This week, Network member Deb Roy and Daniel C. Dennett published “Our Transparent Future” on Medium, a piece that argues, “No secret is safe in the digital age. The implications for our institutions are downright Darwinian.”
Roy and Dennett believe that transparency is the single concept that best sums up the massive changes in society brought about by media inundation. With this in mind, they argue:
“The impact on our organizations and institutions will be profound. Governments, armies, churches, universities, banks and companies all evolved to thrive in a relatively murky epistemological environment, in which most knowledge was local, secrets were easily kept, and individuals were, if not blind, myopic. When these organizations suddenly find themselves exposed to daylight, they quickly discover that they can no longer rely on old methods; they must respond to the new transparency or go extinct. Just as a living cell needs an effective membrane to protect its internal machinery from the vicissitudes of the outside world, so human organizations need a protective interface between their internal affairs and the public world, and the old interfaces are losing their effectiveness.”
