Letter from the Editor: Reflections on 2023
Man searches for answers in a chaotic world in which he continues to redefine his relationship with technology
“How will 2023 be remembered?”…
That is of course a question to whose answer greatly depends on who you ask.
Alone with my computer, savoring the umbrage of a shaded patio in sunny Mexico on the shortest day of the year, my first thought turned to my newest research companion: Chat GPT.
No matter where we are in the world, technology travels with us.
However, the GPT quickly reminds me that as 2023 is past its knowledge cut off date of January 2022, so it can’t answer this question.
So then I turned to Google.
And Google reportedly had 333 million results to filter through.
Which is impressive, but since 80% of people, 80% of the time only regard the first 5 results, that’s (mostly) all that really matters.
The first result, published by NASDAQ, an American stock exchange centered around technology companies, isn’t hesitant to share it’s point of view right away:
“No doubt 2023 will mostly be remembered as the year of Generative Artificial Intelligence, or GenAI. OpenAI, with its ChatGPT app, sparked more interest since its launch in late 2022 than any other application that has ever existed, reaching millions of users in less than a week and receiving hyped media coverage, prompting tech and finance titans to pivot to AI and GenAI.”
The article then goes on to talk about how this new innovation has moved markets, led to big controversies and is the focus of new regulatory efforts in the US and EU.
Point made. I then go to the 2nd result:
“Will 2023 be remembered as the year where technology started to triumph over people?” by the Business Continuity Institute - A content light article which links to a far larger report about business resilience, I decline to read very far. I’m almost surprised the article ranks so high, but perhaps it’s because it’s asking a pertinent question of our time - how resilient are humans really in facing these new challenges, opportunities and threats brought on by new technology?
So on to the next one…
Andrew Sheng of the South China Post writes: Why 2023 will be remembered as a tipping-point year? “All the mega trends of finance, technology, trade, geopolitics, war and climate change showed signs of increase in speed, scale and scope. We had banking crisis, wars, uncontrolled technology, temperatures rising. Putting all these mega trends together suggests that a mega-system disaster may be on the cards. Historically, these seismic-scale disturbances are settled through a massive recession, like the Great Depression of the 1930s, or wars which wipe out debt and make everyone poorer.”
So, great - now we have a doomsday Oracle with lots of all around positivity showing on the cards. Technology is taking over.. and the world is f%e#d, if you hadn’t considered that already.
Desperate to recover from this dismal start, so I go to the 4th option. It’s from NPR: Here's what 2023 has in store, as predicted by experts in 1923.
Written 1 year ago, it’s not about what 2023 was at all, just what people thought it should look like. The seers predicted 4 hour work days, 100+ year lives, the world would be full of more beautiful people, less diseases (ie. no cancer) and less doctors.
And this commentary is neatly followed by a similar article, published by the Akron Beacon Journal, on what this future imagined 100 years ago would look like reviewing newspaper clippings at the time.
To share a few quotes:
lots of leisure time
“Leisure will be occupied in productive diversions satisfying the particular instincts of the individual,” he said. “We will be more collectivistic in the operation of our essential productive life and more individualistic in the pursuit of personal happiness and contentment. Leisure will stimulate educational interests in every conceivable direction.”
widespread use of clean energy
The year 2023 won’t behold a track, a locomotive, a motor truck, a submarine cable, a telegraph line in use anywhere. Traffic and communication are moving upstairs, and when properly established there will obtain required energies from power stations which suns and planets have been charging since the heavens were spread… [we won’t need to dig up any more coal from the ground]
Ooh shoot, so I guess it sounds like we’re falling behind…
… Or are we?
It’s interesting that many search results are reflecting on 2023 inside the lens of human progress. We came from somewhere and we are headed somewhere else. We have varying viewpoints on whether the past was better/worse and whether the future is better/worse and what is technology’s role in that (which arguably contributes to one partisan political divide). So here’s my 2 1/2 cents:
It is very hard to understand changing technological paradigms. Forward thinkers 100 years ago got several things right (like newspapers becoming defunct to other forms of media), but they also imagined real magic with innovations like radio waves and telephones (like teleporting with radio waves). Generative AI is part of an emerging technological paradigm, but we don’t fully understand it all yet.
Human nature doesn’t change very quickly, or maybe not at all. Many of our great challenges are political and interpersonal rather than technological in nature. If new technology were frictionless and the collective appetite and expectations for consumption (also called GDP) didn’t change, the four hour work day might actually be correct. Instead, higher productivity has resulted in a greater overall production of services and goods whether or not needed. (see poem below)
Healthy debate is good, but it is a hard balance. Future US Secretary of State Cordell Hull argued 100 years ago that diverse opinions and democratic debate are necessary for progress. But they clearly also hamper it. It is undoubtedly a good thing if can openly debate the merits of a nuclear weapons program and if US university students protesting injustices in the Middle East shouldn’t unequivocally labeled as being ‘Anti-Semitic’. But when non-consensus on key issues like health care, education, and energy can be manipulated into politically stalling progress for decades, it is hard to be so sure. Healthy democracy is a still a frail child.
I am at once reminded of a poem I once saw in a hippie Amsterdam gift shop attributed to the Dalai Lama:
We have... more conveniences, but less time. We have more degrees, but less sense; more knowledge, but less judgements; more experts, but more problems; more medicines, but less healthiness. ... We build more computers to hold more information, to produce more copies than ever, but have less communication. - excerpt from "The Paradox of our Age"
So what is 2023, really?
I think the conclusion is we really don’t know - perspective takes time to build. We can’t tell what 2023 is all about because we are living in it. From an admittedly Western political viewpoint, it wasn’t as apparently significant of a year as 1989, 2008, or 2020. But who knows how we’ll see that in the future?
The world's 8 billion people all see that differently. I’d gander that many Ukrainians, Palestinians, Israelis and Argentinians, among others, also have different opinions there. For some it was a year of life and death, for others of new achievements, new risks, uncertainties, and changing families.
So maybe it’s better to focus on the micro, not the macro. As an invitation, ask yourself and others at the dinner table: What do you have to be grateful for in 2023? What was different than expected? What was better than expected? And what do you hope to change in 2024?
It doesn’t always make for great journalism, but perhaps focusing on our humanity and listening to one another is really the only answer to these grand questions. To go a step further, perhaps it’s where the real seeds of human progress actually stem from.
And that takes me to the Merriam-Webster word of the year - “authentic.” In an era where convincing, but false answers can be hallucinated, and where art can be quickly generated without barely any conscious thought or intention behind it, our scarcest collective resource may now be our own authenticity.
So be your authentic self and have a Happy New Year,
Kyle
