Technological progress brings far-reaching benefits, but it also poses increasingly serious threats to humankind. With governments and citizens already struggling with the consequences of recent innovations – from job displacement to security risks – technology policy is likely to take center stage in the coming decade.
While Boris Johnson, the likely successor to British Prime Minister Theresa May, takes his country down a path of diminished trade, the European Union is negotiating one of the largest free-trade agreements in the world. One really has to wonder what the "buccaneering" Brexiteers have to complain about.
For months, the world looked on as Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan attempted to reverse the outcome of the city's municipal election. But now that Erdoğan's party has been defeated once again (and massively so this time around), his fundamental weakness has been exposed – as has that of populist authoritarians everywhere.
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STANFORD – What do the leaks of unflattering email from the Democratic National Committee’s hacked servers during the 2016 US presidential election campaign and the deafening hour-long emergency-warning siren in Dallas, Texas, have in common? It’s the same thing that links the North Korean nuclear threat and terrorist attacks in Europe and the United States: all represent the downsides of tremendously beneficial technologies – risks that increasingly demand a robust policy response.
The growing contentiousness of technology is exemplified in debates over so-called net neutrality and disputes between Apple and the FBI over unlocking suspected terrorists’ iPhones. This is hardly surprising: as technology has become increasingly consequential – affecting everything from our security (nuclear weapons and cyberwar) to our jobs (labor-market disruptions from advanced software and robotics) – its impact has been good, bad, and potentially ugly.
First, the good. Technology has eliminated diseases like smallpox and has all but eradicated other, like polio; enabled space exploration; sped up transportation; and opened new vistas of opportunity for finance, entertainment, and much else. Cellular telephony alone has freed the vast majority of the world’s population from communication constraints.
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