Technology is growing exponentially, while the bureaucracy that regulates it is growing arithmetically in response. As we approach the inflection point what could the ‘bureaucratic singularity’ mean for regulation in shipping?
If you’ve never heard of the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell, it was written in 1949 and is set in a dystopian world of perpetual war, surveillance and public manipulation overseen by a malevolent presence known as Big Brother. The hero of the book works for the Ministry of Truth which is responsible for propaganda and historical revisionism, and erases all traces of news articles embarrassing to Big Brother by sending them down the ‘memory hole’ to be incinerated.
The themes of bureaucratic control, surveillance and persecution of individualism and independent thinking mean that the book and its elements are frequently cited today in discussion of how the technology we have so readily adopted, allows others to watch and control us. So it was breathtakingly ironic that in 2009 it should be that very book which suddenly exposed just how radically different the new realities of ownership and control in the digital age had become.
The Amazon Kindle e-reader was still a comparatively new, but reliable product, so Kindle owners who had bought digital copies of Nineteen Eighty-Four and another Orwell title Animal Farm, were mystified to discover both had suddenly gone missing in the night.
After much consternation and online chatter it rapidly became clear that the same wireless network Amazon used to synchronise books across devices, could also be used to reach into the device and delete the book altogether. Which was precisely what Amazon had done, without reference to the customers who had purchased the titles.
The outrage which followed wasn’t lost on Amazon which rapidly realised it had a PR disaster on its hands. “We are changing our systems so that in the future we will not remove books from customers’ devices in these circumstances,” spokesman Drew Herdner said, but for many it wasn’t so much that they promised not to do it again, it was that it was possible in the first place.
From Wikileaks to Edward Snowden recent years have seen a steady stream of stories demonstrating that most of us aren’t really aware of the bargain—some might characterise it as a Faustian pact—we’re entering into with the companies whose products and platforms we consume. Whether they are monetising our eyeballs or our data, there is a strong movement advocating better understanding amongst consumers about just how these technology companies operate and how the rules of engagement have changed.
Amazon used its digital platform to retrospectively and proactively enforce the legal rights of the copyright-holder, demonstrating how the rules of engagement have changed.
The Amazon incident tends to be cited as an example of a greedy monolithic company using the black art of wireless technology to steal goods back from people who had paid for them in full. But that wasn’t the whole story.
Amazon had undoubtedly gone about things the wrong way, but the motivation for its actions was sound. Herdner explained that the books had been added to the Kindle store by a company that did not have rights to them, using a self-service function. “When we were notified of this by the rights holder, we removed the illegal copies from our systems and from customers’ devices, and refunded customers,” he said.
Far from a thief in the night, Amazon’s systems were actually allowing it to right a legal wrong it had unwittingly allowed to be perpetrated against the rights owner, in this case the estate of George Orwell. The real criminal here was the vendor which had scanned and digitised copies of the titles without authorisation and then offered them for sale on the Kindle platform.
When those books went AWOL it was the first time that an author’s copyright had been enforced by a bookseller in both a retrospective and proactive way. It was a glimpse into the power a corporation had within its own digital ecosystem. It was also a glimpse into the future of regulation which is now coming to fruition.
Post-Snowden there is a lot of pressure from governments and public protection agencies worldwide on the big digital service providers and platforms to help in the fight to keep us all safe. From Facebook using its algorithms to identify potential terrorists on its platform to Twitter proactively closing down accounts which are used to be abusive to others, we are looking to these companies to both police and uphold the law.
It was reported earlier this year that if Facebook was a country it would now be the most populous on earth, so it’s no surprise that we’re expecting it to enter the family of nations by protecting freedoms and enforcing laws the way our democratically elected governments do.
Where those governments may not have looked far enough ahead though is where devolving that responsibility to democratically unaccountable companies will take them. The bureaucracy which surrounds the creation and maintenance of international and national laws is massive, as is the cost of policing and applying those laws, including the apparatus to levy and collect fines.
What none of that bureaucracy has had the power to do in the past is to stop the laws being broken in the first place. But commercial companies can, and they have already started.
In February of this year a drunken member of US Intelligence was showing off his new drone to a friend when he lost control and crash-landed it onto the White House lawn. Unsurprisingly the White House got a bit windy about the fact that an unauthorised flying vehicle—which could easily have had a payload of explosives, chemical or biological material—had managed to turn up literally on the POTUS doorstep and neither the military, security services nor Bruce Willis in a dirty vest had prevented it.
Millennials see the use of products and services as a collaboration rather than a transaction. As drone-manufacturer DJI showed, that opens up a new ownership ecosystem where regulation is instantly enforceable, on land or at sea.
President Obama went on television to call for greater regulation of drones as America conducted a media autopsy and wrung its hands as to how such a thing could be prevented in the future.
Meanwhile the manufacturer of the drone in question had quietly solved the problem. Within a day or so the company, DJI, revealed that it was to put out an update for its drone operating software system. This update would automatically disable drone flights over Washington D.C. and, for good measure, fence off no-fly zones around more than 10,000 airports across the country.
“We are pushing this out a bit earlier to lead in encouraging responsible flight,” said DJI spokesperson Michael Perry. “With the unmanned aerial systems community growing on a daily basis, we feel it is important to provide pilots additional tools to help them fly safely and responsibly.”
Unlike Amazon’s clumsy attempts back in 2009, DJI’s approach is far more evolved. Instead of punishing drone owners by threatening to disable their drones if they don’t download the software patch, DJI is bundling it with some new, desirable features. So you don’t have to download the software patch now, or tomorrow, but if you choose not to you will miss out on even more new, cool features down the road.
For a fledgling (if you’ll excuse the pun) drone industry, in the firing line for closer regulation DJI have taken a sensible step, neutralising potentially damaging PR and demonstrating a responsibility and civic-mindedness that won’t do them any harm at all. But what we’re witnessing here is just the tip of the iceberg and it could cause a seismic shift in the way shipping, maritime and every other blue industry is regulated.
The pace of technology development and implementation is relentless in maritime and IMO is already showing signs of fatigue. But don’t assume that this is an IMO problem; this is a global problem for regulators of all colours.
So what will the impact of the approaching bureaucratic singularity be on maritime? Already several mega-trends are converging to profoundly affect how maritime might be regulated in the future, shifting power, responsibility and opportunity from regulator to platform, service provider and manufacturer.
Most regulators are required to fully examine any areas slated for new legislation, take soundings from industry and other stakeholders and model the impact of new regulations carefully before actually enacting anything. But with the technology that drives the world accelerating in some cases exponentially, the efficacy of this model is failing.
Quite simply, things are now moving so quickly that regulation is rapidly approaching the point where it can no longer do its job—and this point is being referred to as the Bureaucratic Singularity.
“The complexity and ubiquity of technology (and our capacity to hack it) is growing exponentially, while bureaucracy grows arithmetically in response,” explains technology pundit Mark Michael Lewis. “In the relationship between these two curves, there reaches a point where technology outpaces bureaucracy. I believe we are at the inflection point in that relationship—we are in the beginnings of The Bureaucratic Singularity.”
So what will the impact of the approaching bureaucratic singularity be on maritime? Already several mega-trends are converging to profoundly affect how maritime might be regulated in the future, shifting power, responsibility and opportunity from regulator to platform, service provider and manufacturer.
Connectivity, autonomy and access over ownership models are changing things. Increasingly systems onboard ships are highly integrated and sophisticated to the point where those onboard aren’t really qualified to maintain them.
But as connectivity allows manufacturers to monitor, tune and intervene where necessary—remotely and independently—it makes far more sense for both ship operator and supplier if maintenance comes as part of the package. It’s mirroring a wider trend for the Millennial and Gen Z’ers, a philosophical desire for access over ownership and a willingness to see the use of products and services as a collaboration rather than a transaction.
For maritime suppliers, moving from a one-off transaction to a service partnership with recurring revenue which allows them to embed deeper customer relationships, is an opportunity. For ship operators there is the chance to eliminate heavy capex and ensure their systems are always running the most up to date software allowing them to operate at maximum efficiency. Over time, and probably less time than we anticipate, the extent to which an asset is really owned will become questionable. We won’t so much be talking about owners, as about an ecosystem in which the owner is just one part.
It is this new ownership ecosystem, and it’s imminent massive expansion, that may hold the key to how we regulate and enforce in the future. With the internet of things and industrial internet poised to throw billions more physical connected devices online, the ability to effect mass, real-time regulation via the ownership ecosystem will arrive.
If your national laws require you to wear a seatbelt, a software patch from your car manufacturer may prevent the vehicle from starting unless it verified you’re wearing one. As part of national infrastructure management, government may decide to mandate thermostat settings or water usage during a drought, which would be instantly enforceable via a home energy platform like Nest or Hive.
The required software patch from the appropriate manufacturer will simply prevent the vessel from operating in certain zones unless its emissions are appropriate. Regulation and compliance will be immediate and universal.
For the blue industries the potential of this kind of real-time regulation via prevention holds totally new possibilities. With severe environmental issues facing our oceans sulfur emissions have been identified as a threat which requires regulation. But despite IMO bringing in mandates, not everyone follows them. In fact the problem is so acute that a group of operators has formed the Trident Alliance. According to its members, which include Maersk, Stena, Spliethoff and Hamburger SÜd, the threat of weak enforcement of sulphur regulations is escalating fast and the Trident Alliance represents responsible industry taking the initiative to mitigate the threat, on behalf of a healthy environment and a level playing field for operators. It claims that in Europe only one in every 1,000 vessels is tested and of those 50 per cent are found to be in violation.
But in a new ownership ecosystem where connectivity allows us ‘perfect knowledge’ of who’s where on the ocean, and a ship’s engines and systems are maintained by several large manufacturers, whose sensors are streaming operational data in real-time, compliance is instant. The required software patch from the appropriate manufacturer will simply prevent the vessel from operating in certain zones unless its emissions are appropriate. Regulation and compliance will be immediate and universal.
In the new culture of collaborative regulation our responsibilities are no longer to a regulator like IMO, but to each other, in real-time.
Of course there will always be operators who choose not to download the software patch, and who will try and circumvent the rules, but the ownership ecosystem doesn’t just include operator and ship’s suppliers, it also includes a variety of stakeholders who will be able to see the data coming off the ship in order to monitor its own interests.
From financial institutions checking that the ship isn’t breaking any sanctions areas or carrying cargo it shouldn’t, to insurers checking that the vessel is being operated in compliance, to flag, class and port state control, the ecosystem around the vessel will grow so integrated that it will end up being far more trouble to try and evade it than to get on with things. In short, if you want the money to buy a vessel and an insurer to cover it, you won’t have much choice but to make sure you’re being regulated and complying in real-time.
This model could see the costs involved in monitoring compliance and bringing transgressors to book, fall significantly. Which raises another question. If that’s the case, then shouldn’t IMO be looking at driving the uptake of just this kind of technology? With shipping a huge part of the blue economy what wider benefits could a model which accelerated regulation and compliance have?
But sharp-eyed readers will also have identified another issue here. The manufacturer in the ecosystem may act as a proxy regulator, ensuring compliance with existing mandates, but there’s nothing to stop it going far further. Like DJI and its drone software patch, maritime suppliers could take the public temperature on an issue and decide to get ahead of the legislation.
If a major marine accident caused environmental damage the owner ecosystem and its stakeholders may decide not to wait ten years for new regulations from IMO, but update its systems to prevent a recurrence. And perhaps of more concern, if the industry believes the regulation is a bad one, the ownership ecosystem may well choose not to comply.
There’s a saying amongst futurists which reminds us that the future isn’t somewhere we go, it’s something we create. The mega-trends underlying these scenarios are already there, but how maritime decides to capitalise on them is still very much up to us.
Regulation is about to be disrupted by the digital age in shipping and everywhere else, and we should be alert to the dangers of that. IMO, for all its faults, has been a constant for shipping for a long time and for many the idea that regulation and enforcement should devolve to suppliers, and owners and be guided not just by industry experts but by public expectation—essentially the crowd—is scary. But in many respects it’s not revolution but evolution.
Regulation has always been characterised by red tape, and so far digital has only really changed that from tape to cable. But we are already seeing the birth of what promises to be a new culture of collaborative regulation where our responsibilities are not to a regulator, but to each other.
The opportunities for maritime are there, if we can find the courage to cut the cord.
Images credit © IMO/Penguin Australia/Amazon/Getty Images
This article appeared in the April 2015 issue of Futurenautics
