This year, 2024, will bring many challenges of one kind or another. Every new year, of course, contains challenges, some which already feature in our awareness, and some which don’t because they tend to emerge from leftfield in due course. The online world, the traditional press, and broadcast media provide plenty of opinion on forthcoming challenges at this time of year, but they tend to highlight things that are already the larger blips on our awareness radar. To start the year off, therefore, the Badger set himself a personal challenge, namely, to decide on the world’s biggest challenge for 2024 and beyond, one that deserves to be a much bigger blip on everyone’s radar.
The following reality provided the backdrop for the Badger’s deliberations:
- Life today is dominated by digital technology, global connectivity, the internet, automation, and an addiction to smartphones whose applications provide immediacy of information, anytime, anyplace, for ~75% of the world’s population.
- Digital evolution continues apace, AI is advancing rapidly and cannot be ignored, international conflict is on the rise, politics is increasingly polarised, and the world order is under considerable strain.
- Unforeseen natural, humanitarian, financial, and economic crises, are an inevitability.
A front runner for the biggest challenge of 2024 and beyond emerged quickly in the Badger’s thoughts, ostensibly because it had already been bubbling in his mind for months. He quickly concluded that this front runner was indeed the world’s biggest challenge. So, what is it? Put simply, it’s to stem the rise of distrust.
Trust is a fundamental component of cooperation, relationships of all kinds, business, service, and interactions between social groups and different cultures. Society is on a slippery slope to failure without it. Unfortunately, research over the last decade or so shows that our levels of distrust have been progressively rising. Distrust in politicians, governments, corporates, and their leaders continues to rise. Similarly, distrust of the internet and social media continues to grow as we all become more aware of data breaches, fake and weaponised news, misinformation, disinformation, online safety, security and privacy issues, swindles, and cyber-crime. AI seems unlikely to change the trend. The Badger thus feels that stemming the rise of distrust warrants being the world’s greatest challenge if we want a better society for our children and grandchildren.
Addressing this challenge is not easy, but change starts when lots of people make small adjustments to their behaviour. This year the Badger has resolved to stem his rising distrust of ‘pushed’ online content that has become the norm in our 24×7 online world. He’s breaking the mould, taking back control, and engaging with it differently and more selectively in 2024. New Year resolutions, of course, have a habit of falling by the wayside. It’s early days, but so far so good…
