Paradoxical as it sounds, the evolution of life in the primordial ocean can teach us a few things about the future of our society. Since no secret is safe in the age of digital networking, we are on the threshold of an era that must completely redefine the relationship between public and private life.
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About 543 million years ago, the so-called Cambrian explosion occurred: a spectacular accumulation of biological innovations. Within a few million years - by geological standards almost instantaneously - living beings developed completely new body shapes, new organs, new strategies for attack and defense. Evolutionary biologists are still arguing about the cause of this amazing wave of innovation. But a particularly compelling hypothesis from zoologist Andrew Parker of the University of Oxford suggests that light was the trigger. According to Parker, at that time, the shallow oceans and atmosphere became much more translucent due to sudden chemical changes. At that time, animal life existed only in the oceans, and once sunlight penetrated the water, vision became a crucial evolutionary advantage. At the same time as the rapid development of eyes, correspondingly adapted forms of behavior and other physical features also emerged.
Whereas previously all perceptions captured only the closest proximity - by direct contact or by sensing chemical concentration changes or pressure waves - animals could now identify and track distant objects. Predators swam purposefully toward their prey; the prey could see enemies approaching and take flight. Locomotion is slow and uncertain unless guided by eyes, and eyes are useless if you can't move. That is why perception and movement developed in parallel. This coevolution was a major reason for the emergence of today's biodiversity.
Parker's Cambrian explosion hypothesis provides an excellent template for understanding a new, seemingly completely different phenomenon: the spread of digital technology. While advances in communications technology have also changed our world in the past - the invention of writing signaled the end of prehistory, the printing press shook up class-based society - the impact of digital technology could eclipse everything that has gone before. It will increase the power of some individuals and organizations and disempower others; and it will bring opportunities and risks that were unimaginable a generation ago.
Through social media, the Internet provides individuals with global communication tools. A digital world without established rules is opening up. Services like YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram, WhatsApp, and SnapChat are creating new media that rival the telephone and television - and the speed at which these media are emerging is staggering. As engineers took decades to develop and set up telephone and television networks, society had time to adapt. Today, a social service can be created within weeks, and possibly hundreds of millions of people use it within months. The enormous pace of innovation gives organizations no time to adapt to one medium before the next one already appears.
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Change at full speed
Digital transparency is forcing people to adopt new ways - to protect themselves, but also to take advantage of the new opportunities.
The precipitous change triggered by this flood of media can be summed up in one word: Transparency. We can now look further, faster, cheaper and more easily than ever before - and be seen too. Each of us recognizes that everyone is capable of seeing what we see; we are in a recursive hall of mirrors of mutual knowledge that simultaneously empowers and hinders. The ancient game of hide and seek that has shaped all life on our planet is suddenly shifting its playing field, its equipment and its rules. Players who cannot adapt will soon be eliminated.
Our organizations and institutions are facing profound changes. Governments, armies, churches, universities, banks, and corporations have evolved in a relatively murky cognitive milieu in which most knowledge remained local, secrets were easily kept, and individuals were myopic or even blind. When these organizations suddenly find themselves in bright lights, they quickly discover that they can no longer rely on the old ways; they must respond to the new transparency or perish. Just as a living cell needs an effective membrane to protect its internal mechanisms against the vicissitudes of the outside world, social organizations need a protective interface between their internal affairs and the public - and the old protective screens are losing their effectiveness.
Claws, jaws, armor
In his book, In the Blink of an Eye, Parker argued that the outer hard body parts of fauna responded most directly to the extreme selection pressures of the Cambrian explosion. The sudden transparency of the seas led to the emergence of camera-like organs of vision, which in turn led to the rapid adaptation of claws, jaws, carapaces, and protective body parts. In addition, nervous systems evolved as some animals began to act as predators while others switched to flight and camouflage.
Analogously, we can expect organizations to respond to digitally induced social transparency pressures by making adjustments to their external body parts. In addition to the organs with which this outer layer delivers goods and services, it contains information-processing elements for control and self-preservation, for example, departments for advertising, marketing and legal affairs. This is where the effect of transparency is most directly noticeable. Through social networks, rumors and opinions now travel around the globe in days or even hours. Advertising and marketing departments have recently had to "stay in the conversation" - that is, respond to individual customers in a comprehensible, honest and flexible manner. Organizations with immobile legal departments that take weeks or months to develop communications strategies will soon be left behind. Old habits must change or the organization will fail.
Easier access to data allows for a new form of political commentary based on extensive empirical observations. This was demonstrated by data journalist Nate Silver on the occasion of the 2012 American presidential election. While some news outlets claimed they knew why their candidate would win after just a few polling samples, Silver provided analysis based on all available polling data. Silver not only predicted the election results with striking accuracy, but by publishing his methodology he also dispelled any suspicion that they were merely coincidental. Since transparent polls have become increasingly accessible, news outlets and political commentators spreading one-sided stories have an increasingly difficult game.
Small groups of people will cope best with the new transparency
Consumer goods manufacturers face a similar challenge. User ratings of goods and services change the power relationship between customers and companies. Establishing a brand becomes more difficult when consumer opinion gains weight. Flexible companies learn to respond quickly and publicly to complaints and negative reviews - and if criticism prevails, they must change the product or drop it altogether. There is no longer any point in pouring money into marketing mediocre products.
Small groups of people with the same values, beliefs and goals, who can quickly coordinate in the event of a crisis using ad hoc improvised internal communication channels, will cope best with the new transparency. To distinguish these flexible organizations from large hierarchical bureaucracies, they could be called "adhocracies." As the constraints of mutual transparency continue to grow, new types of organizations are likely to emerge that operate in a much more decentralized manner than today. Moreover, selection pressures are likely to favor smaller entities and perhaps condemn large organizations to extinction in the first place.
Secrets without duration
From Louis D. Brandeis (1856-1941), U.S. Supreme Court Justice, said, "Sunlight is considered the best disinfectant." This is true both literally and figuratively. But sunlight can also be dangerous. Aren't we killing too many useful cells with our cleaning zeal? Aren't we running the risk of destroying the cohesion or effectiveness of organizations by exposing their inner workings too much?
Brandeis was a principled opponent of secrecy. Apparently, he thought that the more transparent an institution was, the better. A good 100 years later, the campaign he initiated can boast many successes. But despite all the political phrases about the beneficial advantages of transparency, secrecy continues to reign in the centers of power - and for good reason.
A biological view makes it clear that transparency does not only have advantages. Animals and even plants use their sensory organs to inform themselves about the environment and act to increase their well-being. Similarly, a human organization is an actor consisting of numerous active, living parts - people. But unlike plant or animal cells, humans have many different interests and perceptual abilities. A multicellular organism need not fear that its components will jump ship or start a mutiny; except in the case of disease, cells are docile, obedient slaves. In contrast, humans have individual power and are extremely curious beings.
That was not always the case. In earlier times, dictators could rule quite freely behind high walls. They had hierarchical organizations made up of functionaries who knew very little of the system to which they belonged, and even less of the state of the world, near or far. Churches have always been particularly skilled at thwarting the curiosity of their members; providing them with insufficient or distorted information about the rest of the world and shrouding internal actions, histories, finances, and goals in mysterious fog. Armies also tend to keep their strategies secret - not only from the enemy, but also from the troops. Soldiers who know the presumed casualty rates of an operation will not fight as well as those who have no idea of their likely fate. Also, an ignorant soldier may reveal less if he is captured.
A fundamental insight of game theory is that players must keep secrets. If you reveal your own condition to a teammate, you lose valuable autonomy and run the risk of being manipulated. To compete fairly in a free market, companies protect the recipes for their products, their expansion plans, and other corporate data. Schools and universities must keep their exam papers under lock and key until the time of the exam. U.S. President Barack Obama promised a new era of government transparency, but despite significant improvements, strict secrecy and immunity continue to prevail in many areas. That's the way it's supposed to be. For example, economic statistics must remain secret until they are officially released so that insiders cannot take advantage of them. A government needs a poker face to execute its actions - but the new transparency makes that more difficult than ever.
We must measure future organizations by the values that apply to each individual
As Edward Snowden's revelations about the machinations of the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) demonstrate, a single "mole" or whistleblower can significantly disrupt a massive organization. Although Snowden disseminated his information through traditional news channels, it was the amplifying response in social media that ensured that the public furor did not die down, that the NSA came under lasting international pressure, and that the U.S. government had to act.
The NSA is responding by drastically adjusting its "outer skin." The mere fact that it publicly defended itself against Snowden's allegations was unprecedented for an organization that had long operated in complete secrecy. She now has to figure out what kind of secrets she is capable of keeping at all in an increasingly transparent world. Former NSA chief counsel Joel Brenner commented on the sudden change in working conditions at a forum held in Dec. 2013 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Lab: "Very little will be secret in the future, and what is kept secret will not remain secret for very long ... The real goal of secrecy now is to extend the decay time of secrets. They are like radioactive elements."
As optimists, we hope that this period of upheaval will bring us organizations that better meet the ethical standards of civil society and that effective new procedures will emerge to correct undesirable organizational behavior. At the same time, we cannot rule out the possibility that our intelligence services will be permanently weakened and will be less able to detect threats in the future.
Information wars
Cambrian fauna invented a plethora of evasive maneuvers and countermeasures in their evolutionary arms race, and this arsenal of feints has continued to grow ever since. The animals have developed camouflage and alarm calls, as well as garish markings that falsely indicate to potential predators that the prey is poisonous. The new transparency will lead to a similar flood of information warfare techniques: Campaigns to discredit sources, preemptive attacks, covert operations, and so on.
Nature has always stimulated the development of deceptive protective mechanisms. In modern air warfare, the ink cloud emitted by a cephalopod fleeing from a predator is equivalent to clouds of metallic filaments reflecting radar beams or mock warheads misleading defensive missiles. We predict deceptives that simply consist of megabytes of disinformation. They are likely to be quickly debunked by more sophisticated search engines, which in turn provokes the creation of even more deceptive false reports. At the same time, new methods of encryption and decryption continue to emerge as organizations and individuals seek to protect their data.
A species explosion of organizations
Finally, from our comparison with the Cambrian explosion, it follows that we will soon see an enormous diversity of types of organizations. This is not happening at the moment, but we can look for signs:
Apparently, we are indeed at the beginning of a radical fanning out of the family tree of human forms of organization.
The pace at which transparency shapes an organization depends on its competitive position - its ecological niche, as it were. Companies are most exposed to the influence of public opinion because customers can easily choose alternatives. If a brand that has been built up over decades is neglected, it may disappear from the market within months. Churches and sports clubs are somewhat better protected by the deeply rooted cultural habits and social networks of their members. But when child abuse or head injuries, long ignored before the advent of the Internet, come into the glare of transparency, even the most powerful of these organizations must adapt - or perish.
Government systems are best protected from immediate evolutionary pressures. Protests forced by social media can topple rulers and parties, but the established organs of state usually remain fairly unaffected by a change in political leadership. The state apparatus is subject to little competitive pressure and is therefore the slowest to develop. But even here we should expect significant change, as the power that individuals and outsiders gain through insight into organizations will undoubtedly increase. Under public pressure, governments grant access to vast streams of raw data that provide information about internal operations. Combined with advances in large-scale pattern analysis, data visualization, and data-driven journalism, powerful social feedback loops are accelerating the transparency of systems of governance.
The newly emerging human order, however, comes up against certain self-imposed limits. Ant colonies can accomplish more than individual ants, and likewise human organizations exceed the capabilities of individuals. This can create memories, beliefs, plans, actions, and perhaps even values that go far beyond human scale. But our path of development dictates that we measure organizations, no matter how superhuman, against the values that apply to each individual. This self-regulating dynamic, which subordinates the acceleratingly growing capacity for communication between man and machine to the good of the individual, distinguishes our species from other life forms.
Source: https://www.spektrum.de/news/wie-digitale-transparenz-die-welt-veraendert/1347106