have resources: talents, skills, knowledge, energy
and entrepreneurial drive to invest in an inclusive
‘contribution society’.
The contracts that emerged (or were created) to
suit the conditions for the 19th and beginning of
the 20th century were mostly outcomes from 1st
and 2nd industrial revolutions, with a focus on as-
pects such as taxation, industry, labor regulation,
literacy, education, and bureaucracies. It’s also
the era of the great public works creating infra-
structure for the whole society: think of drinking
water, sewage systems, electricity, rail systems,
and highways.
After World War II they still worked relatively well,
but society and technology developed further: the
welfare state was being developed and society
entered a new era. An enormous growth in social
democracy, emancipation, participation, edu-
cation which also led to more individualization.
This phase brought us the teenager as rebel,
make love no war, greed is good, the cult of the
individual, and more recently: the revenge of the
nerds, identity politics, and fake news. Many of
these developments took place to a large degree
outside of the governmental context, and many
of these institutions no longer fit our time (think
about the downturn of trade unions, churches,
housing organizations). It ends with the absolute
marker of the end of ideology – the fall of the Ber-
lin Wall in 1989. Was this the ‘end of history’, as
Francis Fukuyama famously proclaimed? Clearly
not. But it did signal the neo-liberal market driven
capitalist ideology memes much to the forefront
of attention as ‘winners’ of the contest. And
together with the triumph of technology – espe-
cially Information and communication technology
28 HF |
April 2019
– it set the scene for public values of today.
When we take a closer look into the question why
the social contracts were revisited, we notice
that a new social contract was often preceded by
wave of innovation (see the chart below where in-
novation is measured by an increase of the num-
ber of breakthrough patents). And, looking back,
we notice that those waves of innovation created
also, after some time, societal disruption, lead to
societal reorganization and forced rethinking of
the existing social contracts and the core values
they were based upon. The path from break-
through innovation to widespread use of product
by society can be a long ride. Nikola Tesla invent-
ed the electro-magnetic motor in 1888, but only
the recent development of better batteries made
practical production of hybrid and electric cars
viable – partly because it looked like requiring us
to change the society and the economy.
moment, dissemination could take place in a de-
cade. With the Internet: dissemination is possible
in a few weeks or months. Today, memes dissem-
inate in an instant. The ‘instant’ has become a
new measure of time.
We are in a period of transition and adoption. So
based on the recent third wave of breakthrough
innovation patents, the spurs of disruption, the
shifting public values (think about the ‘Black
Piet’ discussion in the Netherlands) (14), and the
unrest in the society (think also about the ‘gilets
jaunes’ in France and the sharpening political
division in the USA), we believe this supports the
need for a new societal contract.
For our knowledge society, the communication
We believe we are moving into to the next phase.
Information technology speeds up further individ-
ualization and gives way to a total different worl-
dview. The difference with the previous industrial
technology is a relevant example. How fast do
new ideas and new notions spread? In pre-Guten-
berg times: dissemination of knowledge could
take a lifetime. After the original Gutenberg
revolutions is that those have been contextual-
ized within a hierarchical way of looking at the
world, today we move very quickly into a network,
or circular, society with completely new demands
and possibilities.(15) Like previous transitions,
parts of the existing societal contracts need an
update, some need an overhaul, but many are
obsolete and need to be completely re-imagined.
It’s the Anthropocene – will
silicon and superintelligence
save us?
Watershed events were not the only shapers
of societal contracts. New (and fundamental)
thinking about what actually constitutes growth,
development of how we can organize our soci-
ety and a new holistic approach to development
means that we have an opportunity to develop
something new.
Let us consider a few of the mega-changes that
are ongoing; not only third wave in patents or the
fourth industrial revolution(17), broadening the
scope to try to see some of the effects of the
on-going development of industry and technol-
ogy, and also society, ecology and even humans
(transhumance, technological enhancement,
superintelligence).
We are moving into a completely new epoch –
the Anthropocene (18), the era where mankind
13 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Revolution
14 https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/nov/14/black-pete-scandal-dutch-silent-sinterklaas
15 See for example Josephine Green in Brave New Interfaces- individual, social and economic impact of the next genera-
tio ninterfaces (Jan Cornelis and Marleen Wynants eds), 2007. See also https://www.kateraworth.com/doughnut/ (2018-
08-13)
16 Figure SEQ Figure \* ARABIC 1, see Kelly; B., D. Papap Nikolaou, A. Seru en M. Taddy (2018) Measuring Technological
HF | Human Futures 29