Only sustained human intervention can effectively mitigate challenges to daily human life
In the fast pace of modern life, it’s hard to ignore advertising that plays on our sense of deficiency, fostering a culture of inadequacy among individuals and organisations. This, in turn, drives consumerism and leaves society feeling trapped, believing that they’re never good enough, that human social interaction can be replaced and worse, that these replacements might be better than genuine human connections.
Even in digital democracies, there’s a trend towards technology vendors offering solutions that promise streamlined governance tailored to specific needs. The central question that the governance ecosystem must consider is whether technology alone can truly replace human and societal connections in governance.
The ongoing upgrading of technological solutions, promoted as governance remedies — do they really address genuine needs, or do they simply contribute to a culture of inadequacy, often encouraged by the sellers of these digital solutions?
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Even if the trade-off between humans and technology seems financially viable in non-governmental ecosystems, the same trade-off in the context of last-mile public service delivery requires deeper scrutiny.
Observation, regulation, dissemination and solution are four key aspects of democratic governance. In democratic governance, the legislature, judiciary, executive and broader civil society have traditionally worked together to observe, regulate and disseminate information about issues that threaten social cohesion.
Their aim is to limit social impoverishment and reduce various forms of exclusion to ensure that capability deprivation in society is minimised. Ultimately, this collaborative effort aims to offer solutions to the ever-evolving challenges faced by society.
Analysing digitisation through the lens of governance and last-mile service delivery reveals a troubling pattern of over-dependence on technology. This reliance often exceeds its intended role as a facilitator and observer, with unrealistic expectations for it to single-handedly resolve human issues.
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Unfortunately, these technological interventions frequently overlook the critical element of human-society interaction. As a result, many last-mile service delivery initiatives and broader digital governance efforts fall short due to a lack of genuine human engagement.
To illustrate, prolonged extreme climatic conditions, natural resource contamination and the proliferation of e-waste pose significant challenges to daily human life. These challenges manifest in various ways, such as increased heatwaves, crop damage, contaminated and depleting water tables and microplastics entering our food chain, thus harming natural ecosystems.
While digitisation can help monitor these changes, only sustained human intervention can effectively mitigate these challenges. We often see wealthier governments heavily investing in technological solutions within governance frameworks, inadvertently worsening the challenges of the Anthropocene.
While technology can streamline service delivery and governance decision-making processes, a proper analysis of its opportunity cost is often lacking.
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The administrative approach demands immediate solutions; however, long-term policy interventions are often deprioritised. The broader challenges of the Anthropocene for digital democracies are frequently missing from contemporary technology regulation discourse.
For digital democracies, it is imperative to recognise the potential for self-inflicted social impoverishment by overlooking these long-term challenges of the Anthropocene.
Sharique Hassan Manazir is Assistant Professor – Design Thinking for Citizen-Centric Public Policy & Technology Society and Governance
Views expressed are the author’s own and don’t necessarily reflect those of Down To Earth
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