Notes for a global critical communications plan - Part 1 - The world is heading for certain disaster without a global plan for critical communications

Part 1 of a new blog series that will explain a new economic model based on critical communications and new measures of social value.

In such a short space of time – less than a generation - a global internet and mobile communications have become the basis of modern life. With each passing day, in an ever expanding number of global towns and cities, it becomes harder to imagine what life would be like without the plethora of new tools crafted by a new generation of entrepreneurs in this nascent - increasingly precocious - digital age.

However, just as we appear to be taking total control of the Earth’s abundant resources and developing technologies of a magnitude far superior to anything humanity has ever seen before, we also find ourselves running up against the inexorable limits of the laws of physics. Such limits threaten to stall or halt our progress towards technological Nirvana, as well as undermining the very nature of social and economic systems that have depended on guaranteed levels of growth for the past two centuries:

Regarding silicon-based semi-conductors, Moore’s Law is coming to an end as excessive heat and quantum effects come into play at the nanolevel. The imminent arrival of quantum computing during the 2020s/2030s threatens the flawed security of our global industrial and financial systems soon to depend on cryptocurrencies and the Internet of Things; and we are witnessing unacceptable levels of complexity, uncertainty, volatility and instability within fragile social systems ravaged by war, despair and rampant inequality.

In other words, the most recent advances in our scientific and technological world are now putting into question the future viability of our economic & financial models based on traditional capital accumulation. An economy predominantly based on moving information around the world no longer behaves like an economy predominantly based on moving atoms around the world. As complex algorithms move trillions of dollars around the globe at the speed of light, such phenomena become less and less observable and less and less controllable by humans, leading to the development of more algorithms to control the original algorithms in a death spiral that leads eventually to the algorithms overloading the system that we depend on to transfer values across a modern electronic society. The invisible hand of digital markets suffocates us in its tight grasp.

Without doubt, we have reached a defining moment in our evolution as a species. For several decades now, we have been sleepwalking into the ultimate nightmare scenario as digital, IP-based information technology and communications come together to develop a global consciousness that no longer respects individuals or borders. Our economic models of reality have been tested and critiqued by eminent scholars at regular intervals during the 19th and 20th centuries and corrections have been made following each economic & financial crisis, eventually allowing us to move to the next stage of social & economic evolution. We are now at one of those crossroads where we need to think long and hard about the kind of global society we are constructing, and the way in which we will capture and distribute tokens of value in the digital, post-money age so that everyone on this planet can live a decent, fulfilling life.

It is becoming very, very clear as we read more and more alarming, quasi-apocalyptic news stories about larger and larger cybersecurity breaches that security, privacy and trust must be at the core of the new economic model we identify to take us further into the digital age. Allowing the so-called private sector made up of a small number of visionaries pursuing individual goals of global domination through a form of winner-takes-all economics to shape the future of our planet can only produce one result: a major catastrophe on a planetary scale as capital accumulation in the hands of the few corrupts and decays a global system where nation states are no longer in control.

Public safety is the exclusive domain of a strong state representing and protecting the values and physical, mental and digital integrity of all its citizens. In an increasingly interconnected world we need global institutions to protect global citizens who now have enough information at their fingertips and a sufficient level of education to refuse to accept excessive disparities of income and wealth between or within existing nation states. We can see the limitations of divisive, inhumane national or regional policies on the streets of Athens; the conflict zones of Syria and Iraq; the boats full of refugees in the Mediterranean Sea and the slums of the developing world’s megacities. Massive random fluctuations in currencies and the unfair disconnect between where value is created and where it is captured are signs of a global financial system in turmoil that needs to be re-booted to serve the majority rather than the few.

Over the past 30 years or so, we have allowed the so-called private sector to take control of the global economy to the detriment of the majority of Governments and ordinary citizens, who have become simple bystanders in a global power struggle, seduced by the apparent success and attractiveness of new services and applications, sucked into the propaganda of economic growth and greater prosperity. The economic model of this era based on massive privatisation of social services and creative, reckless finance has now reached its own limits. Only a renewed global consensus calling for national, regional and global institutions to invest a significant proportion of global resources into increased public safety, security, protection and critical national infrastructure based on a more sustainable, alternative economic model that prioritises social value over fanciful financial derivatives might allow us to escape the negative consequences of our irrational exuberance and belief in rigged, biased, socially poisonous markets.

So where does critical communications enter the picture? Quite simply, without a coordinated, coherent global plan for Governments to invest sufficient resources in spectrum, research, technology, applications etc. and without innovative business models and new methods for financing robust, resilient critical communications networks that are globally compatible and resistant to all recognised forms of attacks, we are heading for a series of inevitable disasters of such proportions that are currently unimaginable and unquantifiable because the human race no longer appears to possess sufficient intelligence to quantify the downsides of such a lack of investment in what matters most.

Very, very simply, we need a new global framework for measuring the social and economic value and impact of critical communications solutions, without forgetting that we also need to quantify and add up the enormous social and economic cost of not developing them in time.

To be continued…

Future posts will develop these ideas further looking at spectrum (WRC-15), standards (3GPP SA6 etc.), global coordination of new public safety broadband initiatives, leading finally to a radical new economic model for the digital age based on security, privacy, trust and global cooperation. Peter will also take a close look again at recent developments in the UK regarding the new Emergency Services Network and will call for a rethink by the Government to bring this project in line with what is happening in the rest of the world.