Contemplations on Change
1) Don’t focus on technological change. Focus on social change.
Sure, it’s exciting that we can now crush virtual candy on our smartphones while waiting for the bus and that our fridge is connected to the internet. But our everyday lives are more affected by us not leaving the house anymore when our groceries are ordered and delivered automatically. We move less, we interact less with others and don’t bump into neighbours for a spontaneous chat, and loneliness becomes another deadly pandemic.
In the 60’s, astronauts landed on the moon and we got Nike Airs and pens that can write upside down. However, the Civil Rights Movement turned our norms upside down and changed laws and societies.
2) Don’t focus on fast change. Focus on slow change.
We’re worried about shocks and sudden changes that hit us unprepared. We’ll immediately be highly aware of those changes, though, and we’ll have the chance to compare and to repair. Tectonic shifts, on the other hand, don’t happen over night. They happen over millions of years and they can create continents and oceans. Profound changes play out over time, hardly noticeable and easy to miss until they eventually manifest as those “shock events” that draw everyone’s attention.
3) Be as cautious with “positive” change as you are with “negative” change.
I like to talk about “positive change” myself, because I feel that it’s needed to point out that not every change is positive or qualifies as progress (looking at you, Obama) and that “positive” is sufficiently precise then within my bubble. At the same time, I’m aware that it’s completely subjective what “positive” change is. This makes it not just useless, but almost dangerous to talk about positive change, since it opens the door to manipulation. Few have been tricked by someone promising to make things worse, but horrendous atrocities have been committed in the hope of making things better, making people happier, richer, or preventing “a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie” or to end corruption and “drain the swamp”.
4) Pay attention to second-order effects.
This one has killed companies and governments. If you don’t consider second-order effects of an intervention or a change process, the intervention might not be successful. Even worse, it might backfire and result in the exact opposite of the intended outcome. For example, trying to fix congested highways by adding more lanes will induce demand and bring more more drivers onto the road, eventually only leading to worse traffic jams on bigger highways. Not considering second-order effects is also a huge obstacle to making any changes to our current dysfunctional political and economical systems: We look at one single element and argue that it’s impossible for this element to be any different when everything else is still the same. In reality, it is not that everything else will stay the same despite the different element, but everything else will change because of the different element.
5) Change does not happen on a scale from 0 to 10.
When Covid started, I had a conversation with a friend and when I started talking about radical shifts and a new normal, he just replied — half jokingly, half cynically — that “it’ll probably be more like 9/11, where after a devastating event not much will change and everything goes back to before.” Well, things did actually not go back to before after 9/11. While for most of us, our lives continued after 9/11, the event also brought us global mass surveillance, the “war on terror”, Islamophobia, it changed news reporting and the size of the sunscreen bottle you can bring along on your holiday flight. Saying that “not much has changed” seems to assess the impact of events on a scale from 0 to 10. “10” represents a huge, tangible change, societal collapse style, that’ll force us to live in huts in the forest again. “0” at the other end represents no change, where we’ll basically still go to the same supermarket to buy the same items, paid for by our same, old job. That perspective is useless.
Change always happens as an 11, everything being in constant flux and going beyond our expectations. The perceived level of change is not determined by how “big” the event is, but by how surprising it is. In other words, how visible a change is does not depend on the change, but on the quality of our observations. The question never is “Did anything change?” but the question always is “What exactly has changed?”.
In summary:
1) Don’t focus on technological change. Focus on social change.
2) Don’t focus on fast change. Focus on slow change.
3) Be as cautious with “positive” change as you are with “negative” change.
4) Pay attention to second-order effects.
5) Change does not happen on a scale from 0 to 10.
