This year’s Digital Debates echoes the darker undertones of 2020 and the decade ahead of us. Through three big stories that have taken centre stage, the book's nine essays capture the zeitgeist of our times: First, the pandemic has demonstrated that the workplace is inconsequential to the creation of value. Are we also racing towards the threshold where humans themselves become inconsequential to work? Second, for millennia, regime change by an external power was achieved through violent conflict, war, and annexation. Now technology allows regimes to be destabilised with a degree of simplicity. Third, technology no longer “intersects” with politics: technology is politics. The intimate enmeshing of technology and national identity has become the driving force of geopolitics, and the pursuit of technological gains is not restricted to the realm of fabs and factories, but envelops societies and global regimes and systems as well. In a plagued world—in both the literal and figurative sense of the word—where gated globalisation is the consensus and digital fences are visible across jurisdictions, it is crucial that we hold on to the kernel of hope espoused by the defenders of interconnectedness and technology's role.
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Contents
Technology
1. Democratising Technology for the Next Six Billion - Nisha Holla
2. The Next Normal: Building Resilience in the Post-COVID-19 Workspace - Manavi Jain
3. Rethinking Decoupling: Interdependence, Dependence, Independence - Elina Noor
Security
4. Building a New Digitalised World Through Technology Centrism - Cuihong Cai
5. Protecting Enterprise Secrets and Intellectual Property in a Volatile World - Genie Sugene Gan
6. Digital Sovereignty in a Time of Conflict - James A. Lewis
Society
7. Reimagining Work and Welfare for the Indian Economy - Sangeet Jain
8. Envisioning the Digital, Remote-First Workspace - Utkarsh Amitabh
9. Work from Home to Work from Anywhere: The Future of Co-Working Spaces - Arnav Singh Gusain