Abstract
Non-technical summaryOur time seems to be trapped in a paradox. On the one hand, the capacity to master information has tremendously increased, but on the other hand the capacity to use the knowledge humanity produces seems at stake. There is a gap between our capacity to know and our capacity to act. We attempt to better understand that situation by considering the evolution of knowledge processing along human history, in particular the relation between the development of information technologies and the complexity of societies, the balance between the known and the unknown, and the current emergence of autonomous machines allowing intelligent processes.Technical summaryInformation-processing capacities developed historically in conjunction with the complexity of human societies. Positive feedback loops contributed to the co-evolution of knowledge, social organization, environmental transformation, and information technologies. Very powerful loops now drive the rapid emergence of global digital platforms, disrupting legacy organizations and economic equilibria. The simultaneous emergence of the awareness of the sustainability conundrum and the digital revolution is striking. Both are extremely disruptive and contribute to a surge in complexity, but how do they relate to each other? Paradoxically, as the capacity to master information increases, the capacity to use the knowledge humanity produces seems to lag. The objective of this paper is to analyze the current divergence between knowledge and action, from the angle of the co-evolution of information processing and societal transformation. We show how the interplay between perception and action, between the known and the unknown, between information processing and ontological uncertainty, has evolved toward a sense of control, a hubris, which abolishes the unknown and hinders action. A possible outcome of this interplay might lead to a society controlled to stay in its safe operating space, involving a strong delegation of information processing to autonomous machines, as well as extensive forms of biopolitics.Social media summaryThe sustainability conundrum and the digital revolution are entangled phenomena leading to complexity and disruption.
Highlights
The digital revolution has led since the 1950s to an acceleration of the amount of information that is harvested and processed by machines
Digital platforms take control of whole social and economic sectors with a quality and efficiency of service that condemns legacy institutions, private enterprises as well as public administrations, to obsolescence. This singularity (Chalmers 2009) leads to a trans-human information dynamics, an evolution of the relationship between humans and machines where humans increasingly play a subordinate role in the technosphere (Haff 2014). How does this profound transformation of human societies supported by a radical change of information processing relate to their main challenge, sustainability? Our aim is to investigate how the evolution of the way human societies process information and accommodate knowledge determines their sustainability, and how that process might evolve in the future, under the impact of AI and Machine Learning
The more cognitive dimensions exist, the more, and more complex, problems can be tackled, and the more quickly knowledge is accumulated and novel techniques are developed to reduce the effort involved. This accumulation of information processing capacity enables a concomitant increase in matter, energy and information flows through a group or society, enabling its members to grow in numbers
Summary
The digital revolution has led since the 1950s to an acceleration of the amount of information that is harvested and processed by machines. The uninterrupted process of human individual and collective learning that has transformed our societies from small bands roaming the Earth to huge societies involving millions if not billions of people may be seen as the result of two positive feedback loops They create shared order out of diverse experiences of the – seemingly chaotic – world, by isolating patterns, characterizing them in terms of a limited number of dimensions that are used to structure knowledge (van der Leeuw 2007). The more cognitive dimensions exist, the more, and more complex, problems can be tackled, and the more quickly knowledge is accumulated and novel techniques are developed to reduce the effort involved This accumulation of information processing capacity enables a concomitant increase in matter, energy and information flows through a group or society, enabling its members to grow in numbers. We would focus on the most recent evolution of information and knowledge processing, and situate it in the long term history of human societies to better understand how ensuring sustainability is related to information processing
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