Lexpert Magazine

60 LEXPERT MAGAZINE | SEPTEMBER / OCTOBER 2018 TECHNOLOGY | COLUMNS | George Takach is a senior partner at McCarthy Tétrault LLP and the author of Computer Law. Renaissance (perhaps one of the most flourishing moments of the arts ever), the plague hit Italy (and the rest of Western Europe), and killed between 20% and 60% of local populations, depending on local conditions. As recently as 100 years ago more people died in the Spanish flu pandemic between 1918 and 1920 than were killed in the First World War. en there was death by accident. In the days before occupational health laws and fire codes, hundreds of thousands died in industrial and general accidents each year. In the crowded cities, wood was the most common building material, and each major city had at least one "great fire" in its his- tory. ese fires were "great" indeed, oen destroying 50 to 80% of all buildings, and in an age before property insurance losing a home oen meant the homeowner had no way to pay for a re-build. ese earlier civilizations were also rife with war. As soon as one community produced a surplus of food and wealth, a neighbouring community would decide to exploit this by seizing its neighbour's newfound wealth. ousands of technical innovations over the centuries were de- veloped to assist the warriors in this the, and the concept of an "arms race" is not re- stricted to modern times. e ancient spear was bested by the long bow, and that by the cross bow, and that by the musket, then by the rifle, and by the machine gun, and by the missile. TODAY'S INNOVATION CIVILIZATION So, what makes today`s civilization so much better than the past ones? First, technological and scientific breakthroughs have continued apace, and indeed have ac- celerated beyond what anyone would have imagined even 100 years ago. Agriculture is a case in point; as recently as the 1970s, eminent thinkers predicted that as the world's population reached 4 billion to 6 billion people, mass starvation would fol- low because the capacity of farmers would simply not be able to meet the demand for food. But a number of agricultural break- throughs have allowed farmers to produce much more food per hectare, and produc- tivity throughout the food production supply chain — including all-important logistics and delivery — have increased food consumption per person dramatically both in the OECD countries and across the globe (the world's population has since grown to more than 7 billion people). As for disease eradication, again it is a fantastic story, enabled by countless breakthroughs in infectious disease phar- maceuticals and vaccines, and acute care procedures; most people who had a heart attack before the Second World War died from it, while today (if an ambulance gets to them in time) they will generally live. And chronic care therapies produce a much higher quality of life for stroke victims to- day than a century ago. Regrettably, most countries still spend inordinate sums of money on weapons- related innovations and procurement, but the good news is that we have also devel- oped institutional innovations that make the use of these weapons less likely. e two largest nuclear-weapons powers, the United States and Russia, have a "hotline" and talk to each other regularly, all with a view to avoiding the kind of "accidental" war that precipitated the start of the First World War and its attendant loss of life. More intriguing is the impressive exper- iment in cross-national community build- ing exemplified by the European Union. e history of Europe prior to 1945 is one of almost constant war and cross-border conflict. Every conceivable reason why people fight vicious armed conflicts with others has reared its ugly head over several thousand years of "civilization" in Europe. ere were religious wars, wars caused by dynastic succession crises, wars of empire (where colonial interests clashed), and wars caused by "accident," to name just a few rationales. Aer the Second World War, several statesmen concluded there must be a bet- ter way forward, and in 1957 the highly innovative European Union was born with six member states; it now numbers 28 (although the United Kingdom is slated to withdraw soon). Moreover, all the EU countries are also members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), formed in 1949, which defends its mem- ber states in holding that an attack on one member is an attack on all. It is therefore highly unlikely that a war between any two or more member states would occur today. Given that between the time of the Ro- man Empire and 1945 there were literally hundreds of wars in Europe, the creation and growth of the EU and NATO over the past seven decades has been a magnificent innovation in social engineering and inter- national politics. Some critics of our innovation civiliza- tion argue that the information technology revolution of the last 20 years (now charac- terized by artificial intelligence and "big data") has within it the seeds of our demise, particularly because continuing automa- tion will cause massive unemployment and social dislocation. It is to this issue I will turn in the second part of the Innovation Civilization series. THE CREATION and growth of the EU and NATO over the past seven decades has been a magnificent innovation in social engineering and international politics.

• Cover
• Big