Political systems are failing to catch up

SO YOU'VE decided to enrol in a PhD programme in computer science in 2020. Consider the following: By the time you submit your doctoral dissertation in, say, 2025 and publish it in 2030, much of what you have written would probably feel out-of-date, if not archaic, in light of the astounding developments in computer technology in the last 30 years.

In a way, it would not be an exaggeration to suggest that our current political systems - the ideas that underlie them, the men and women who lead them, and the legal and bureaucratic structures they administer - reside in social, economic and technological realities that have been transformed and will continue to be revolutionised in the lifetime of our average politician.

Indeed, the continuing failure of contemporary political systems to respond to the sea changes in the way we live, work, and play explains in part why we have witnessed so much political unrest in the last decade - not only in Western countries, but also elsewhere in the world; why citizens in the United States, France, Britain, as well as in Lebanon, Chile and Hong Kong, are so angry, if not full of rage.