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A transcript of an interview on the information age
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We’re living in
DISRUPTIVE TIMES An interview with Martijn Aslander on the network and information society What is information? ‘I have no idea. I understand the concept of knowledge, but information? Is it data? Is it zeros and ones? I don’t know. It’s not something I worry about, by the way.’ How do you look at organisations? ‘Most organisations will seize to exist. They are not smart enough, too slow, too expensive, too sluggish, lack the ability to learn and people who work for organisations are not allowed to use free applications and tools that make everything a lot easier. We are living in a network and information society. If you merge these together you get what I call ‘the new renaissance’. If you connect networks – physical networks, social networks and information networks – to the available amount of information (which is growing exponentially) completely new forms of solutions and applications for issues of supply-‐and-‐demand friction emerge. This may sound abstract, but nearly everything on this planet is about supply-‐and-‐demand friction. Organisations are founded in order to get something done. But it gets easier all the time to get something done faster, nicer, kinder, more fun, better, cheaper (and for free, even) outside of the organisation than inside of it, because of the way we have shaped them for thirty to forty years. Thanks to the internet and all that free technology people are inventing smart things as we speak, making the essence of your organisation obsolete. We are living in disruptive times and you could think of that as scary and complicated but you could also be fascinated by it, because it saves us
all a lot of hassle. But it’s the end of the line for many organisations as we know them today. Developments are going so fast that you can hardly design a strategy for it, or manage it. The only way to deal with it is to tinker and try, that’s the only way. Especially now that DNA-‐storage is coming. The incredible amount of data you can store in a medium like DNA is insane. You can make millions of copies per hour and it lasts a few hundred years. Quantum computing is imminent, super materials are on their way. The sky is the limit.’ How are we going to deal with this? ‘We don’t know yet. Time will tell. That’s the strange thing about these times; we don’t have any answers, we can only observe which way things are moving.
I look at it from swarm technology. From the concept of swarms. With ants, the queen doesn’t dish out orders, it’s much more subtle. Ants are incredibly good at
‘Ecosystems can’t be controlled, you can build them at best, see what
happens and improve them if necessary.’
exchanging information, working smart together and getting things done. They’re the most successful species on earth. Self organisation and self management, these are new concepts, new themes, that come into sight due to technology’s possibilities. We are on the eve of working with such mechanisms. It’s just that we feel the need to control things, because we are afraid and insecure. En controlling things works best from a central hierarchical approach, it makes you the boss of it.
Swarm leadership is about observing what happens and situational leadership; it takes a different kind of leader in different situations. So that’s not a hierarchical model but a decentralized one. Ecosystems can’t be controlled, you can build them at best, see what happens and improve them if necessary.’ What do we need as a society in transition? ‘The ability to learn. The skill to learn faster from what you discover. So learning faster from mistakes, exchanging mistakes, shorter feedback loops, more iterations, trial and error and a different attitude towards mistakes. We need to get rid of the current business culture when it comes to mistakes. That if you make a mistake you won’t get promoted within your organisation, or promoted to a higher position. We have got to stop punishing people for mistakes, we’ve got to create an open culture which enables us to learn faster from mistakes. The wrong idea everybody has is that self-‐employed people are sailing solo. They are not alone, they are together. Faster than ever, more agile than ever. And they make a living sharing their knowledge and information and making mistakes. When a self-‐employed person makes a mistake he misses out on another assignment, but not a lot of
harm is done. Lessons learned, and he just continues. Organisations are not safe environments to make mistakes. So people start acting politically; retaining information, manipulation, a lack of transparency. I can see that organisations are lagging behind. A new kind of culture needs to emerge. And to be honest I don’t see this happening; I think a lot is simply imploding. And that’s not a bad thing per se. What we need is a different attitude. I often visit seminars where I’m asked to be a keynote and there I explain: Hire for attitude, train for skills. The attitude by which you take part in an organisation, how you approach your job, is more crucial than ever. It’s better to hire based on attitude than on skills and experience.’ Will we be earning money in the future? ‘I think we’re all going to make a lot less money. But that’s not a bad thing. The past hundred years we have been busy acquiring possessions. But the networked society is not about possessions; it’s about access. The digitalisation of society really means a dematerialisation of society. You never hear anyone talk about this. We don’t have to spend 800 euros annually on cd’s, because we can use Spotify for 10 euros a month. We don’ have to spend four, five hundred euros each year to buy dvd boxes with series on them – to put them on a shelf – if you’ve got Netflix for 8 euros a month.
‘What we need is a different attitude.’
‘The digitalisation of society really means a dematerialisation of society. You never hear anyone talk about this.’
My smartphone, which cost me 800 euros, has 80.000 euros worth of devices in it; a level, a compass, a dictaphone, a calculator, and so forth. Just imagine: 80.000 euros worth of devices that don’t use up any resources. That you don’t have to dig up, transport, don’t have to turn into semi-‐finished products, don’t have to assemble, don’t have to package and don’t require any logistics in order to get them delivered to your home. You just use a digital app. I think eventually we’ll have less money. So I have to laugh a bit about the current discussion about the inequality of incomes. If you were unemployed in the thirties, you may have had nothing to eat. If you were unemployed in the fifties, you may have had something to eat, but no TV. If you were unemployed in the eighties, you may have had a tv but no social media, no eBay, no food delivery, no exchange mechanisms. If you’re unemployed today then you have all the knowledge of the world at your fingertips, all the music, all the movies, everything you might need to develop as a person and get yourself a life again. And interact with others at the same time, so you’ll feel less lonely. I’m not saying it’s a good idea to be unemployed, but if there has to be a moment in time to be unemployed, it’s better to be so today than during the thirties, fifties or eighties.’ What do you mean by the democratization of information? ‘Well, take the government for example. We have no clue what the government is spending all her money on. Yes, we read a budget every now and then, but we can’t see where the money is going on the detail level of the receipts and if it’s spent in a smart way. What I’ve considered to be quite bizarre for years, is that a city like Amsterdam spends a million euros on a website and doesn’t ask for the source code to then call Rotterdam and say: “Listen, we’ve just bought a new website and it works like
a charm, I think you need one as well, shall we send you the code?” So all these cities in the Netherlands – and these may as well be a ministry, water boards and so forth – are all doing exactly the same thing. This has to be made visible. We have to exchange this information, so that the people can contribute with ideas. In every city there are unemployed smart coders, who are not hired because they are far too smart, so we’re giving them money in all kinds of complicated unemployment benefit programs, while on the other hand (just look at the current debate about governmental ICT projects) we’re hiring expensive consultants to do something we could have gotten for free from people who had nothing to do to begin with. This is all invisible to the public eye. So what I mean by the democratization of information is that if we just make all this knowledge visible and shareable we can collectively solve this entire puzzle a lot faster. Because there are enough people who have the time and the inspiration to work with this kind of information. We’re headed towards an era of radical transparency, in which everyone has access to that information. And I think that’s a good thing.’ What’s your take on privacy? ‘I think this is a difficult theme, I haven’t figured it out yet, not personally either. If everyone knows everything about everyone, then all we have to learn to deal with is shame. If I know what you’ve been up to and what’s in your head and what you’ve done, and everyone knows everything about everyone, well… it’s more of a philosophical question. In the end it’s about the concentration of power. In this entire privacy debate you always end up with the fact that you don’t want the government to be able to abuse your information. And this is what is happening right now. To which extent we don’t know, sometimes they will deal with it with integrity , other times they won’t ... hey, that sounds funny: can you abuse information with integrity? Yes, I think so, because you have the law on your side … but eventually all these
It’s better to be
unemployed today than during the thirties, fifties or eighties.’
mechanisms are exposed. We’re doing it ourselves, too; we are in a stage of transition in which we are tapping on a large scale and don’t claim responsibility about what it is we’re doing. Eventually this method will expire. I sometimes joke: “The mice outnumber the cats and the mice are getting increasingly well-‐organized among themselves, so the cats have to start paying attention.”’ What do you think is going to happen? ‘I have no idea whether it will be a rough or a soft landing. But right now so much is in motion simultaneously: we’re in an energy transition, in an education transition, in a healthcare transition. And people, especially the ones who are employed in the aforementioned fields, are unsuspecting of what is going on, that’s truly bizarre. We’re in the middle of a tremendous transition the scale of which we haven’t witnessed before. There’s a super computer, Watson, made by IBM, which, a few years back, beat the best Jeopardy champions, by memorizing everything that’s on Wikipedia. So a computer has memorized Wikipedia, deducted the algorithms and semantic relationships between all pages, and therefore
knew all the answers – trivia answers! – and beating two of the best players there are. If you extrapolate this to the next ten years computer power will expand enormously. Exponentially; computers are not just getting one of two or three times as fast and smart, no, much more. And a lot cheaper, too, so owned by everybody. And if you can teach a computer all of Wikipedia it can also memorize an entire law book and all jurisprudence and all comments on this and all the rulings. This means that the work which is now making up many of the billable hours in law can all be automated. And if all of that can be automated, what else can? The speed with which we can scan, save, connect, combine and reshuffle is unimaginable. Bots are created that can make news items based on tweets and Facebook updates, in a readable context. As we speak accurate news reports are made without the involvement of a human being. Think about that.’ And what now? ‘I observe an enormous emergence of yoga schools and mindfulness courses. I think that Adjiedj Bakas, the well-‐known trend watcher, may have a good point when he says: “We’re probably going to be bored out of our minds, so we’ll have to become really good at killing time.” And let’s be honest, we have been working far too hard the past couple of years. We’ve worked very hard to get here. How about enjoying it?’
This article is based on a series of interviews with Martijn Aslander for a documentary about information. Text: Yvon Mekkring Translation: Annedien Hoen
‘I have no idea whether it will be a rough or a soft landing.’