Benjamin Franklin claimed that the only two things certain in life were death and taxes. Today, I'd say the only thing really certain is change.

The pace of technological innovation is unprecedented. And with the innovation comes change. We are in no position to forecast what the change is going to look like (not yet, at least - may be innovation will change that, too). But what we can foresee is the uncertainty coming with change. Uncertainty in our workplace, our personal lives, and our society.

Over the past 20 years, this uncertainty already manifested in threats for many people. Take the 45% of young people in Spain that are unemployed. Or the many older people who are not in the statistics of unemployment anymore, because they have been without a job for too long. That is just one example for the impacts of structural change heavily (but admittedly not only) driven by technological innovation.

Those impacts are dividing our societies in those who benefit from change - and those who don't. And, anticipating future changes, it divides us into those who welcome innovation and change - and those who fear it. The uncertainty and the risks from technological innovation and change are real. That does not mean we should object it, on the contrary. In many ways, the only hope for mankind is more and better technological innovation (take clean energy, water usage, and food security as examples for areas with need for adoption of technological innovation).

However, welcoming the change requires us to acknowledge and mitigate the risks. Starting with building more security for the part of the population that (probably rightly so) fears change. Our social security- and tax systems should reflect the risk landscape and insure people sufficiently against the risk of a change in their environment (paying lump sums to people without jobs will not help them reintegrate to the workforce - education will).

One of the biggest risk to our society is not the technological changes, but the inequality that comes along with it if we keep the existing systems in place. For too long many political systems have neglected the needs of those not benefitting from globalization and innovation. The result is growing support for nationalist, narrow minded, political movements who see the solution to their constituents problems in more protectionism. And as long as those who benefit from change don't provide better solutions, no one can blame those who object change.