Being human in a digital age

Technology and humanity are at loggerheads.?As technology continues to advance at a rapid pace, it's natural to feel threatened by the changes it brings. Will AI take over our jobs? Will it encourage the worst parts of us, prioritizing efficiency over authenticity and diversity? And what does all of this say about our values, identity, and self-worth? These are just a few of the questions that may come up as we navigate this new reality.

The promise and perils of AI have been prognosticated for decades but it did not really enter the public consciousness as it has in the last few months since the release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT and DALL-E tools. As you play with these tools you simultaneously revel in their power and worry about what would remain in the uniquely human domain. ?

Silent screens glow,

Human Hearts beat in the wires,

Connected, yet alone

(Haiku from ChatGPT for the prompt “write a haiku about being human in a digital world”)

At a more personal level, we don’t have to look further than catching ourselves doom-scrolling social media to see how technology can absorb our attention over all else. At best, we fool ourselves that we are keeping up with news or friends as we do this, or worse we fall prey to a sense of inadequacy in trying to keep up with curated posts and filtered selfies. What does it mean to be human in this digital age and how would you honor that?

At the Center for the Edge (C4Edge) we explore the edges of technology and business to frame how the world is evolving and what to do about it. The human aspect of those futures and actions has been a red thread that runs through much of our work.?In What is work? we underline the enduring human aspects of work in a work environment fueled by Artificial Intelligence (AI). In Unlocking human potential we provide a framing for how to both use and avoid technology to develop personal ‘roots and shoots’ of growth. In Technologies that touch you we introduce the growing body of technologies that allow us to listen to our minds and bodies connecting the human and digital worlds. In A making of a movement we explore the ‘Maker Movement’ and how global ecosystems came together to accelerate human creativity. In From livable to lovable: Making cities more human, we highlight the need to re-focus on making our cities not just smart and connected, but also more human.?In my personal musings I write about the systematic erosion of human-ness: When will we start to be more human? And, in our latest exploration of The Metaverse in Asia, one of our key taglines is that “the metaverse in inevitable, but a human-centric one is not”, compelling us to be proactive in shaping what the ‘next-internet’ could be. These examples showcase how we see the human aspect as a holistic and embedded critical element for all our explorations. In times when the human and digital worlds are increasingly more intertwined, explicitly focusing on the human aspects will be one of the key thrusts for the C4Edge going forward.

Please join us in this on-going discourse. Lean in. Help shape what it can, and should be, than worry about about what it might be.