Ten Really Scary Digital Hypotheses For 2018

There are a few scary narratives floating around about an increasingly digital, connected world – such as robots taking all our jobs, computers making life-and-death decisions without ethical considerations, and cyber being the new arms race. But they aren’t the only things to worry about. Here are ten less common, but very scary things I can think of to say about ‘digital’. I apologize profusely to anyone I offend (sort of):

1. What if free markets/ capitalism cease to work/ be in any way fair, when a large number of products, services and industries have near zero marginal cost? [I independently had this thought, and am not 100% sure it’s right, but it’s definitely worth thinking about.]
2. What if societies and many industries depended on a measure of ignorance, not knowing and forgetting, but we were nevertheless plunging headlong down a path to expose all knowledge.
3. What if all companies, government organizations, societies, practices, frameworks and management theory was fundamentally designed for 90% stasis, 10% change, but because of the possibilities that digital represents, global connectedness and the increasing fungibility of everything physical and informational, at least the next 20 years will require almost the inverse of that?
4. What if the notion of political and royal elites required a front-of-house to perform publicly, and a back-of-house that nobody could see or question, hence didn’t really make sense anymore in a hyper-transparent word, and that was increasingly obvious to all, but it was too scary to address that fact, even if relatively free, democratic countries?
5. What if the right way to view digital was a complete overhaul of the $100 trillion (PPP-adjusted) global economy and society, but almost everyone was looking it as the next phase of the $4-5 trillion IT+ IoT industry?
6. What if, since the end of World War II, the vast majority of organizations in the developed world have replaced invention, strategy, and entrepreneurship with incremental innovation, planning and management, and become addicted to ‘the way we do things around here’?
7. What if shareholders dominate other stakeholders, require quarterly performance improvements, and measure value conventionally, but experimentation was increasingly important, and increasingly important platform/ ecosystem/ direct and indirect network effects had to be valued and measured differently?
8. What if boardrooms consisted of people who were in the latter stages in their career, biased towards thinking that does not take into account new digital, connected realities, and not very keen on taking risks, especially ones that won’t pay off until after they retire?
9. What if supply-side invention and innovation was really good, but demand-side understanding, invention and innovation (what people need and how people use stuff, digital anthropology) was still really weak, yet increasingly important in a context where the computers enter our world, instead of us entering theirs?
10. What if all the companies set up to advise the world on digital trends and strategies had existing IT leaders and current IT industry companies as their major buyers/ sources of income, and hence had to be a little careful about what they said.

What if I felt all of the above were true, but was slightly concerned for my own position and brand, hence phrased them as what if questions?