Human Sustainability – driven by Technology

“Sustainability” is a buzzword that’s been thrown around a lot, and companies feel that pressure to address it somehow. Some take a strategic approach and apply it to its value chains others opt for a spray and pray approach. We see that the top 3 most common sustainability categories economic, social, or environmental sustainability.?However none of this will exist without the 4th - human sustainability. With no humans there would be no workforce, suppliers, vendors, customers, distributors- am sure you get the picture. So it is in every organisations own interest – to understand human sustainability and apply it.

In this series of papers, we shall examine how the present conditions are impacting human sustainability. The first in the list is understanding ‘Human Sustainability – driven by Technology’.?There is no two ways about the fact that COVID has cemented our relationship with technology. Today we are so driven by technology that it would be impossible to imagine a life without our smartphone. This dependency on technology is shaping our behaviour. While technology has expanded our connectedness it has replaced some physical relationships with virtual connectedness and thus affected our perceptions of the world. These new perceptions have resulted in more confused identities and a massive decrease in mental well-being. Research studies have shown a correlation between digital technologies and mental wellbeing.

Mental well-being and human development are closely linked. Mental well-being is something more than simply the absence of a diagnosable mental illness. It is a state where one’s thought and emotional processes allow one to meet one’s optimal potential. Many factors play into the increasing prevalence of a loss of mental well-being, including loss of social cohesion, loss of trust in societal institutions, demographic and economic change, conflict, shifting expectations in a very complex world, rapid change and the emergence of the digital environment.

As a society we are more inclined to trust technology (in the form of Youtube- recommendations, Waze- directions, Amazon- ‘people who buy this also bought’ suggestions algorithms, Netflix- surprise me) than people. This change in our mental constitution is fairly new. Medical and psychological research is showing the significance of a life course approach to understanding the emergence of psychological resilience in the face of rapid technology change. Such resilience is critical to sustained mental well-being. The foundations emerge in the first few years of life and are reinforced in the school years. If people do not have psychological resilience, mental well-being and a sense of self-worth, then human development is not being achieved for them. Given this context

• Are we really protecting our humanity , especially the younger generation, when models of development and conceptions of technological progress destroy the sustenance of our mental lives?
• Does the widespread use of digital technologies, risk transforming our personalities and transforming the way we relate to one another into distant, controlled and technology-mediated relations?
• Are we leveraging all the potential positive ways we can use technologies to enhance our freedoms and capabilities in an open, transparent, and safe environment?

As clearly elaborated by the work of Noble laureate Amartya Sen and perhaps much more clearly in the work of Martha Nussbaum, the task of institutions is to craft the social structures that facilitate the expansion of people’s capabilities through freedom. Institutions are needed to provide accountability for ensuring the conditions that enable people’s lives to flourish. In a Always On?Always Connected environment, driven by technology, are institutions tackling fragilities and tapping potentialities in human nature from an ethical perspective.?

So the true question is:?In an age of technology-facilitated humanity, where machines are still learning to replicate human traits like emotion, feelings, mindsets, religious principles or ethical values, are we risking humanity?

Are humans really free surrounded by technology and what is the role of institutions in being accountable for Human sustainability in the face of untested technology on human psychology?

In the next article we shall delve a bit further to understand- What is an institutions accountability to uphold and facilitate humanity’s mental struggles in a technology first world.