Throughout history, every time technological advancement has enabled a minority to gain substantial advantages over others not in a position to utilise the latest technology, the power gap between the few and the many has greatly widened.
Control over metallic weaponry and large-scale construction techniques meant that ancient rulers could command vast numbers of people to endure hard labour to erect pyramids and structures such as the Great Wall of China. The Industrial Revolution led to unprecedented levels of mass production and transportation, and business leaders could place countless workers like cogs in a machine to deliver wealth that will accrue predominantly to themselves.
The latest IT-driven transformation is also opening new ways to differentiate the have-tech and have-not. On one side of the divide, there are intelligent machines that can carry out many tasks at higher speed and with greater reliability than humans; communication devices that facilitate instant and complex interactions with those devices over vast distance; and bionic enhancement that can give enhanced durability and capability to the human frame. Put these together at the disposal of the small minority who can afford them all, we have neo-humans who can order tasks to be implemented all over the world at the blink of a networked eye.
On the other side of the divide are the people left behind, displaced by machines that do the work they previously did, unable to acquire the latest generation of multi-functional devices, and lacking the many features that give neo-humans incomparably healthier, stronger, and longer lives. In the not too distant future, these will be deemed ‘sub-humans’.
Is this inevitable? Ancient rulers of large empires once considered themselves representatives of gods, or even fully divine. But political movements emerged to confront them and succeeded in securing a wider dispersal of power. Emperors and kings who did as they pleased gave way to constitutional monarchs and elected governments that must concede to democratic constraints. Business magnates too were eventually caught up by political challenges. Ownership of shipping, railway, factories, shops might have given them hegemony over the people for almost a century, but the rise of social democracy resulted in the power and resources of many countries being shared out more equitably and effectively among all its citizens.
Unfortunately, if laissez faire were allowed to prevail, those with inherited wealth and a strong corporate powerbase would accelerate their ascendancy as neo-humans. They would take control of more natural resources (air, energy, water, land) and technological aids that would render other people wholly dispensable. Pushed to the margins with virtually no power to obtain food, shelter, or any basic ingredients of life, the majority of the world would be relegated to the status of sub-humans – neglected, despised, and left to die.
The only way out is for renewed political resistance to challenge this insidious growth of power inequalities, set up collective arrangements to ensure that life-enhancing technology is made available for the wellbeing of all, and halt any form of neo-human development feeding into the takeover of land and resources for a few to the exclusion of everyone else. It is no exaggeration to state that our future depends on it.
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For a depiction of a dystopian world divided between neo-humans and sub-humans, check out the novel, The Hunting of the Gods: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Hunting-Gods-Henry-Tam-ebook/dp/B01FKF212O/
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