Do Keep Up

"Innovation is racing ahead exponentially—it's time to adapt quickly or be left behind."

This is a message that I've seen on LinkedIn quite a bit since Generative Automation tools started becoming big. And there are a number of different variations on it, as one might expect, like: "Ai is the future. DO NOT get left behind," "It's time to embrace the change or risk being left behind," or "Are you ready to embrace AI, or will you get left behind?"

What I've found interesting about all of these messages over the past several months or so is that they all focus on the individual. The march of technology is treated impassively, like a force of nature, and it's up to the reader to do what they need to do to keep up.

But I'm not sure that this is an accurate way of looking at it. Because people, communities and societies drive technological change. People aren't going to be somehow simply left behind; everyone else is going to make the choice to leave them behind. This isn't something that's out of everyone's control; it's a choice that people are making. And while it's true that not everyone is going to have an equal say in that choice, and as individuals, many people will have no say at all in it, there's nothing that prevents groups of people from deciding that making this into a rat race, with the hindmost being overtaken by unemployment and poverty, is a bad idea.

The point behind technology should be to make it easier to bring people along, not to make cultures of scarcity even sharper and less forgiving. The political moment we find ourselves in right now is almost entirely due to people feeling that they were deliberately left behind. And rather than blame themselves for that, they blame those that moved the technology and culture forward from underneath them. What about this present situation is so wonderful that it's going to bear repeating in another few decades or so? (If not sooner?) American society has yet to find a way to do anything positive with the level of anger and resentment that currently roils the United States (even if the currently levels are overrated), why decide that more of the same will somehow be helpful?

Another industrial revolution, where many people saw their incomes plummet, and it took generations for their families to recover, may be the future, but not because it could turn out no other way. If people are left behind, it will be because their fellows chose to leave without them. Acknowledging that may be what's needed to head it off.