Exploring New Digital Age Challenges

Digital age challenges are intertwined and STEEP (Social-Technical-Economic-Environmental-Political). The hallmark of the digital age is the platform society. Platforms provide connected individuals personalized service (news, communications, transportation, lodging, health, education, gig jobs). Platforms cut costs, bypassing cumbersome institutions in exchange for personal data. Data feeds algorithms at scale to improve AI-based service, hence platforms compete for more users and collaborators (ecosystems). The four digital age challenges explored in this paper are: (1) technological over dependency, (2) marginalization of unconnected, (3) trust of platforms, and (4) competing for collaborators. We explore these four challenges from an integrated Service Science (SS) and Viable Systems Approach (vSa) perspective.