him in another. Over 60% of Trump voters believe, based on exist polls, that the next generation will be worse than the current. Undoubtedly, Trump’s fear campaign will have attributed to this, but for many of these people it might actually be true. Their vote was their opportunity to exercise a choice between more of the same, or to roll the dice on risk. As Nobel laureate Daniel Khaneman explains in his prospect theory; people are risk seeking when choosing between potential unfavourable outcomes. In Fitzroy, Victoria, just like Silicon Valley, California, it’s easy to get lost in your near-Utopian bubble and forget the fears of so many others.

“Design the future, don’t just let it unfold”... “Disrupt your business before someone else does”… “You can’t stop progress”… “Be biased toward possibility”. These mantras have defined my career.

Indeed, progress cannot be stopped, but it’s time we had a look around us with the same amount of empathy we claim to apply to the outputs of our craft. While it can’t be stopped, progress can be directed. If, instead, we proceed by neglecting large portions of our populations without any real care to educate or support them through change, those people will start to look for someone like Trump — who in desperation are forced to ignore what he will ratify in terms of discrimination of minorities and the disrespect of women, as they clutch at nostalgic ideas akin to making America great again.

If we don’t start asking the question more often “progress, for whom?” — then applying careful consideration in respect to how we move forward in the most inclusive and considerate ways — when general AI and fully autonomous systems arrive, we’re going to be in a world of pain as this sentiment effects an ever larger portion of our population. No one will be excluded from this next leap forward, and it’s not hard to imagine a situation in which many of us are faced with the same challenges as those in shrinking American industries now.

We need to start thinking about how we as technologists are going to make the world better for everyone, how we’re going to appropriately inform and educate people, how we’re going to support them during the process. We’re going to need to find ways to help more people transition to the new world with us… otherwise the world might look very different to the one we’re working toward.