Of course you know Carl Sagan the distinguished astronomer and great explainer of science via best selling books and the TV series Cosmos.
One of his last interviews was conducted by Charlie Rose in May 1996. The clip below captures a very important message from this discussion, one I think he really nailed for its relevance to the technological world we live in.
His message was about the full spectrum of science and technology and the fact that we people need to be smart enough to drive the right decisions in society vice abdicating to leaders who themselves are ignorant.
Key points:
“if the general public doesn’t understand science and technology, then who is making all of the decisions about science and technology that are going to determine what kind of future our children live in, some members of congress? There are only a handful who have any background in science at all, and some of them don’t even want to know about it.”
and
“We’ve arranged a society on science and technology in which nobody understands anything about science and technology, and this combustible mixture of ignorance and power sooner or later is going to blow up in our faces. I mean, who is running the science and technology in a democracy if the people don’t know anything about it.”
I believe this is important to revisit and consider on its own merit. However, there are special considerations in light of enterprise technology and digital risk. In large enterprises we are at the point where business leaders know too little about the technology that empowers their organizations. And in government the same is true. Too frequently, the leaders of organizations are too ignorant, but still very powerful. And we the people who must watch over them, as well as the government oversight processes from the executive branch, congress and the courts, are also too frequently too ignorant to really improve things.
The OPM breach, for example, is clearly a situation exactly like the one Carl Sagan described: a combustible mixture of ignorance and power that has blown up in our faces.
But this is a story best told by the great explainer himself. Watch the clip below and at this link and ask yourself, did Carl Sagan nail it or not?
More importantly, I believe the tech community should try to put thought into how we can help inform policy both in our own enterprises and broadly in society. It is not a foregone conclusion that we must always have things blow up in our face. We can structure in ways to reduce risk and improve enterprise functionality and the world overall.
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