To the 2004 and back (week 4)

 In 2004 Pekka Himanen, a Finnish researcher and philosopher, presented a report called "Challenges of the global information society" to the Finnish Parliament's Committee for the Future. 

His report listed the challenges that Finland with its current model of welfare state could face in terms of the development of global information society. Himanen attempted to describe what the future may look like by identifying 10 major trends that were already in strong progress. By using those trends he then tried  to model development scenarios and came up with 3 quite different dynamic models: the "Silicon Valley model", the "Singapore model" and the "Finnish model". 

The Silicon Valley model comes with high societal price of leaving the weak and vulnerable behind to progress further. That creates a class division, where people at the bottom don't have as many opportunities as people at the top and that leads to even further gap in the next generations. Today, in 2021, we can see the massive amount of problems that US faces daily due to that model of development.

The Singapore model is based on creating tax havens and thus attracting foreign companies to the region. It comes with a hefty price of the countries' economy being pretty much pumped and dumped when those companies decide to move somewhere else with even cheaper taxation. A big problem of Singapore model is that the country tries to control its citizens as well which negatively affects the creative aspect of the society. Today we can see the taxation aspect of Singapore model being used in India and neighbouring countries to attract tech giants like Apple and Nvidia, and the controlling aspect of the Great Chinese Firewall. 

The European model has its own dangers if people will protect industrial era structures without any kind of reforms. This passivity can lead to further cutbacks in welfare and economy becomes less dynamic. However, if the policy of this model can be moved to proactive and the model can be reformed through innovation, then it is possible to combine welfare and information society. Today, we can see it for example in Finland and Estonia. 

The author then enlists values that could serve as basis for such reform, namely confidence, freedom, creativity, visionariness, balance.  Key concepts for social development according to Himanen are creative economy, creative welfare society, humanly meaningful development and global culture.

In my opinion, the three models, that the author came up with, are quite close to reality and 17 years later it is easy to notice all the major flaws that have manifested themselves over the years. The current global pandemic even became some sort of catalyst that further accelerated identification and resurfacing of a lot of societal problems and disparities. Hopefully, 17 years from now we will live in a better and happier world.