Moving our own goal posts

“As a vessel is known by the sound, whether it be cracked or not; so men are proved, by their speeches, whether they be wise or foolish”
– Demosthenes

“ Just be yourself, sir. Whatever happens, they can't take that away from you.”
— Denholm Elliott as Coleman, Trading Places

Speech writing was a highly formalised affair in fourth century BC Greece, with orators spending several years studying the finer points of Rhetoric (that is, the art of debate) before they could argue their case in the public forums of Athens – the Assembly and the Council.1 According to Aristotle, rhetorical skill was devised to encourage deliberation – in other words, thinking hard – before and during the composition of an argument. Rhetorical speeches were not to be composed in a rush, but over a period of days, weeks or even months.

Assembly meetings took place at the Pynx, an outdoor area with a stone platform running along one side, itself fashioned from a rocky outcrop. The Pynx is recognised as the birthplace of democracy, the word itself meaning people-power, though it did not exist in a shape we would recognise today. There was no party political system, no lobbyists, and indeed, the vote was not universal; rather a semi-random selection of the male populace that had come together, on that one day, to make a collective decision. Speakers would lay out their painstakingly constructed arguments in front of up to 6,000 of Athens’ male citizens2, which was all the area could fit. Once the debate had taken place, all major decisions were put to majority vote by a show of hands, the results of which (in the form of decrees) were passed to the 500-member Council for adoption. From there they were copied and recopied, then broadcast across the mainland and islands of ancient Greece. Messengers travelled by horse, boat and foot, meaning several weeks could pass before decrees could guarantee to have been heard in all corners of the nation.

In truth, Demosthenes was an unlikely orator – born with a speech impediment, orphaned and denied much of his inheritance. He worked hard to overcome his stammer and develop the skills he needed to sue his guardians for a share of his money, working as a logographer – a professional speech writer – before becoming famous for his own efforts, ranking with Plato and Aristotle as one of the most charismatic orators of the time. When it came, his fame was largely on the basis of hearsay, as few of the Greek population would ever hear his speeches first hand, or have the opportunity to read a transcript. The few copies that existed of his speeches were kept in libraries for use by students and were not generally accessible to the wider public, even if they had the skills to read them.

While the Greek system of decision making was not unique[^3] in ancient times, none are known to be quite as extensive. More typically, powers of persuasion and charisma had to be underpinned by both individual strength and the presence of an appropriately structured militia. The ‘power of the crowd’ would more usually be represented along tribal lines, with angry hordes needing leadership before they would attempt to topple their oppressors. Indeed, Demosthenes’ own doom was spelt when he attempted to use his rhetorical skills to rally the masses against the Macedonian king, Philip, and his successor, Alexander the Great. Unable to withstand his foes by force, he took poison to prevent capture by Alexander’s representative, Antipater.

The main advantage Demosthenes had over his modern counterparts was that he had plenty of time. He and his peers had a high level of influence to a reasonable volume of people – mere thousands would be swayed by his words. However the time to prepare, while a luxury, also meant speed of creation had to be measured in weeks; speed of distribution and subsequent impact of his own writings was limited. While today’s computer networks can transmit far more than ‘just’ text, the importance of the considered opinion has not diminished. From the days of community memory, through bulletin boards and online forums, the Internet has offered a place for debate, a virtual Pyx with no limit on how many people can attend.

But while the world may be very different today, the role of the individual has not gone away — indeed, perhaps the only thing to change is the scale of the debate. As we have seen, the information revolution has been marked by the lowering of thresholds. The information is unconcerned about the impact it has — it exists only to inform. It can inform people — we can be entertained or educated, we can use it as the basis of making our minds up both within and outside business. It can also inform processes and drive equipment, opening the door to automation. It is generally created by capturing, then digitising and processing data, transporting it from one place to another using a generally accepted binary format. Whether we write a message or make use of a sensor, we are adding to the mother of all analogue to digital converters. As a result, the whole world has become our Pynx.

With thresholds lowered, we can all become the next Demosthenes, for better or worse. But we are in many way, more isolated than ever. UK journalist Johann Hari, himself on a journey out of a pit of his own creation, was researching drug addiction. His findings surprised him — that more isolated people were more likely to become, and stay addicts. “What I learned is that the opposite of addiction is not sobriety,” he commented. The opposite of addiction is human connection.” How ironic it is, then, that in this hyper-connected world, we should still be suffering the darker consequences of being disconnected.

The future is real, and it is here, and it is happening faster than we can adapt. So we are losing our sense of meaning, as we struggle to understand who we are in the new. Following his experiences as a concentration camp prisoner in the Second World War — during which he essentially found that people, if they lost their sense of purpose, also lost their reason to live — psychotherapistVictor Frankl devised a meaning-based therapy and speculated that a loss of meaning may be linked to the breaking down of the immune system. Ultimately, our physical health and our sense of identity may be connected to our ability to cope with where technology is taking us.

Strange as it might seem, computer security experts were some of the first technologists to stumble upon a similar truth. The Jericho Forum3 was founded by a number of well-placed Chief Information Security Officers at the turn of the Millennium, in the recognition that organisations could no longer control the data that they managed in their databases. “The walls have come tumbling down,” went the mantra. In response, the CISOs realised that they needed to manage data wherever it was, rather than trying to keep it in one place — which moved their thinking from protecting the data to coming up with a way of identifying who, and what, was accessing it. In November 2010 they announced4 their Identity and Access Management Commandments, describing the set of design principles computers needed to adopt should they require to link device, or personal identity to the data set. To emphasise how important this move was, the group was disbanded soon afterwards, in November 2013[^6], when it was deemed to have completed its work. “Ten years ago, the Jericho Forum set out on a mission to evangelise the issues, problems, solutions and provide thought-leadership around the emerging business and security issues of de-perimeterisation, with the aim of one day being able to declare ‘job-done’,” went the press release. “That day has now arrived.”

The need to connect people with data for security as well as psychological reasons should not coincidental, given the primary purpose of security — to manage the risks associated with data about ourselves. At the same time it confirms that to reflect data’s role as being about reality, it also needs to connect to reality in a tangible way. That is, data needs to have real meaning, just as people do. Such principles are also being acknowledged today, not least in GE’s ‘digital twins’ initiative5, which involves creating what they hope will be the world’s largest database of physical object attributes — virtual shells, which can be filled with information about the physical objects they represent.

This evolution in thinking — that identity holds the key to success — is profound. And even more fascinatingly, it is not just coming from technology, but from our own brains which are increasingly wired to take into account our activities in the virtual world. To understand how this is possible we can consider the work of Temple Grandin, an autistic agricultural equipment designer, who has written extensively about both her own experiences, and our general understanding, of the autistic spectrum.  One area she highlighted was that the human brain is in a constant state of redevelopment. Where neural pathways are under-functioning or otherwise blocked, other connections get made. These biological adjustments to the circuitry of the brain enable signals to be re-routed, directly affecting a person’s cognitive abilities.

It isn't just autism where synaptic re-routing takes place. Those familiar with rehabilitating drug addicts know that addiction has physical consequences — essentially, new pathways are created to reflect the ’normality’ of drug use. Once made, pathways cannot be told to cease operating, which starts to explain why addicts can’t ‘just stop’. The parallels between addiction and autism don’t stop there. Temple Grandin has highlighted the importance of learning social skills for people on the autistic spectrum, even if this means they are operating outside their comfort zone, as they enable people to interact and function in society. In the 1950’s, social skills were taught in a much more rigid way so kids who were mildly autistic were forced to learn them. It hurts the autistic much more than it does the normal kids to not have these skills formally taught,” she remarked. 

As Temple Grandin illustrates, it appears that we are genuinely wired for our existence. Our brains are likely wired for the old. What we perceive as rationality is based on our ability to repeat a complex response to a complex situation. When that situation changes subtly, our attempted response appears ‘irrational’. It is a myth that decision making is largely rational - digital sources constitute part of that rational element, as do other non-digital sources such as word of mouth. Irrationality tends to be affected by risk, time pressure, (in)experience and cognitive biases, as well as incompleteness of rational inputs including digital/data. Given how the technology revolution has made us more connected, and yet more isolated than ever, Temple Grandin, Viktor Frankl and Johann Hari’s experiences may be of profound importance. External connections are vital to our well-being, for sure, and these may well be reflected in synaptic connections which, once created, cannot simply be un-knotted. 

If it is that6 our brains need to be re-wired, as suggests the Economist7 and IDG8, then what should we do about it? The answer is perhaps nothing — we can just wait for the change to happen. Children, it is well known, have a greater ability to learn and adapt, simply put they are better equipped to build the neurological matter that we all need. Even they9 will continue to struggle, given that the changes are not over yet. But the important thing is that people will get smarter — shifting towards this goal.

To abet this process, a good first step is education. Which needs to be as broad as possible — we can help ourselves by harnessing the diverse range of skills and knowledge we have accumulated through the aeons, across the sexes, across nations, across rich and poor. With the best will in the world, the core of the technological revolution is being defined by the few, rather than the many. Only with broader understanding can we understand how to be more at peace with technology as a race. Then we have to embrace the change. We need, essentially, to shift our thinking from analogue to digitally augmented ways, to understand that the data around us is as much a part of us as the blood that flows in our veins, or the money in our increasingly virtual wallets. By taking this leap of understanding, we can start to un-knot our brains from the old and build the inner synaptic pathways that reflect the way ahead. But even as we do so, we need to keep an understanding that while technology can augment us, can even change the way we think, it does not ultimately affect our purpose. “A person’s primary task should not be computing, but being human,” says10 cyborg11 anthropologist Amber Case. The reason why we are here, how we have survived for so long, does not have to change.

While we may become hyper-aware, the future lies in retaining our closeness with ourselves and the world around us. From a wine perspective for example, wine technologist Matic Šerc and his team have learned that more goes on in wine growing than engineering can solve. “It’s a triangle of the soil, the weather and the vine. When you manage vineyards you can manage the soil and you can manage the canopy, to an extent. But you cannot completely switch the soil, or change weather conditions, with technology. You have to keep in mind what you want from the grapes — the grapes then go through the process of wine making but there are factors that you cannot influence.” Ultimately wine is more than a product, it is a consequence of everything that takes place to turn the first opening leaves of Spring into the dark reds and crisp whites, the infusion of flavours and textures that bring so much pleasure to so many. “Wine has a story, a personality,” says Matic. As have so many of the facets of the world around, and within us.

Wherever the digital revolution takes us, one thing is for sure: we are stuck with technology and need to make the best of it. This doesn’t mean that we should do away with the largely non-digital world we inhabit, however much some more evangelical voices might want. Like water, data will engulf everything that we do - it cannot be held back. Like fire, it will spread uncontrollably however much we penalise those who drop the occasional lighted match. Like the air on a cold day, we will breathe it, and it will retain an image of our breath which can be captured, with or without our knowledge. But a cup of espresso, served on a veranda on a balmy day in Southern Italy, still gives more pleasure than watching the same in a YouTube video.

And, the chances are, it always will.