Consequences
Technology revolution consequences we don’t see coming
By Jamie Dobson, author of ‘Visionaries, Rebels and Machines: The story of humanity’s extraordinary journey from electrification to cloudification’.
Today we view Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde as Gothic horror stories, but they were initially anxious meditations on the Industrial Revolution, a period when steam engines and factory machinery transformed society faster than anyone thought possible. Many currently find themselves in a similar moment of panic. Except this time, the pace of change is exponential.
Facebook went from a Harvard dorm room project to 2.9 billion users in less than two decades. Artificial intelligence systems can now write essays, generate images, and diagnose diseases. The technology revolution we’re living through—a culmination of computing power, global networks, and learning algorithms—is remaking our world in real time. And just like our Victorian predecessors, we’re beginning to ask an uncomfortable question: what are the unintended consequences of all this technological progress?
In the 1930s, Goebbels and Hitler used the height of electronic technology of their time. They designed and distributed radio sets, ensuring German households could tune in to carefully crafted programming.
Today, we’re not dealing with state-sponsored radio broadcasts; we’re contending with Social Media platforms and algorithms that know your fears, your biases, your weaknesses, and deliver precisely calibrated messages designed to trigger specific emotional responses. And unlike the 1930s—when propaganda required state resources and control—today’s information warfare can be waged by anyone with a laptop and a basic understanding of social media dynamics.
Markers that played a huge part in bringing about the Second World War—mass unemployment, wealth concentration, class resentment, young people without prospects—are appearing again. And now we have technology that accelerates wealth accumulation in ways that would have been impossible in the 1930s.
The global marketplace, enabled by digital technology, has created unprecedented opportunities for individuals to hoover up resources. Amazon can reach customers on every continent. Tech billionaires can accumulate wealth faster than anyone in history. Meanwhile, the same technology that creates these opportunities is eliminating the entry-level positions that previous generations relied upon to get a foothold in the economy.
The baton of skills development isn’t being passed. We’ve had a recession and a recovery, but without the return of jobs, particularly entry level jobs. Young people are finding fewer opportunities to develop skills, falling out of the workforce, and becoming angry at a system that promised them a future but delivered precarious gig work instead.
This isn’t just about robots taking jobs, although that’s part of it. It’s about a fundamental breaking of the social contract. When you combine technological unemployment with sophisticated propaganda tools, you get a powder keg. Angry young people without economic prospects, targeted by algorithms designed to amplify their grievances and direct their rage?
Technology has always replaced jobs in the short-term, and we’ve always found new jobs. It always follows a period of adjustment and instability. The real danger isn’t artificial intelligence. It’s biological engineering.
We’ve already seen what happens when a novel virus emerges and spreads globally. COVID-19 disrupted the entire world for years, and, by historical standards, it wasn’t even particularly lethal.
Now imagine someone using AI and a home CRISPR DNA editing kit (available online for as little as $59) deliberately engineering a pathogen that combines the contagiousness of COVID with the lethality of Ebola. The technology to do this exists today, and it’s becoming cheaper and more accessible every year.
Unlike building a nuclear weapon, which requires massive infrastructure and rare materials, bioengineering can be done in relatively small laboratories with commercially available equipment. The barrier to entry keeps dropping. And whilst we worry about whether ChatGPT might become sentient, we’re potentially overlooking the more immediate threat of a teenager in a garage accidentally (or deliberately) creating the next pandemic.
This is what happens when technological progress outpaces our social and institutional capacity to manage it.
There is good news to consider, First, we’re not blind to these dangers. Journalists and researchers are actively documenting and reporting on the issues we’re facing. The very fact that we’re having conversations about algorithmic bias, wealth inequality, and bioengineering risks means we’re not sleepwalking into catastrophe. Awareness is the first step towards action.
Second, despite all the hype about automation, there are things robots simply cannot do. Try getting a robot to fold a fitted sheet or arrange flowers in a vase. These tasks require a kind of tactile intelligence and adaptive problem-solving that humans possess in spades, but machines struggle with enormously. The much-predicted robot apocalypse has been just around the corner since the 1960s, yet human workers remain remarkably difficult to replace.
Third, AI might actually be put to good use. Climate change, medical research, and infrastructure development are all problems where machine learning could help us make breakthroughs we’re currently struggling to achieve. In some parts of the world, new technology might allow developing nations to leapfrog Western development entirely. Why build expensive copper telephone networks when you can go straight to mobile? Why construct coal power plants when solar panels are becoming cheaper every year?
Fourth, and perhaps most importantly, we’re still here. Humanity has survived and adapted to every previous technological revolution. The printing press was supposed to destroy social order. The telegraph was going to make the postal service obsolete. Television killed the radio star. Each time, we learned to live with the technology, to adapt our institutions, to create new norms and regulations that mitigated the worst effects whilst preserving the benefits.
The Tragedy and Comedy of the Commons
There’s an old economic concept called “the tragedy of the commons” – the idea that when resources are shared, people will selfishly exploit them until they’re depleted. A common grazing field gets overgrazed. A fishery gets overfished. The atmosphere gets polluted because no individual actor has an incentive to stop.
But there’s also what some call “the comedy of the commons” – the peer-to-peer revolution. This is when people spontaneously organise to create and maintain shared resources. Wikipedia is a classic example. Nobody owned it. Nobody profited from it. Yet millions of people contributed to creating the most comprehensive encyclopaedia in human history, simply because they wanted to share knowledge.
The technology that enables exploitation can also enable cooperation. The same social media platforms that spread propaganda can be used to organise protests and social movements. The algorithms that concentrate wealth can be reprogrammed or regulated. We have choices. The future isn’t written in code. It’s written in policy, in voting booths, in boardrooms, and in the countless small decisions we make about how to use the tools we’ve been given.
Sometimes, bad things accelerate positive change. The oil shocks of the 1970s drove investment in fuel efficiency and alternative energy. The financial crisis of 2008 led to stricter banking regulations. It’s possible that the current crises we’re facing—climate change, inequality, AI risks—might force us to make the changes we should have made decades ago. We might get the benefits of post-war social investment and cooperation without actually having to fight the war.
The Users Determine the Future
The leitmotif running through the entire history of technology is that tools get used in ways their inventors never imagined. The telephone was supposed to be a business tool; it became a social one. The internet was designed for military communications; it became a global platform for everything from cat videos to scientific collaboration. Twitter was meant to be a status update service; it became a political force that helped topple governments.
At Container Solutions, I’ve spent years watching how people actually use technology in ways that surprise and delight me. Developers take tools designed for one purpose and bend them to entirely different ends. Communities form around shared interests that nobody planned for. The peer-to-peer revolution is already happening – it’s just not evenly distributed yet.
So, here’s my challenge to you: keep using technology in ways they don’t intend. Keep connecting with other human beings. Keep organising. Keep pushing back against systems that treat you as data points rather than people.
We have the benefit of history. We know that humans adapt, that we create institutions to manage new tools, that we eventually figure out how to preserve the benefits whilst mitigating the harms. It won’t be quick, and it won’t be easy, but it’s possible.
Rapid change can be scary. But it can also be full of possibility. Yes, the unintended consequences of technology can be catastrophic, but they can also be miraculous. And which way it goes depends far less on the technology itself than on what we choose to do with it.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jamie Dobson is the founder of Container Solutions, and has been helping companies, across industries, move to cloud native ways of working for over ten years. Container Solutions develops a strategy, a clear plan and step by step implementation helping companies achieve a smooth digital transformation. With services including Internal Developer Platform Enablement, Cloud Modernisation, DevOps/DevSecOps, Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) Consultancy, Cloud Optimisation and creating a full Cloud Native Strategy, companies get much more than just engineering know-how. Jamie is also author of ‘The Cloud Native Attitude’ and the recently published ‘Visionaries, Rebels and Machines: The story of humanity’s extraordinary journey from electrification to cloudification’. Both are available from Amazon and good bookstores. https://www.container-solutions.com/
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