Enter, Rightstech
Everybody knows Fintech. Everyone knows Cleantech. And Biotech? Well, d’uh. Dare I mention Medtech, Edtech, Proptech, Femtech…the list is now long. But you know what is missing?
Rightstech. You are right in saying “Wha…?” It is NOT a term in common parlance. Yet.
So let us be the first to coin it! Who doesn’t love a good neologism?
Technology is advancing at breakneck speed, spurring the appearance of an unprecedented slew of neologisms like those above. In the world of business, the coining of a neologism is almost a daily occurrence, as existing words are combined into abbreviations that quickly become part of trend reports. Over the past years, we’ve witnessed a proliferation of solutions or companies — especially startups– seeking to leverage the new possibilities enabled by the latest technological advances to take on traditional sectors, giving shape along the way to new subsegments of economic activity that escape the traditional definitions conveyed by existing terms.
Most of these new segments have been named by adding the –tech suffix to a prefix that normally makes reference to the traditional segment of activity they are related to. Thus we have fintech, proptech, insurtech, wealthtech, regtech, legaltech. So, now, let’s explore and name the new mountain of human endeavour to be conquered: Rigtshtech.
What is it?
Let’s begin by defining it: Rightstech is (now, hereafter, ever after — and remember you heard it here, first!) the term used to refer to innovations in the human rights and technology crossover space, and typically refers to organisations like slavefreetrade or other services that use technology to provide human rights services to businesses or consumers. could rightly be further described to include any entity that provides human rights services through software or other technology and may (in the future) include anything from rights-promoting apps to rights-enabling cryptocurrency.
Until now, you have not been participating in a revolutionary human rights experience when you buy a coffee. But in a world in which Rightstech is a thing, all industry will be turned on its head. Your consumer experience included. Rightstech is the means by which we put human rights ALONGSIDE commercial and other interactions in our daily lives.
You know the energy rating on your fridge? Picture now a human rights rating on it.
You know that sustainability rating on your ESG ETF? Picture now a human rights rating on your managed fund.
Your know that claim by a brand to sustainable, ethical, or slavefree with no proof? Picture products with human rights labels triggering Rightstech tools; immersive tech in real time.
That’s Rightstech. Powerful. Convincing. Evidential.
Whether purchasing coffee at your local coffee shop or managing your power grid, all of these other forms of tech are all around us in 2020. Rightstech is not. Yet. But it absolutely has the potential to be, and greater potential than of these other tech sectors to date. Why? Ubiquitous humanity.
Admittedly, we have absolutely no idea where Rightstech will go. There is no crystal ball. But the human condition and our fascination with it means that once we know it, we cannot let it go. You can turn your mind off when you compare the energy rating of 4.5 for one fridge against 2.5 for the other. For price, you can probably park your climate reservations. If your phone is rated 2 for human rights or 4.5 for human rights, is it as easy for you to park your values? 67% of the time, no, it is not.
Rightstech differs from every other -tech neologism becuase it is compelling. It is visceral. it is deeply emotional.
Some of the interesting effects of what we project will become the burgeoning world of Rightstech projects include the democratisaton of human rights, the universalisation of human rights, a process of normatisation, and expending agnosticism.
Democratising
As a consumer, whether singular, plural, or corporate, or government, you have power in your purchases. When you purchase in a Rightstech world, you are casting your vote through that machine. In a remittance world defined by burgeoning Fintech, new avenues are opened, and you choose to send YOUR money the way that best suits YOU. You won’t be coralled by the Western Unions of the world.
In the same way YOU get to choose crypto over fiat, in a Rightstech world, you get to choose to deal in rights-friendly, rights compliant goods and services. You get to be informed by the decision intelligence it provides, when you need it, in a format you can decide for yourself whether you believe or not.
Universalising
It is fair to say that the vast majority of people don’t understand human rights. Not really. Not until they start having theirs taken away. Our individual understanding of human rights might actually be described as exceptionist; we know when someone is impinging on ours, because we feel aggrieved, even if we cannot put our finger on the point of international law. Rightstech brings the body of international human rights law — our universal, inalianeable rights . out in the open,lays them bare to be understood. And not in legalistic ways. But in real ways. Translated. Operationalised.
Universal standards such as the content of the body of intetnational human rights law do not belong on lawyer’s desks in dusty volumes. They belong out in the field where they make all the difference in the world to that woman being underpaid, to that black person being discrimibated against, that child being beaten. Rightstech has the potential to bring the everyday glorious meaning of rights to those who experience them, and experience the lack of them, daily.
Normatising
Norms are not fixed, but are constructed, and evolving. They are produced and reproduced through interaction processes. Individuals and sets of individuals, socities, communities, are influenced by norms constructed through past interactions and we produce new norms.
Rightstech promises to advance a new understanding of what rights mean in our daily lives, and, crucially, how we can work together, using that democratising power of one, to enforce and persuade and arrive at a new stable norm where rights are rendered mainstream. Rightstech helps us advance, and speed, new normative development and raise the profile of human rights through the millions of small daily interactions where Righstech can remind us there are human rights involved.
Agnosticism
Rightstech offers, like Fintech does to remittances, an agnosticism to things that have defined the physical world: geography, product, service, jurisdiction, timezone, socio-economic status, or ideology.
When an international human rights law standard in a workplace is defined, it is global. It is universal. If makes zero difference in a Rightstech world that a country does not define living wage. It does not matter that a juridictions allows racial discrimination. Universality means the standard is agnostic to, transcends even, local, regional, national law.
Whether a product crosses a hundred borders, the human rights standard remains universal, agreed, understood. Rightstech operates at the level of natural justice. Borders are irrelevant to Rightstech. It doesn’t see rich and poor. It doesn’t see colour, race, creed.
Transparency
The promise of Rightstech is transparency. This transformative transparency promises you the understanding that when you buy your iPhone, it does not have the broken backs of 6-year olds in the Congo. If you know a phone that doesn’t have that, which one do you buy? This is the ultimate decision intelligence. X-ray vision for consumers.
If you are an investment firm, and your investors hand you €500m but adds the caveat that it is not to fund modern slavery and human rights abuses? You have nowhere to go. In the Rightstech world, you have the lens to magnify your business network and unravel its inner workings. X-ray vision for investors.
The end of greenwashing. Another neologism, greenwashing is the MASSIVE % of companies that claim things that are simply not demonstrably true. We are all duped daily by corporations. Nay, hourly. Like the powers of x-ray vision, Rightstech promises the ability to see straight through bogus, weak, or completely unfounded claims. That’s a superpower.
We don’t know where this will all end up; we are really just at the start. Rightstech is a neologism that belongs, deserves, breathes with its own life. And it promises to lift us all up in ways we cannot imagine today except in the most detached, utopian way. But it is a promise that, if we buy into, will be realised.
Rightstech. Let’s make that a thing. Together.
