Global Futures Initiative

Immense good has arisen in the recent past through the deployment of technology for development. The strides in life expectancy, the leaps made in improving nutrition, and the expediency of information exchange across the globe is all thanks to medicines, high-yielding crops, and the micro-chip. More is on offer. Energy from the sun is free and ready to be harnessed by all. The universe, moreover, remains an untapped resource waiting to be unlocked with technology.

Technology also lends itself to abuse.  Nuclear weapons have the potential to annihilate the planet’s population. Rogue individuals with access to the internet have the means to pull (invisible and often invincible) strings from afar, and with anonymity. The damage they can cause to humanity is chilling, to say the least.

The breakthroughs coming in the next decade in the forms of nanotechnology, smart customised manufacturing, genetically modified crops and animals, and much more will transform life everywhere. The indispensable smart phone of today connects people and markets across vast distances quickly and cheaply: that of tomorrow will do a lot more.  Connected communities offer topportunities for the cultivation of common human values and offer gains from trade; but they also pose the threat of the nurturing of divisions and dissent.

Will technology developed over the future be a benefit to or bad for development?

It depends! Harnessing technology for good whilst containing the risks of abuse demands exceptional global leadership plus organizational innovation. Neither of these is abundant or imminent. The two world wars plus a depression in-between led to the creation of global institutions such as the United Nations, The International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank that have since undergirded peace and prosperity for the majority. The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, the precursor to The World Trade Organisation, lent a system of rules for global commerce.

Will we wait for another large scale catastrophe, or two, before rules are written down and enforced on the appropriate uses of technology?  It may prove too late should the brunt of the destructive forces of technology fall in the wrong hands.

Professor John Kline’s push for the promotion of shared human values to build a genuine global community that could then begin framing the rules on the appropriate uses of technology could be the place to start now. 

Satish Chand is a professor of finance in the School of Business at the University of New South Wales Canberra.