It was 1999 when David Bowie said with utmost confidence that “The potential of what the Internet is going to do to society, both good and bad, is unimaginable”. Back then, the internet was still at its early stages, yet Bowie’s prediction has proven incredibly accurate despite the skepticism of the time.

Today we are once again caught in the midst of another disruptive transition. As emerging technologies are increasingly dictating our day-to-day and shaping our future, we are becoming more and more aware of the implications this transition entails. We have reached a point where we need to begin considering, as a society, which is the best way forward. 

And it should come as no surprise that this is happening now. We have shifted from machines executing our instructions to smart devices predicting our life events and shaping our social and geopolitical development. The level of sophistication and complexity that we are witnessing in today’s innovation is leading us to think what type of guardrails we should be implementing to prevent - or eventually overcome- a techlash. 

But the most significant question that we need to address is what type of society we want to evolve into and how we should unlock that desired evolution. As Trudeau mentioned during the 2018 Davos, we are at a time where “The pace of change has never been this fast, yet it will never be this slow again” and we have to seize the moment and reach consensus on the right balance between what we want to do and our way of thinking and the values we will commit to. 

Digital ethics has never been so critical. Over the recent years, we have seen, more than ever, increasingly urgent calls for the development of ethical norms, frameworks, and structures. 

It is therefore apparent that the profound changes affecting our well-being and reshaping our society as a result of new tech need to be addressed. 

Never before in history have we been so deeply conscious that the benefits of technologies must be just and fairly distributed, without jeopardizing our rights and freedoms. These need to be thoroughly addressed at the early stages of the tech creation, before a product or service is delivered to the market

And so our challenge today as a society is to understand what the benefits sought by individuals are as well as the fairest way to deliver them. We need to conceive products and services that, by design, cannot be used in an unethical way and that enable people to be responsible users, and to commit to the values that are important for them.

Understanding the underlying causes of the ethical challenges brought about by new tech is a very complex task. It requires, and will continue to do so, our full attention, expertise and preparation. Waiting to see how new tech evolves and, only then addressing its consequences, won’t be enough. We need to start now to proactively recognize how this will transform and reorder our society.