All Lawmakers Should Be Futurists

When Mark Zuckerberg testified before a joint congressional hearing last year, the biggest takeaways weren’t about the company’s data vulnerabilities or growing technological impact. Rather, what the public discovered from those nearly 10 hours of questions was... Congress doesn’t understand technology.

This exhibition of ignorance was capped off by a question from then-84-year-old Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah: “So, how do you sustain a business model in which users don’t pay for your service?”

To which, Zuckerberg responded (with a slight smirk), “Senator, we run ads.”

We live in arguably the most innovative age of human history. Rapid technological change is reshaping our world, with its impact felt by every American.

The decisions we make now will dictate whether we’re positioned to benefit from this advancement or if we’ll be left behind.

Futurist Ray Kurzweil has stated that our overall rate of progress doubles each decade: “We won’t experience 100 years of progress in the 21st century—it will be more like 20,000 years of progress (at today’s rate).”

So what could possibly hold back world-changing innovation? Archaic policy.

New Questions in an Evolving World

I’ll offer an example: In just a few years, fully autonomous cars will constantly be in transit, dropping off passengers and either picking up others or waiting in a less busy area until needed again. They won’t have to park for more than 1-2 minutes in a busy, downtown setting.

So that begs many questions:

• What do we do with our parking garages when they’re no longer needed?
• How could we better design our roads and cities?
• How do municipal governments replace lost revenue from fewer parking tickets?

Construction and zoning are long-term processes, with the expectation that structures will last 40 to 100 years. But the world will be vastly different in 40 to 100 years. If our lawmakers dive into that planning process without at least a basic vision of what the future might be like, then we may end up limited by infrastructure that, while still standing, doesn’t provide the utility it did only a few years before.

Obviously, I don’t expect lawmakers to know exactly what the world will look like in 40 to 100 years. To be honest, I have only a passing guess as to what the world will look like then. But it’s important that our lawmakers realize that the world will be vastly different then and the decisions they make now have the potential to empower or handcuff innovation for future generations.

How Do You Define What Hasn't Been Invented?

Thankfully, some lawmakers have embraced this future-proofing approach to the sausage-making process.

When the Florida Legislature passed a texting-while-driving ban earlier this year, the bill’s sponsors took great strides to offer a definition of “wireless communications device” that could include anything from a smartphone to an Apple Watch. They also included language in the bill to prevent future restrictions on technological innovation by excluding autonomous vehicles while in self-driving mode.

But could that bill inadvertently create challenges for the adoption of new technologies we haven’t thought of yet?

The “wireless communications device” definition includes any handheld device that connects to the internet. In upcoming years, 5G connectivity will lead to widespread integration of “Internet of Things” solutions into anything from your toaster to your car.

Of course, the definitions within our laws can always be modified as technology evolves, and we will certainly have to do that more and more in the years ahead. But the process to purge or update old laws requires time and political capital, which many lawmakers would rather invest in the passage of new legislation.

Thinking Critically About Our Future

So it’s high time our local, state, and federal lawmakers learned about the technologies that are rapidly changing our world – and to think through how those technologies will intersect with public policy.

Many of the greatest technological innovations will be developed in the United States over the next decade, creating millions of new jobs and transforming how we live, work, and play.

The future will arrive faster than we can imagine. We have to think critically about where we’re going and how we’re going to get there.

A version of this article was originally published in INFLUENCE Magazine on August 8, 2019.