Pardon The Disruption - Introduction

I published "Pardon The Disruption" in Novenber 2013. I am now republishing it one chapter at a time on Steem, for free. This is copyrighted material so please do not use any of this material without citing the book properly. Thanks. I will put chapter one up this weekend. Here is the Introduction. Enjoy!

INTRODUCTION

Texas 1973

A stifling August heat rolled through the West Texas courtroom. Every window propped open, desperate for any hint of a late afternoon breeze. That fine Texas dust covering the window sills and drifting onto the polished hardwood floor. The defendant sitting at counsel table in the rumpled brown suit he had borrowed from a cousin, in a failed attempt to look respectable for his all-white jury. The overhead light, sporadically flickering, revealing a broken man who already knew his fate.

Next to him, his court-appointed lawyer glanced nervously at his watch, wondering what could be going on in the jury room. He dabbed at the sweat that had beaded on his forehead. Earlier, during the trial, a young white woman, the victim of a savage rape, had pointed her narrow, dainty finger at his client while horrifying the jurors with the details of her ordeal. Many had now come to see the defendant as subhuman. Defense counsel had called three family members to present his client’s alibi. They all swore the defendant had been home with them on the night of the rape. The prosecution had dismissed their testimony with utmost contempt, painting all three as shameless liars. The jurors were invited to consider them as bad as the rapist himself.

When the buzzer sounded, the bailiff jumped to his feet and stomped to the jury room. His gut falling over his gun belt, nudging the .357 Smith & Wesson strapped in his holster, made him look half a killer and half a clown. The judge, old and tired, was barely visible above the bench, his stooped shoulders hidden beneath a black robe. The bailiff returned from the side hall, jury in tow. Defense counsel could barely contain the butterflies in his gut. From the safety of the jury box, one angry juror, in a flannel shirt, had his stare fixed on the defendant, a stare that burned with pure hatred.

In a barely restrained sneer, the judge bellowed, “Will the defendant please rise.” The defendant could hardly stand, paralyzed by sickening fear. His feet were cinder blocks. “Have you reached a verdict?” questioned the judge. “We have, Your Honor.” He passed the verdict sheet over to the bailiff, who then dutifully handed it to the clerk, who then dutifully brought it over to the judge. All with such dignity and oh-so-civilized.

The judge leveled his gaze on the defendant as he read the verdict. “We the jury find the defendant guilty of rape in the first degree. Does the defendant have anything to say before this court passes sentence?”

“But I didn’t do it, Your Honor! You heard my family. I wasn’t there. I wasn’t there, goddammit! I didn’t do this!”

“Counsel,” growled the judge, “get your client under control! Having failed to show any remorse whatsoever, you are hereby sentenced to life in prison.” The defendant went limp. His attorney placed a hand on his shoulder and quietly murmured, “I’m sorry.” The defendant’s mother let out a screeching wail and burst into uncontrollable, hysterical sobbing. In barely more than a whisper, defense counsel made his last stand. “Your Honor, the defense gives notice of appeal.”

The young man in this story went on to languish in prison for over 25 years. A lot can change in 25 years. DNA evidence became admissible in court rooms in 1986. It took a long time to start sifting through the old cases of graying men who’d spent a quarter century in prison maintaining their innocence. Loved ones moved on, parents died, siblings became involved with families of their own. A man can grow old in prison. Science, however, continues to develop at an exponential rate. In 1998 our defendant, who had been convicted of rape by a West Texas jury, was shown to be factually innocent. Not because of a legal technicality, not because of eyewitness testimony, but because his innocence was established as a scientific fact through DNA analysis. But for science he would still be incarcerated today.

When the first DNA exoneration was taken before the Court of Criminal Appeals in Texas, the court ruled that the factual innocence of the accused would in no way affect the finality of the judgment – that is, they refused to release the defendant. The governor denied a pardon (because he was tough on crime) and the defendant languished in jail an additional year until the legislature passed a law allowing for subsequent DNA exonerations to free innocent men. Could this be any more insane? Ironically, these are the workings of what we term a “justice system.” The above scenario has played out in reality over 300 times nationwide. Men convicted of rape and murder have spent massive amounts of their lives behind bars for crimes they did not commit, only to be freed, eventually, by DNA evidence. Although we’ll never know how many times this has actually occurred, the number grows larger every year through “innocence projects” conducted in all 50 states.

We live in very exciting times. Our world may be on the verge of incredible greatness – or our own destruction. Communication is now instant and global. Technology is advancing at rates never known before throughout all of human history – and it’s accelerating.

Randy and Clay bring two things to this discussion. They have been trial lawyers for over 30 years and share an abiding curiosity about science. They both were assistant District Attorneys for Harris County, Texas for five years. Clay switched to criminal defense for five years, and has pursued personal injury litigation for the past 20 years. Randy has continued with criminal defense up to the present. Litigating on all sides of these social issues gives you a peerless education in human nature, revealing both the degree of heroism and the depth of depravity that the human species is capable of.

Our life’s work allows us little room to engage in fanciful fictions about human nature and people in general. When jury selection starts we have fifteen minutes to connect meaningfully with a room full of strangers. If we don’t, all is lost. Most jurors have their minds made up by the end of the attorney’s opening statement, prior to hearing any evidence at all. Few will change their minds during the course of the trial, absent some dramatic revelation that changes everything. (For the real cases that are described in this book, all client names have been changed to protect their privacy.)

Rob Bencini, MBA, is a Certified Economic Developer (CEcD) and Economic Futurist from Greensboro, North Carolina. He has an extensive background in a variety of industries, non-profit leadership, and local government leadership. His consultancy provides foresight analysis and unique strategic plans for businesses and community transformation processes for communities. He has written strategic plans for economic development, community and economic development plans and economic development policies. Mr. Bencini gives keynote presentations on the impact of current trends on the economy, education, workforce preparedness and local and state governments.

The contention of this book is that exponential advances in technology have had a tremendously disruptive impact on the legal system and the economy – and will have even a greater impact in the future. The book is written in two parts: the first part discusses the past - and projects the future - of the disruptive impact of rapidly advancing technological development on the legal system; the second part, technological advances and the impact on the economy. The two come together in a compelling scenario that encompasses the trends that we see in play today.

This legal section of the book is not meant to explain the current state of the law. Rather, it is an attempt to look at where we’ll be when some nascent technologies reach maturity. In the economy section, we do offer some economic history that sets the table for the types of impacts we will likely see from exponentially advancing technology. We’re not claiming to have all the answers, but common sense tells us that, with things becoming more complicated, it’s not a great idea to base our public policy on bumper sticker slogans. There’s no exact date for any of what we’ll be talking about. All students of Strategic Foresight understand the peril of speaking with certitude about the future. Jim Dator, Director of the Hawaii Research Center for Futures Studies, has proposed a dictum, Dator’s Law, which states that “any useful statement about the future should appear to be ridiculous.” Anyone can take an existing trend line and extrapolate into the future. As Dr. Peter Bishop, Associate Professor of Strategic Foresight at the University of Houston, cautioned us many times in class, “Since we know all trends at some point come to an end, we also know extending a trend line far into the future shows us the future that will probably not happen.” Dator’s Corollary is, “When futurists make useful statements about the future, they should expect to be ridiculed and laughed at.” (Dator, 1995)

Perhaps our best explanation for some of the predictions we make can be borrowed from the introduction of Alvin Toffler’s classic book Future Shock: “…every statement about the future ought, by rights, be accompanied by a string of qualifiers – ifs, ands, buts, and on the other hands. Yet to enter every appropriate qualification in a book of this kind would be to bury the reader under an avalanche of maybes. Rather than do this, I've taken the liberty of speaking firmly, without hesitation, trusting the intelligent reader will understand the stylistic problem. The word "will" should always be read as though it were preceded by "probably" or "in my opinion." Similarly, all dates applied to future events need to be taken with a grain of judgment.

The inability to speak with precision and certainty about the future, however, is no excuse for silence. Where "hard data" are available, of course, they ought to be taken into account. But where they are lacking, the responsible writer – even the scientist – has both a right and an obligation to rely on other kinds of evidence, including impressionistic or anecdotal data and the opinions of well-informed people. I have done so throughout and offer no apology for it."

What can be said with certainty is the advancement of technology is not linear. According to futurist Ray Kurzweil, technological progression since the late 1800s has shown exponential growth. Linear progression is simple: you take 30 one-foot steps, you reach 30 feet. But in exponential progression, if you take 30 one-foot steps, you reach over a billion feet. You are just 15,000 miles shy of reaching the moon while your linear-footed counterpart has merely crossed the room. Dr. Kurzweil points out that your cell phone is one million times cheaper and 1,000 times more powerful than the early computers built in basement and laboratories at places like MIT in the 1960s. Scientists predict that this growth will continue for at least the next 20 years. The iPhone that came out in 2010 has a computing power equivalent to that of a supercomputer from 1997 – and it’s a billion times more powerful than the MIT computer from the 1960s.

Randy tells a story that brings this into perspective. As he was walking through the Harris County Courthouse one day on his way to a hearing, he came upon Poppy Northrop, a fellow attorney. As often happens when two lawyers get to chatting, they began telling stories to each other. Randy had known Poppy for years, but didn’t know much about her life. They began talking about how rapidly attorneys had taken up using computers. He told her about how he’d once worked with a large civil firm, and had suggested to one of the partners that he should have a computer. This was a pretty new idea at the time, and Randy had to explain that he’d be able to draft some of his pleadings on the computer alone at his desk (replacing the complicated method of using the dictating machine), give the tape to a secretary, have her type up the dictation, return it to him to read and make corrections and finally send it out of the office. The partner answered his request with a perplexed look, then, in shock, explained, “Only secretaries use computers. Lawyers never use those things.”

Poppy laughed. She had a story of her own. It seems she’d had a previous life before becoming a lawyer, working for NASA. She was there when Apollo 13 ran into trouble. She was there in the control room the day when those famous words came crackling across the intercom: “Houston, we have a problem.” A quiet fell across the room, she said, just for a minute. And then: pandemonium. Voices talking over each other, bodies flying across the room and finally, after a lot of discussion and a lot of hand-wringing, and with a lot of help from their state-of-the-art-circa-1970 computers, Poppy’s team managed to bring Apollo 13 back to earth. She then gave a quizzical look and added something that, though deceptively simple, says a lot about how rapidly this world is changing. She cleared her throat and said, “Randy, what you have sitting on your desk today, churning out pleadings, is more powerful than the computer I used to bring back Apollo.”

That small bit of history, and Poppy’s statement, have a lot to teach us. There’s no escaping history. The computers we lawyers use to create reams of paper in our offices – just to throw at each other in court and eventually have stored in some dusty warehouse – are a direct outgrowth of man’s unending need to seek out new frontiers, and the corresponding need to conceive and build the tools that can get us there. Billions of dollars and incalculable effort were spent to make the tools that took man’s footprint beyond the earth – and now one of these very tools is such an everyday object we use it to produce pieces of paper to send to each other on a daily basis.
In just 40 years a computer that weighed several tons and took up an entire basement has been improved to the point where it is now one billion times more powerful, weighs only several ounces, and fits in the palm of your hand. If we look 40 years into the future, the computer should be one billion times more powerful than the iPhone and the size of a grain of rice. At some point, computers will be small enough to implant inside the human body and plug directly into the brain. To those who would dismiss this as outlandish science fiction, I would point out that already there are several thousand human beings who have implants embedded in their brains to treat the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease. These implants, part of a therapeutic regimen called “deep brain stimulation,” are wireless ready and can download periodic software updates out of thin air. Nor is this the only example of computer-brain interfaces currently in use. Paraplegics have had wireless transmitters embedded in their brains that allow them to move the cursor on a computer screen using only their thoughts.

In its early stage, we see the computer-brain interface being developed to cure disease and disability. But as this technology is perfected, it will switch from being a cure for neurological disorders to actually augmenting and improving normal human capacity. This kind of heightened ability will allow for more truth and more deception; more heroism and more depravity; more freedom and more fascism. Perhaps the greatest danger is of creating a two-tiered society, in which the enhanced are pitted against the unenhanced.

So, our technology is advancing exponentially. But our laws, culture and social contracts are moving in linear fashion. That is, technological change is approaching the moon in just as much time as it takes legal and social change to cross the room. People constantly complain, “Why doesn’t someone do something?” The reality: we are “someone.” Laws and social norms cannot keep up with the exponential development of technology unless we hitch our new reality to an exponential growth paradigm. Easy to say, but hard to do – especially when hobbled with a linear mind.