What to expect in the future

There is one thing clear about what to expect in the future: we cannot predict what will happen but we will get better preparing ourselves. There are some developments which are interesting:

1.????? The way we use AI in the Web;

2.????? The way we organize;

3.????? The way we govern;

4.????? The way we model the economy.

These developments could help us to solve some of the current complexity. The first is the development of artificial intelligence. Although artificial intelligence was used already in the previous century a major breakthrough was made by applying neural networks and large learning models. Data necessary for those models are now becoming available allowing artificial intelligence to learn faster and better. Artificial intelligence can now place the data in context and give personalized advice. This has a major impact on what will be offered in the Web. Where version 1 of the Web was built to give access to information, version 2 not only gave access but allowed also for communication. The introduction of blockchain in version 3 in the Web was a major change going from a centralized to a decentralized environment. Data become public available and supervision becomes part of the decentralized system. This decentralization combined with the increased speed in the physical networks (Wifi, 5G) allowed for new decentralized financial services like crypto currencies. But it will not stop here; the following step, creating version 4, will be the use of artificial intelligence in the Web to interpret the data in context, a semantic Web. This will allow decentralized personalized services. Think about credit scoring or finding the best job and education.

The logical next step will be to allow artificial intelligence to learn continuously from the available data to offer the best personalized services. In this version 5 of the Web privacy and autonomy, self-sovereignty, will be very important, because people have to be protected against illegal activities using the data from anyone or any organization including governments.

This brings us to the second development, the way we organize. When changing from hunting tribes to farming communities a new way of organizing was developed based on ownership of the land. This resulted in a patchwork of small communities, which then melted into another patchwork of kingdoms. The industrial revolution had a major impact on the way of organizing because of the introduced technology. Organizing became optimizing spend time on production using system theory, where systems consist of processes and resources, the people and/or machines needed to handle the processes. We still apply that way of organizing using artificial intelligence as a new technology which can increase productivity by lowering spend time in the production. New developments like the decentralized skills passport in the Netherlands, which is are based on the competences of individual, change that. The skills passport allows the optimization of a team for the fulfilment of a goal instead of finding the best fitting (human) resource for a function. Organizing is not anymore about translating strategy and goal into processes and functions, but optimizing a team, a network, to fulfil the goal in their own way using their own competences.

The third development is in the way we govern. Governance is currently split in managing the system, the processes, and in making regulations, laws, to protect individuals again illegal actions like harmful products, exploitation of workers or pollution. Originally, during the hunting and farming period all the governance was done by the elderly people or to the king. There was no split between the governance of the processes and the governance of the regulations. When the industrial revolution allowed new classes like merchants to become influential, the current way of governance was introduced. The feudal system was replaced by a representation system including the right to vote. A split was made between the power of the people and the power of the king. But governance was still based on nations; after the first world war nations became the basis for determining the borders of organizations and the governance. At the same time the governance of the processes in the corporations is becoming global; corporations act global and produce wherever it is most advantageous. The result is a national governance system for the regulations and a global corporate governance for the processes. At the same time new technology like blockchain is allowing for global decentralized supervision. The communication speed is increased allowing us to inform ourselves what happens globally. This cannot be stopped by using borders. Instead it allows? governance in a different way allowing differences between local networks and global corporations.

This is important for the fourth development, the way we model the economy. Not only regulation governance is based on nations but also the economy including the use of money. The use of money was long unknown. Only when it became possible to transport goods over long distances, for example between Holland and Italy, money became necessary. Money became even more important during the industrial revolution, where one needed money in the form of loans to buy machines and to pay salaries. National economy is based on the financial capital and the money in the nation. This allows a link between government, corporations and trade. But supply chains, the trade of parts necessary to produce a final product, are not nation wise organized. Steel is produced in one place, screws made out of steel somewhere else and the end product again somewhere else. Economy has become global despite all types of taxes and local regulations. Economy models based on nations cannot be used anymore to support governance, because people do not organize themselves anymore according to nations. The introduction of digital money and tokenization of non-financial assets like human capital, the competences of each individual, and social capital, the relations in the network for each individual, gives us new possibilities to model the economy. They will allow other optimization possibilities not based on nations or global activities but linking local innovation in networks to global increase in welfare.

The mentioned developments increase complexity; the currently used models are not able to predict anymore. The models used by governments or corporations do not give the expected results, lowering the confidence of the people in their governments and in the management of the corporations. One might conclude that the expected development in technology will allow us to make a better world for everyone. But this is only part of the story; regulation government has to change from a nation or federation of nations model to a global model. We have to accept that trade is global, but innovation, the building of new corporations, is local. Because of the complexity we need a new approach. This new approach has to combine local network activities like the starting of new small companies with the global developments in supply chains and global regulation government. We have to let local communities, local networks, exist next to the global economy. Local communities will be governed by their own norms, rules and values withing the set of global laws based on human rights. This implies that we use the new technology to make those norms, rules and values explicit and available for AI agents to support the local communities. At the same time we have to accept that there will be global regulations to protect individuals against misuse of their data.