Uddannelses- og Forskningsudvalget 2014-15 (1. samling)
FIV Alm.del Bilag 97
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Lene Andersen & Steen Rasmussen, November 2014.
A  summary  of  the  emerging  BINC  transition  
Social media, mobile apps, internet services, and many more digital phenomena have changed our
everyday lives in less than a decade. In fact, most of us use technologies on a daily basis that were
wild and crazy science fiction some 45 years ago when computer science first became mainstream
at Western universities. However, for most citizens and policymakers, the impact of the still
exponentially growing information and communication technologies (ICT) is only starting to
become apparent.
Today, a convergence between the bio-, info-, nano- and cogno- (BINC) technologies provides
the living and intelligent technologies of tomorrow. All developed countries participate in the
development of the BINC technologies and they are about to take off like ICT did a little more than
a generation ago, in fact fueled by ICT.
The problem is that democracy, politics, rule of law, human rights, the modern nation state, the
market economy, capitalism, the banking system, and the creation of money as we know them are
all products of the industrial age and its technologies. As individuals we have learned to navigate
the industrial economy and as societies we can somewhat control and define it with politics and
legislation. But nobody has a clue what the global economy is going to look like in the post-
industrial age of the BINC-technologies.
The industrial economy grew out of austerity and a need for more of everything; more was
simply better. Increased productivity was wonderful because it meant fewer hard jobs, more fun and
interesting jobs and shorter work hours, longer vacations and cheaper goods.
The BINC economy grows out of a situation where, in the richest parts of the world, more is not
better. We are already sick from over-eating. Increased productivity may lead to cheaper goods but
fewer needs more, instead we turn the Earth’s resources into trash faster and we must consume in
order to stay employed.
The world of the BINC technologies will be a world of plenty. Some 2-5% of the population
will be able to develop, produce and distribute what everybody needs. It will be a world where
everybody could have their own personal fabricator, just like we have personal computers and
printers at home today. We would be able to design or download the code for goods we need and
fabricate almost anything at home. As these goods could have life-like properties, most can be
recycled; technology will become like biology and part of the natural cycles in nature.
There are many reasons to believe that the BINC technology convergence will have as drastic
consequences as, say, the emergence of the industrial economy from an agricultural society or the
societal transition from the Bronze age to the Iron age. In the matrix next page you find a simplified
map of the cultural consequences of new technologies throughout history.
Within and between the nations we see indicators of this current transition. Among them are the
emerging citizen privacy issues due to abuse of big data, challenges concerning secure and
sustainable energy systems, increasing international taxation issues regarding corporations, a
rapidly growing and mainly speculative financial market, increasing costs for welfare and human
health, and a radically transforming job market mainly due to automation and digitization. The latter
concerns not only blue-collar jobs, but also white-collar jobs. As the matrix below shows, we
suspect it is necessary to prepare for a multifaceted transition.
What can we do in Denmark to mitigate this situation?
 
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Lene Andersen & Steen Rasmussen, November 2014.
Below we have summarized and grouped 19 critical issues associated with the current technology
driven transition:
1. Digital products and services represent an increasing part of the value creation.
2. Only the first digital unit requires capital and creates jobs, the following copies are
practically free to produce, which means profit without production. Without production
there will be no need for employees.
3. Digital products have no transportation costs, so the best product wins globally: There is no
market for the second best; winner takes all.
4. The digital economy (e.g. automation) removes more jobs than it creates. Increased global
demand on highly skilled individuals, while competition for the still fewer available low-
grade jobs does not raise wages but only working hours and employment insecurity.
5. There is greater return on investment in speculation than in production; you become
wealthier from being rich than from working.
6. Information, humans and money can travel freely across national borders. The world is
increasingly changing from some 200 national economies to one global economy for which
there is no common rule of law, nor macro-economic models or theories. On the individual
level, everybody participates in one global job market.
7. Businesses move to places where they don’t need to pay taxes. Nation states compete among
each other to provide the lowest taxes; it is everybody’s race to the bottom.
8. The national economies are becoming communicating vessels regarding prices, wages and
workers’ rights.
 
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Lene Andersen & Steen Rasmussen, November 2014.
9. The middle class can no longer provide the tax revenue needed to secure good nation state
governance.
10. Economic elites are taking over the political power and democracy is deteriorating.
Economic and hence political power gets concentrated on still fewer hands.
Points 1-10 mean that the nation state is losing its importance for the economy, while the middle
class is getting poorer and the rich are getting wealthier and gain more political power.
11. Big business and governments use the digital infrastructure to access private data from the
citizens, which means loss of freedom and power of the citizens.
12. Local consumption generates global warming, e.g. Danish consumption creates CO
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production in China. There is only one environment.
13. There are no global institutions or other structures in place that can handle this
transformation. There is increasingly only one economy.
14. The converging bio-, info-, nano- and cogno- (BINC) technologies transform the world faster
than ever before into something we have difficulties imagining, as the pace of new
inventions increases exponentially.
15. The global population continues to grow until it approaches 9 billion around 2050.
Points 11-15 mean that we are increasingly globally interdependent.
16. It becomes increasingly challenging to align radically different economic, cultural and
governance structures and get them to match, cooperate and embrace each other, e.g.
traditional Arabic, industrial Russian and digitized Scandinavian.
17. The political spectrum of left and right used to be about capital interests, now it is about
emotions. Left and Right emerged from the industrial society and the struggle for power
between workers and capital. Today, in the West, from left to right there is consensus about
the open society, liberal democracy, market economy, and some measure of public welfare;
there may be disagreements about, for instance, specific levels of taxation or social benefits
but overall, there is systemic agreement about the model. As a result, voters are uniting
along completely different lines; political parties are increasingly attracting members and
voters according to psychological and emotional composition, and less economic interests.
18. Our grand narratives about reality, which used to keep societies together, i.e. religion, nation
and class, are being undermined by postmodern deconstruction, globalization and the above-
mentioned erosion of the left-right political spectrum. As they lose their explanatory power
they are re-discovered in totalitarian form.
19.
The only grand narrative that has survived is “the free market”, which provides consumer
goods efficiently, but which is incapable of solving the above problems.
Points 16-19 mean that the technological development has out-maneuvered politics while
increasingly determining the workings of the economy and society both nationally and globally.
To preserve human dignity, Human Rights, democracy, sustainable economies, and social calm the
above issues should be immediately taken to the forefront of Danish politics. We see multiple
possible solutions to the above problems - some of them very attractive - but the actual solutions
should be developed through an open democratic discourse, lead by Folketinget.
Lene Rachel Andersen
Economist & philosopher
Steen Rasmussen
Professor in physics, University of Southern Denmark
External research professor, Santa Fe Institute, USA
 
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