White Mirror - Digital Ambitions

In the "White Mirror" series I talk about positive ideas for using digital technologies in a way that can improve our lives. The title is a reaction to the popular "Black Mirror" series of often dystopic visions of our digital future. While highlighting potential dangers is important, shining a light on the positive potential of digital technologies seems to me at least as important.

Many cultures have adopted the concept of writing down a wish and tying it to a "wishing tree". Others write down a wish and put in on a float or burn the paper. In any case, putting the wish to paper helps to clearly formulate a concrete wish and hopefully contributes to that distant desire materializing over the course of the coming year. So, with this issue of the White Mirror series I'm formulating my wish for the new year.

The issue

Technologies come with their own perils but more importantly with their own promises. We need a motivation to invest time, brain power, money and other resources into technological progress. A huge part of that motivation lies in the promises that are tied to those technologies. From making our lives more agreeable, alleviating safety concerns or pressure, increasing possibilities and efficiency: technologies hold different promises for different people, depending on their role in the aspect of life a technology impacts.

Digital technologies hold a special place as they by now touch every aspect of our lives - be it professional or personal - and are linked to immense promises, see the hype train regarding AI. And while many of those have certainly materialized - some of them measurable, some of them only experiential - we are confronted on a daily basis with the sad realization that we have not fulfilled the digital transformation. Too many organizations are stuck in the industrial age, even when adopting digital tools at scale or digitizing processes. But hearts and minds of those in charge, be it in politics or business, don't tick digitally.

People still think in forms like back in the day when IBM was selling machines for working with punched paper. We have tools at our fingertips that previous generations could only dream-up in science-fiction novels but only use a fraction of their potential, like monkeys given a professional toolbox put using every tool as a hammer. We lament a lack of talent but fail to shift our educational and professional paths for talented and interested digital talents. We punish digital curiousity by referencing outdated rules, no one dared touch and rethink since they've been established. We fail to debate transformation, correctly assuming that this debate comes with tough choices and at least in the short-term potentially negative outcomes for some. But we should also consider, what costs are linked to our ongoing failure to transition to a digital age, rethinking everything from public institutions, pension schemes, business models etc. Put more bluntly, we are stuck at a limbo state between the old world and the truly digital future.

The solution

Early internet gospel like the Hacker Manifesto or the Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace might seem strange today but some of the spirit contained in those documents still holds important clues for our digital future. And while the tone of those documents is somewhat aggressive, I'll try to formulate a more positive vision. Guided by the spirit of early "cyberidealism" I'd formulate three areas of concern: First, our ability to use digital tools properly. Second, our ability to create agile institutions. And third, our understanding of talent in the digital age.

First, we need to reconsider if we are actually using digital tools to their full potential. This usually means rethinking the process and also thinking about the problem at hand from a new perspective. Why are we using Excel spreadsheets to rebuild forms instead of designing a data model and use software with that data model? Digital tools give us a new opportunity to think about a problem and the data related to that problem. Want to create a digital health ecosystem? First, think of a datamodel that captures the relevant aspects and processes in the health system rather than saying: here is a digital format for the same documents we've used for the last decades.

Second, we need to improve the agility of our institutions. This means seperating the core function of an institution - it's reason for being, the original purpose, which most likely remains - from the way that institution achieves this core function. We will most likely need parliaments and courts in the digital future but they most likely should not operate in the way they do now. Most of our processes and activities for these institutions - be they public or private - were designed in the analogue age and should at least be critically re-evaluated given the digital technologies of today. We need an innovation agency for the public sector and a legal basis to completely renew and rethink how government achieves its core function.

Third, we need to talk about meritocracy and talent in the digital age. Traditional wisdom, especially in apprentice-heavy contexts like German-speaking countries, is that knowledge is passed down from elders to their young apprentices. This is a perfectly reasonable system when the only way of knowledge transfer is through experience. But it is also a system that cements career paths that are built around the idea, that you have to pass through a linear set of experiences. Both aspects are a bad fit for the digital age. With access to knowledge democratized, curiousity becomes the only real limit to learning. It also means that rather than valuing where a person has spent time, we should be looking at what they can actually do and acknowledge - think again of the Hacker manifesto above - that they might know more than we currently do on certain things. As a consequence, we need to be more comfortable with giving people a chance for job positions where they would today be considered a strange choice due to "non-linear CVs". But our goal in hiring and promoting talent shouldn't be to enforce paths that most likely do not make sense anymore - or at least not as much as they used to. Rather, we should strive for an optimal match of capabilities and requirements for a position. And this means, addressing the often lamented talent shortage in all things "cyber" by broadening hiring processes and restructuring how me measure merit.

If we manage to address these three areas of concern - more digital literacy, more agility, more openness - we will have made a big leap closer to fulfilling the promises of digital technologies. That's my wish for 2026. Happy new year!