The Digital Sins – Part 1: Focusing on Trivialities

IMD continually reports on Switzerland’s great successes in digitalisation, yet reality feels quite different. And the vote on eID confirmed doubts about the scientifically measured achievements. What is it that science fails to see?

Yes! Yes! Yes! And: No!

Yes, digitalisation is no cure-all – often it even creates new problems. Yes, it is blocked by many because it changes workflows. Yes, it receives little support from executive suites because they have enough other problems to deal with. It is hardly steered by boards of directors because there are no recipes for doing so. And it fundamentally fails because critical thinking is not among the educational objectives of today’s schooling. But no, none of this explains anything – and even less does it offer broader solutions.

But no, none of this explains anything – and even less does it offer broader solutions.

Yes, it is true that we as a society love fancy gadgets, free services and self-admiration on social media, yet refuse to develop ourselves further as human beings in the digital realm.

Yes, it is true that regulating digitalisation is a problem. A soon-to-be AI-powered regulation production machine is confronted by a highly professional legion of regulation sabotage squads. The result in the case of the General Data Protection Regulation: 99 articles and plenty of internal contradictions.

And it is also true that digitalisation exacerbates problems in the legislature: once there were still honest shitstorms, today there are commercial services for manipulating and/or discrediting democratic processes. Recently, even democracy-friendly political actors have been observed using tactics that originate from the phishing scene.

Yes, it is true that academia has abandoned its former ambition to shape the future. The pioneering spirit of the 1970s – one need only recall Leo Reisinger’s textbook “Legal Informatics” – seems antiquated today; the prototypical design of bold blueprints for future solutions using Design Science methods is considered unscientific; and theoretical models are good for almost nothing.

Yes, it is true that journalism fails to adequately convey either the digital transformation or digital regulation. With the disappearance of the feuilleton sections, not only theatre and music criticism vanish, but also distanced, critical reflections on the digital transformation.

But no, none of this explains anything – and even less does it offer broader solutions. Take the example of the “mobile phone ban solution”: in school lessons with younger children, more and more time is spent resolving social problems and addressing individual problem cases. Our research into the potential uses of social robots provided us, as a by-product, with intense impressions of these challenges. A mobile phone ban in schools does help because it eliminates one problem, but it hardly changes the situation for the better. The fact that columnists at quality newspapers still argue about whether a mobile phone ban makes sense, while otherwise ignoring the problems of today’s schools, is merely an expression of work avoidance: they cannot, will not or are not allowed to engage with the major digital changes. So they quarrel over the small banalities of everyday digital life.

Why extremes have the advantage and inaction promises stability

The above example illustrates only one or two aspects – but does not describe the bigger picture. Before we cautiously approach this, we should first acknowledge the severity of the situation. Our society is breaking apart. And what happens during this disintegration – or in some countries does not happen – remains hidden. For the situation is confused. Despite a high density of polarisation in political disputes, no clear societal divides can be identified (70% stand politically like-minded in the “centre” of society). And almost always the rule applies: nobody really knows anything for certain. People simply have opinions and no time to think their own ideas through to the end.

Take the example of “digital humanism as a beacon of hope”: although humanistic education is currently being discarded on a grand scale, it is supposed to eliminate the dark sides of digitalisation. If this observation surprises you, dear readers, then take a look at the reading lists from grammar schools 50 years ago and ask ChatGPT how these works are judged by the humanities today. Even artists who embody both pop and high culture equally, such as Mozart, are being dissed today at super high-culture festivals. For example, when a production of «Die Zauberflöte» has wisdom leading to masses of dead bodies lying around and the audience’s jubilation seems to know no bounds. This can only be reconciled with humanistic education through great contortions.

Of course, the liberal principle of “why not!” applies here. Everyone should be allowed to live according to their convictions – regardless of whether the state finances it or whether (as in the specific case described) it is largely self-sustaining and moreover generates substantial additional tax revenue. But what good is digital humanism supposed to do when art-loving audiences applaud the dissing of “wisdom as a value” and no one else takes offence either?

We should become aware that the context of digital transformation is a new form of “anything goes”: every inherent contradiction can be logically justified from some perspective. Everything can be sold as an ideal, as can its opposite. The consequence is that everything we can say about digital transformation is perceived as fake news by a larger group of society, because they have heard the opposite elsewhere.

As a mathematician, the problem was clear to me early on: there are many mathematical statements that I would call correct in one context and wrong in another, because they are essentially correct but wrong in the particulars. Recently, at a political event on cybersecurity, I witnessed a fine example of this: the sentence was uttered, “The strongest link in the chain is the human being.” The assumption was that everyone in the room knew that humans are above all the weakest link and would understand the statement in the specific way it was meant. But what happens when someone has heard from a top expert that humans are the strongest link, and then hears from their own boss that humans are the weakest link? How is he or she supposed to make sense of that? Accepting that the two do not contradict each other requires either a substantial cognitive effort, or the adoption of an ‘anything goes’ attitude in which logical contradictions within one’s own position are considered perfectly acceptable.

In this situation – where everything is somehow right and everything is somehow wrong – it is only natural that digital transformation only advances where extreme interests are behind it: in hybrid warfare, in major emergencies, in ideologically pure communities, in billion-dollar business, on the darknet – and in various crossovers, for example between war and crime. In the “normal” economy, but especially in state institutions, the new great uncertainty about what is right and what is wrong is confronted by the old pre-digital world, in which there was still a certain consensus on values and whose practices, DOs and DON’Ts are well known. When people in this situation choose the pre-digital world and cleverly undermine digitalisation, this is to some extent simply reasonable. Not least, they thereby guarantee stability.

The path to the future

Acknowledging the severity of the situation does not mean seeing the future in bleak terms. World history is full of far more difficult situations that individual states have successfully mastered. But we should face reality and search for solutions. In doing so, it would be too simple to think “only” about systemic problem-solving. There are sectors where people have been discussing for years why the right solutions are not being implemented, even though the correctness of these solutions is clear to everyone. It would also be too simple to focus on quick wins, as change managers like to do. We humans are often too hard-hearted to change our perspective based on concrete experiences. Quick wins fizzle out ineffectively more often than one might think.

What we need is the implementation of sustainably far-reaching, concrete solutions AND, in addition, cultural work. For digital transformation is a cultural process that neither works according to plan nor by itself. The human being is – as in cybersecurity (see above) – equally the weak and the strong link.

In computer science, the most effective problem-solving has always been problem circumvention. Instead of introducing consistent forward-looking discipline in project teams, very specifically disciplined agile project management was invented. Instead of improving communication between teams, DevOps teams were introduced. And – less nicely: instead of developing IT department employees further, new CIOs typically replace all those who cannot or will not go along with the intended professionalisation step.

An elegant way to circumvent the refusal of digital advancement is a discussion about target perspectives. This is currently largely absent. But how is one supposed to motivate people to change when the outcome is completely unclear?

The magic word for the future discussion is precise imprecision: it is important to convey the “big picture”, but not to standardise it. Whoever wants to contribute should be welcome. At the same time, the pretense of participation for the purpose of obstruction should be consistently prevented. We need a precisely imprecise image of the digital future that is socially altruistic by nature and invites participation. This changes the perspective on digitalisation, and with it, behaviour changes too.