"Where wealth accumulates and men decay" (Oliver Goldsmith) – its safe tosay no one is accumulating more wealth and decaying faster than the men in big tech. I am on amission to rehumanise organisations. I want tobuild robust and resilient organisations that are less about being data-driven and more about being human-led. Ibelieve that we will never reap the true benefits of digitalisation until we understandour r ole as the human leaders of this natural world.
I see this digital age as one of opportunity, discovery and innovation. Technology makes almost anything possibleand yet, for so many the future seems so bleak. At a time when the technology can unlock theanswers to so many of our questions, perhaps our challenge lies in asking the
right questions. For the most part, large organisations have been designed to recognise, reward and promote the humans that behave like the best machines – consistent and reliable, focused
and tireless, while building machines to behave like humans. It’s a radical concept but maybe we shouldtry behaving like good humans and let the machines behave like good machines.
But what would it even mean to be good human? It seems to me it all comes down to two things: Creativity and Purpose. We are theonly species that can imagine something that does not yet exist and create it, we alone can bring an idea to life. And Purpose– We are the only species that understands the concept of our time on this earth. We know that we have ancestorsand descendants and we find meaning in legacy and stewardship. It is this understanding that gives our lives purpose, we need it. Utopia is not having nothing to do. Utopia is doing what you love to do.
The greatestexpression of our humanity is where our creativity meets our purpose. And herein lies the challenge fororganisations… we all know that creative purpose driven people are notoriously
difficult to manage. Organisations havenot been designed to scale with humans behaving like such wild humans!!
We are unruly and outspoken. We are intolerant and idealistic. Creative purpose driven people, good humans areburdened with honouring the legacy of those who have gone before and feel accountable to those who come after. Good humans are driven to create a better world.
So here weare, a small island country in a digital age at the epicentre of building the infrastructure that bridges how welive in this physical world empowered by the technology of the other world, the virtual world. And we’ve done it before. Not far from here. 4000 years ago. We built an infrastructure that linked thephysical world to the “other” world, the spirit world.
We are 20kms from Uisneach, the very centre of Ireland. During the Neolithic Age, 4000 years ago, the hill at Uisneach was ourceremonial, administrative and spiritual centre. It is here that the limestone rock, “TheStone of the Divisions” marks where the then five provinces of Ireland meet;
Leinster, Munster, Connacht, Ulster and Meath. From the top of the hill, you can see up to 22 counties. Fires were lit from there to communicatewith other communities, fires that could be seen from Lough Crew, Tara, Cong, Rathcroghan, Cashel. As time passed, powershifted. Tara became the seat of royalpower and the physical world but Uisneach remained the sacred spiritual centre
and our connection to the other world.
ThisNeolithic infrastructure emanating from Uisneach persists. It is understood through the archaeological artefacts of an ancient infrastructure of souterrains, stone circles and bog trackways, and the found treasures of brooches and cups. It is remembered and retold in oral andtranscribed stories. There wascreativity and purpose in building it and there is continued purpose in
preserving it, in being stewards of it as a sacred space. No. We are not new to building infrastructure connecting this physical world to other worlds.
Millenia later and 130kms south west of here there is another site, less romantic and sacred but epic nonetheless. The hydro-electric power station at Ardnacrusha is 100 years old this year so it has earned its place in today’s story.
As a feat of engineering, it was the world’s biggest dam in 1925. Ardnacrusha is testament to ourhumanity. The power of the Shannon wasnot harnessed by engineering and physics alone but by creative people of purpose. Some people across the water said‘those poets and dreamers will never make it happen’ but they are people who underestimated the power of the artist-leader. The poets and the dreamers are at the heart of every great change, everygreat revolution. It was just a fewyears before that Arthur Griffith from his prison cell wrote “It’s time to unleash the poets”.
It takes great engineering to make thingshappen, but it takes great heart to want to.
This infrastructure still stands. And whileit stands as a feat of engineering, just as it is with Uisneach, it is what it stands FOR that matters more: bothare historical reference points in our country’s story, our culture, beliefs and values of those times.
Building infrastructure is not about what we build now. It is about the future. It isabout imagining the world as we would want it to be and breathing life into it. And just asUisneach and Ardnacrusha are in conversation with the physical environment of hills, fires and rivers, our infrastructure for this digital age does not exist in isolation either. It seems to methat infrastructure that endures works with and for the natural world and all of its inhabitants.
Stone Age, IronAge, Industrial Age, Digital Age. These are just passages in time. This is the
digital age of this natural world and we as humans have the responsibility to lead it. And we need to leadbetter. I am all for data driven decisions but more importantly, I believe in human-led organisations. This cannot become an age of DATAImperialism where we abdicate leadership to “the data made me do it”.
Being human-led recognises our role in stewardship. In this now digital age, we are
not carving rings on rocks at Newgrange anymore or transcribing stories to books for preservation in the Trinity Library. All of our created content is with these technologycompanies, companies controlled by these decaying men. Held in their data centres, moving through theirether – our music, our books, our poetry, our diaries, our lives.
One hundred years from now what will be in the libraries and museums of the Digital
Age? Three thousand years from now, whatwill some future civilisation discover of us? What archaeological artefacts will remain that will give them insightinto who we are, how our society worked, what was important to us, our values and our beliefs?
I said thatAI has the power answer to anything. There is no problem bound by the laws of
science, engineering, technology, mathematics that it cannot solve. But what of problems unbound by such mmutable laws but simply constrained by the artificial constructs of rules and
regulations? Who made them? Do theystill hold true? In their absence, where the policies of the talking men havebeen outpaced by the technology of decaying men, we need to reconnect with our
own moral compass. Where is it pointing?
In Chinese mythology there exists 172 unanswerable questions to the Gods, known as the
Heavenly Questions. The Chinese artistand activist Ai Wei Wei, mirrored these with 81 unanswerable questions of ask to AI, one question for each day of his political imprisonment. These unanswerable questions include ‘whichlasts longer, love or hate?’ and ‘who am I?’ These are questions for humans not machines. These are questions for leaders. Who are we andwhat is important to us? As humans leading, we must do better.