«Why digital is not good enough.»

Prof. Jan vom Brocke

Uni­ver­sity of Liecht­en­stein

• About the author

Why digital is not good enough.

Where can such added val­ues be found, which will turn us into the de­sign­ers of a good dig­i­tal world? In this ar­ti­cle, I would like to ar­gue pre­cisely that we should not only run af­ter the tech­nolo­gies but in a dig­i­tal world it de­pends es­pe­cially on us be­ing aware of the “com­par­a­tive com­pet­i­tive ad­van­tages” of us hu­man be­ings and of let­ting them flow into the added value. I should also like to stim­u­late thought on the ques­tion whether we have laid down the right frame­work con­di­tions for it in our or­gan­i­sa­tions and in ed­u­ca­tion.

What is dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion? Dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion, how­ever di­versely it is de­scribed nowa­days, means “au­toma­tion” in the fi­nal analy­sis. Other words are com­put­er­i­sa­tion or even ro­bo­t­i­sa­tion. Mo­bile apps, so­cial net­works and data analy­ses are only the be­gin­ning. They mark a path to in­creas­ing data pro­cess­ing by ma­chines and – re­lated to that – even to the sub­sti­tu­tion of work per­formed by hu­mans. If in­dus­tri­al­i­sa­tion was the au­toma­tion of pro­duc­tion, then dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion is now the au­toma­tion of ad­min­is­tra­tion and or­gan­i­sa­tion.

Services provided by machines

Dreams of the fu­ture? Al­ready in 2008, there were more ma­chines than peo­ple in the in­ter­net and we use an in­creas­ing num­ber of ma­chines in our daily life. When we book a flight or a ho­tel, ro­bots as­sume this task al­ready now as it is ma­chines, not hu­mans which pro­vide the ser­vice we re­quest. In this re­spect, ma­chines are vastly su­pe­rior to hu­mans for the for­mer com­pare many hun­dreds of thou­sands of al­ter­na­tives in a few min­utes or sec­onds and this with high ac­cu­racy.

To of­fer added val­ues, we should con­cen­trate on those strengths of ours which still dis­tin­guish us from ma­chines to­day. I should briefly de­scribe a few:

1. Emotionality: Hu­mans, un­like ma­chines still to­day, have feel­ings. What does this mean? We have gut feel­ings and can judge whether some­thing “feels” good or bad or right or wrong against the back­ground of a shared sys­tem of val­ues. This is a great ad­van­tage as re­search has shown that emo­tion has a much stronger be­hav­iour-in­flu­enc­ing im­pact than cog­ni­tion. Hu­mans should be ca­pa­ble of ex­pe­ri­enc­ing their own feel­ings and those of oth­ers and tak­ing them into con­sid­er­a­tion in their ac­tions. There­fore, emo­tional com­pe­tence is im­por­tant. Emo­tion­al­ity must be given proper room over ra­tio­nal­ity: on the one hand, as this makes life worth liv­ing; on the other, how­ever, be­cause we will very quickly be out­num­bered by ma­chines in a purely ra­tio­nal world.
2. Creativity: Hu­mans, un­like ma­chines still to­day, can de­velop new ideas. We can be cre­ative and find al­ter­na­tive ways and new so­lu­tions whilst do­ing sport or on a beau­ti­ful hik­ing trip. In this man­ner, we are ca­pa­ble of ques­tion­ing given struc­tures, de­vel­op­ing new ap­proaches and shap­ing the world. Hu­mans should be ca­pa­ble of ex­ploit­ing their cre­ativ­ity to in­vent and de­sign novel things in or­der to de­liver an added value over ma­chine-based ac­tiv­i­ties. There­fore, in­no­va­tory com­pe­tence isin de­mand. For this, we must al­low di­ver­gent think­ing and act­ing in or­der that a mul­ti­tude of even un­con­ven­tional ideas can be born. An im­por­tant ba­sis is the re­gard for in­no­va­tion and at the same time, the ap­pre­ci­a­tion of be­ing dif­fer­ent and the ques­tion­ing of con­ven­tional ap­proaches.
3. Reflexivity: Hu­mans, un­like ma­chines still to­day, can grasp over­all con­texts and see more than the sum of their in­di­vid­ual parts. We can judge whether de­vel­op­ments, as a whole, pro­ceed well or badly and in this con­text, are also ca­pa­ble of de­vel­op­ing new goals and value sys­tems – both for our so­ci­ety and for our­selves. Peo­ple there­fore should be ca­pa­ble of judg­ing is­sues and at the same time, of see­ing the over­rid­ing big pic­ture. The ca­pac­ity to ob­serve not only sin­gle as­pects but to un­der­stand sit­u­a­tions holis­ti­cally with their di­verse con­se­quences which are dif­fi­cult to pre­dict, can en­able hu­mans to play an im­por­tant role in man-ma­chine-so­ci­eties.
4. Activity: Hu­mans, un­like ma­chines still to­day, can move things ahead. They can shape mat­ters in­clud­ing even com­plex is­sues. They can thus launch and steer change processes which are cru­cial for the con­tin­u­ous de­vel­op­ment of the econ­omy and so­ci­ety, es­pe­cially in co­op­er­a­tion with ma­chines. Hu­mans in the dig­i­tal world should be able to im­ple­ment things and con­tribute not only the nec­es­sary mo­ti­va­tion and en­ergy, but also spe­cific skills and get the space they need made avail­able. ”Ac­tions speak louder than words” as Erich Käst­ner is of­ten quoted. This is all the more true in the dig­i­tal world in which hu­mans will as­sert them­selves, show ini­tia­tive, com­mit them­selves and stand up for a mat­ter with con­vic­tion.

«Who­ever be­haves like a ro­bot in a dig­i­tal world has no fu­ture, as ro­bots are su­pe­rior to us in pre­ci­sion, speed and com­pli­ance.»

When­ever we would like to of­fer an added value over ma­chines, then this can be achieved us­ing our ca­pac­i­ties of emo­tion­al­ity, cre­ativ­ity, re­flex­iv­ity and ac­tiv­ity. These are the skills we must par­tic­u­larly strengthen in a dig­i­tal world in or­der to shape the added value in so­ci­ety and the econ­omy (jointly with ma­chines) for the good of all.

Do we do that? Are our em­ploy­ees strong in emo­tion­al­ity, cre­ativ­ity, re­flex­iv­ity and ac­tiv­ity? Is it that which we fos­ter? For ex­am­ple, through or­gan­i­sa­tional struc­tures, man­age­ment sys­tems and cor­po­rate cul­ture? What is our ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem do­ing? Is it pri­mar­ily emo­tion­al­ity, cre­ativ­ity, re­flex­iv­ity and ac­tiv­ity which is be­ing taught? Who­ever be­haves like a ro­bot in a dig­i­tal world has no fu­ture, as ro­bots are su­pe­rior to us in pre­ci­sion, speed and com­pli­ance. For this rea­son, bor­der of­fi­cials are for in­stance al­ready be­ing re­placed by ma­chines in many air­ports. In the long term, hu­mans will work only in places where val­ues such as emo­tion­al­ity, cre­ativ­ity, re­flex­iv­ity and ac­tiv­ity are in de­mand. We should there­fore ur­gently en­sure that we, as hu­mans, also con­tribute these ca­pac­i­ties, strength­en­ing and de­vel­op­ing them. The job of the fu­ture is the job com­put­ers will not be able to do.

Digitalisation and transmission of knowledge

Please do not let us im­i­tate ro­bots but learn to make good use of them for our ben­e­fit. For in­stance, it is be­ing dis­cussed at uni­ver­si­ties whether dig­i­tal forms of learn­ing such as, for ex­am­ple, so-called mas­sive open on­line courses (MOOCs) will one day ren­der uni­ver­si­ties su­per­flu­ous and the an­swer is nat­u­rally: no. Quite to the con­trary, dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion will make uni­ver­si­ties be­come even more valu­able places where the com­pe­tence to act is taught and the de­vel­op­ment of per­son­al­ity can oc­cur. So-called flipped lec­tures fore­see, for ex­am­ple, that con­tents are taught us­ing dig­i­tal me­dia prior to be­gin­ning a lec­ture, then ini­tial ex­ams take place in or­der to fi­nally work with those who have passed the ex­ams on ex­cit­ing pro­jects pro­mot­ing, in the fi­nal analy­sis, val­ues such as emo­tion­al­ity, cre­ativ­ity, re­flex­iv­ity and ac­tiv­ity. Dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion there­fore fos­ters the non-dig­i­tal area as those uni­ver­sity teach­ers and uni­ver­si­ties which do not go be­yond the pure teach­ing of knowl­edge will in­deed cease to ex­ist. It is ob­vi­ous that this ex­am­ple can be eas­ily trans­ferred to all other ar­eas of life and work, as well as to a bank.

«Each one of us can ask the ques­tion how much are we still rooted in our old ways of think­ing and pro­duce ro­bots which are, how­ever, far in­fe­rior to real ro­bots.»

If we want to en­ter a good dig­i­tal fu­ture, we must above all strengthen the emo­tion­al­ity, cre­ativ­ity, re­flex­iv­ity and ac­tiv­ity in our­selves and in our so­ci­ety. Each one of us can ask the ques­tion how much do we do that to­day or how much are we still rooted in our old ways of think­ing and pro­duce ro­bots which are, how­ever, far in­fe­rior to real ro­bots. With that, I do not only mean ed­u­ca­tion but also or­gan­i­sa­tions and each one of us. I would like to ap­peal to all to dis­cuss this topic on a wide front. Knowl­edge of cur­rent de­vel­op­ments such as blockchain tech­nol­ogy is a pre-req­ui­site. These top­ics come and go and do so with in­creas­ing speed. What re­mains is our role as hu­mans to learn how to use such tech­nolo­gies to the good of the econ­omy and so­ci­ety. What this needs is a fo­cus (or re­fo­cus) on hu­man val­ues such as emo­tion­al­ity, cre­ativ­ity, re­flex­iv­ity and ac­tiv­ity. Places and or­gan­i­sa­tions which recog­nise and im­ple­ment this will be the win­ners of dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion.