For Progress, There Is No Cure
In 1955, two years before he passed away from cancer at the untimely age of 54, Hungarian and American mathematician, physicist, computer scientist and engineer John von Neumann was asked to write an article in Fortune magazine, looking 25 years into the future, towards the year 1980. He wrote a fantastic essay titled: "Can We Survive Technology."
It is one of the essays that I re-read repeatedly. Brilliantly written, a combination of intelligence, insight and humor that was the very essence of John von Neumann.
It was a message of hope and realism, but also one of caution and reflection.
In that piece, about 70 years ago, he wrote “The technology that is now developing and that will dominate the next decades seems to be in total conflict with traditional and, in the main, momentarily still valid, geographical and political units and concepts. This is the maturing crisis of technology .”
It's not difficult to see parallels with today's situation.
We have witnessed over the last two centuries the decline of the power of nation states, and the shift from countries and militaries towards the enterprises and corporations that thrive in the world of global capitalism.
In this century, we have experienced the era of Big Tech, where global enterprises fueled by the rise of network effects and information asymmetry, have ballooned into powerful global concepts. They have grown more powerful and wealthy than anything in the history of human economics. This will truly be the 'maturing crisis' we will have to grapple with in this century, as von Neuman pointed out.
John von Neuman concludes the essay by writing that "The technological system retains enormous vitality, probably more than ever before, and the counsel of restraint is unlikely to be heeded."
That is just an extremely fancy way of saying that you can't and shouldn't stop technological evolution.
At the very end of the piece, von Neumann also delivers an almost poetic statement, which has become my personal mantra:
"For progress, there is no cure."
It perfectly encapsulates the idea that technological development is an unstoppable force, driven by human nature, curiosity and ambition. It cannot be contained, even as it brings both tremendous benefits and significant risks.
Instead, we should steer progress to serve humanity’s best interests in the Never Normal. That's exactly what I wanted to convey in my book "The Uncertainty Principle".