Tag: Ideas

Make it Real – Write it Down

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

Things of value need to be held onto and protected. Some things become more valuable the longer we hang onto them, or when we put them to use and unlock their potential. Our thoughts are one of these things.

There’s a good friend I speak to nearly every day. We chat about life, business and technology. We’ve arrived at the conclusion that we come up with our best ideas when bouncing off each other on the phone. One of the phrases we’ve got in the habit of saying to each other is:

“Write that sh*t down”

And we do. We both trade in ideas for a living and we know that writing them down isn’t just a smart hack to remember them – it actually makes them real. It takes something from being ephemeral to existing in the physical world. It’s the first part of getting the idea into the real world – it’s a chasm we must cross.

For more than 15 years, I’ve been keeping a physical journal of tasks, to do lists, people I’ve met, things we discussed, business ideas and technology hacks. It’s now the most important part of my library. I still go back and refer to catch ups I had years ago to review those thoughts. If I’m in a flat spot, I go to them as though they are a collective secret cave filled with conceptual goodness. Many of the ideas I’ve kept in said journals are now part of The Rebound – which you can catch up on here. (our ratings increased 25% since the first week!) 

Never underestimate the power of your thoughts and ideas. Make sure you capture them so they don’t fade into the ether. Your thoughts have you inside them – your personal experiences and perspectives. They are far too valuable to waste. While perhaps only very few of them will might morph into a project, only those that are written down ever will.

Bonus Stuff

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Keep Thinking,

Steve.

 

Surveillance in our Schools – COVID-19 series

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

Google are grooming our kids. Yep, you read that right. As I type this my child is sitting next to me doing school work at home – thanks to the ‘free’ Google classroom software – on his Chromebook, with all his data being stored in Googles servers.

The world’s biggest Surveillance Capitalist is in the middle of creating a shadow profile for my boy. It doesn’t matter that he is not registered in his own name, doesn’t have a photo next to his profile or that his data is encrypted. Google can tell who he is, where he lives, what age he is, who his siblings are and pretty much everything they want to know through the data they gather. They can even build a biometric pattern of him by tagging his unique typing pattern.

Here’s what’s disturbing – at no point was I asked by the School or our Education Department to give consent to Google for my children to use their service. And the terms of services, as you can imagine, are heavily in Googles favour. There’s been no discussion that I can remember about bringing software into primary schools where the end users are below the age of reason, and the providers entire business model is based on surveillance.

Being concerned, I decided to perform some searches about the issue, ironically on the same companies search engine. My searches included:

Google Classroom – Google Classroom Issues – Google Classroom Problems

All of which yielded trouble shooting links from the same corporate giant. As I am sure you probably guessed, these weren’t the ‘problems‘ I was looking for, and herein lies the ‘issue‘.

Finally I searched Google Classroom In Australia and I was greeted with a link to an Australian Government URL which was essentially a PDF brochure from Google. I was astounded.

The problem of course is that the software they provide is very good, and comes at zero cost to education providers. But, there are better ways to provide our kids with the digital educational resources – and we need look no further than one of Australia’s best educational providers – The ABC.

The ABC is already our most trusted source of news, boasts our most visited news specific website and creates an incredible array of content across science, politics, art and culture. Our national broadcaster is something our government owns and controls and we all have a vested interest in maintaining. The ABC already offers school-aged children a broad range of entertaining and educational content in subjects ranging from maths to literacy to how to be media savvy. These have been widely used by schools to support learning, and even more so during the current closures.

So here’s what we ought do with our Aunty – the ABC – make it our National Digital Education Hub.

The ABC is well positioned to become a national provider of educational software platforms, live digital communications, and data storage. All of which would compliment what it already produces in various forms. The ABC could work closely with the education department to provide students with the digital resources we sorely need at all levels of education in Australia.

This is the perfect fit given the ABC’s remit over digital media in its charter and recent product evolution. It makes sense to utilise an existing and trusted Australian-controlled digital asset to replace services currently provided by a for-proft, foreign-owned business (such as Google) with a patchy track record in data security and nefarious designs on our personal data.

The services offered by Google Classroom – email, documents, sheets, slides,  cloud storage, file sharing, video sharing website, video chat and servers  – can all be replaced by local equivalents. In fact, the core product that Google provide to students are the simplest to build. Google Classroom tools are basic live to the cloud iterations of software we’ve had since the early 1980’s. Read here – very easy to make – not a secret. We have an opportunity to build them here and start exerting our digital sovereignty. Done well, and we could actually export the platform and licence it to other countries. Something which which would be well received in Asian markets given higher education is currently our country’s 3rd biggest export.

It’s time we got serious about our the digital side of education in Australia. And while this proposal might sound crazy to some, I’d argue we’d be crazy not to protect our children and build a system which might become a powerful fulcrum for our future.

Ideas need to evolve

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

Everything in the modern world started as an idea. If it isn’t provided by nature, then at some point it was just an idea. The problem with ideas however, is that once we have a good one, we often forget that we need to build on them. Ideas are a continuum, not an event.

The game of basketball was invented in 1891 by James Naismith in the USA to provide a lower impact sport than Football. It isn’t too dissimilar from what we observe today. A quirky fact, is that in its first iteration fruit baskets where used to catch the ball. Seems like a pretty cool idea to get the first few games underway. But here’s what’s astounding. It wasn’t until 21 years after they started playing that they cut a hole in the baskets so the ball would drop to the floor. And yep, you guessed it, they used to use a ladder to get the balls out. For 21 long years!

There’s lots more of examples just like it: The can opener came 48 years after canned food. Wheels on suitcases weren’t common place until 50 years after the start of air travel. It makes you wonder how many crappy things could be fixed if we just took the original idea that little bit further.

Likewise some ideas become outdated – their time is up and we all move on. This is where we need to be careful. We need to make sure we don’t end up in an industry, or job which ‘as an idea’ is becoming outdated. When ideas become outdated, industries die and careers can too.

At some point we all need to find new ideas, and sometimes we even need to find new towns – especially if the one we are living in is based on an old, outdated industrial idea. Entire towns have been built around the ideas of yesteryear. This time however, we’ve all been given the dignity of choice – we can reinvent ourselves, and even our towns if we choose to. The digital world knows no geography. The biggest challenge with this idea though, is getting people to really believe it.

Maybe we need a big idea. Or just maybe, all we need is a small change, to just cut a hole in the basket and see where our ball lands.

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You’re a true team #Sammatron person coz you read this far and I totally dig it. You know what I’d love? If you checked out the Latest Webisode of Future Sandwich on Digital Twins – our best yet. Heck why not leave a comment and subscribe on Youtube? Thanks.

The next phase of innovation

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

Innovation doesn’t have to include a microchip, be a consumer gadget, come from private industry, generate profits, or even be a physical thing. If we can agree on these truths and what innovation is, then we can usher in a long over due, different type of innovation.

So what is innovation? 

Here’s the Sammatron definition: The implementation of better solutions to meet existing market desires, new market requirements, and even unarticulated needs. This can be done through products, services, methods, processes, business models or governance. 

The two things that matter above for this post are; ‘unarticulated market needs‘ and ‘Governance‘.

Both of which will be the most important facets of innovation in the coming decade. But before we explore the next phase of innovation, it’s worth reviewing the phase we are currently in.

Innovation which has shaped the past twenty years has been the domain of private industry. Technology firms now make up seven of the ten biggest companies in the world. Only one of which, was on the list in 1999 – that being Microsoft. Their financial dominance is a clear function of the consumer utility they have provided, no doubt. The digital era has provided inordinate consumer value through data mobility, entertainment on demand, social connection, digital connectivity, smart devices and ecommerce to name a few. But, they have become an invasive species.

Like all invasive species, they can only spread so far before they start to negatively impact the eco-system they, and others depend on to survive. These days their most important strategies are spreading their data tentacles further, buying nascent competitors, and lobbying government to avoid anti-trust action. It’s now time for a new phase of innovation. It’s time for structural and regulatory innovation from our friendly and representative Governments.

Now after you all finishing choking on your coffee while reading this, let’s not forget how we got to now. The reason big tech has been able to do everything it has, is simply because of what Governments did beforehand. We can thank the the Cold War and the Space Race for literally everything which exists in digital. The moon landing drove the creation of software, the integrated circuit and the microchip, it led to the development of CAT scans, it advanced wireless technology, solar panels, fireproof materials, satellites, GPS navigation, laptops, virtual and augmented reality, even the ‘gorilla glass’ on smart phones to name a few. The list is very long indeed. Big tech isn’t standing on the shoulders of giants, they are standing on the shoulders of tax payers. All the innovations creating our modern lives from a bygone era of Gov investment and innovation.

Unarticulated needs: While most people don’t know it yet, we need to reign in big tech with regulation so that others can compete fairly. The second unarticulated need is for major Government funded technology driven projects – NASA level projects – real moonshots. This scale is needed to unearth new technology which will be the realm of entrepreneurship 10-30 years from now. The reason it needs to come from the world’s Governments is to ensure that new innovations become open-source so that others can build open them – as per the Space Race. The new Australian Space Agency is a good start.

Governance: We need heavy regulation on technology exactly because big technology firms are starting to act like ‘quasi governments’ who control the major factors of production in the digital era. They are even trying to launch their own currencies. Recent responses from Google and Facebook here to the ACCC’s plan to curb their dominance are telling. They claim reigning them in will risk technology advancement. Their aim is to make us fearful we can’t advance society or innovate without them. The reverse is actually true – they couldn’t have existed without us!

So what types of regulatory shifts do we need from Governments? Well, here’s a few crazy ideas to get us started.

Deeper Privacy Protections: Outlaw facial recognition software, and facial storage by private firms without explicit permission.

Gov funded social networks: Social networks which are Gov funded, but open-source so we can build and iterate it and avoid surveillance capitalism.

Mid-life Education Funding: Any person who loses a job to automation ought be able to study free, funded by government for a ‘mid life’ student program. Who said school is something kids do? When public schools were invented life expectancy was around 60 years of age – now it’s approaching 100 – maybe mid-life schooling can replace a midlife crises!

Progressive Regulation: Like our taxation system regulation shouldn’t be put in place on tech firms as a one size fits all. The problem in doing that is that it suits big firms with the resources to respond to regulation and makes it hard for startups to do so. Therefore, regulations should be tougher and more stringent based on size, data and number os users on a service – like we do with income tax.

Algorithm Transparency: What is inside algorithms should be listed like ingredients are on cereal packets. So we know why we are seeing what we are seeing. There should also be an ability to ‘opt-out’ of every algorithm which determines what content a person sees on any web platform.

Terabyte Tax: We know data worth more than oil, so let’s tax it accordingly – we tax oil with an excise – let’s do the same with data.

For anyone who still thinks Government can’t do anything properly, think about it next time you drive on a safe road, drink a nice clean glass of water or fly safely 30,000 feet in the air.

Some of the most important innovations aren’t about efficiency and speed, but about being thoughtful, slow and purposeful.

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You’ve read this far – please go checkout the latest episode of Future Sandwich Now-Soon-Later – and please make a comment too! I appreciate your support. Steve.

The Secret Innovation Budget

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

Research & Development and Marketing traditionally lived in different worlds. R&D for innovation purpose happened in secret, in the lab, while Marketing was mostly just advertising. The advertising itself? Well, that was generally about convincing people to buy what the company could already make. It was rarely about the future and what the brand might become. Smart companies however, have merged these two disciplines. It’s a ‘trick’ any firm big enough to have a marketing budget might want to embrace. Yes, the marketing budget should really be an innovation fund, and vice versa.

In times of great change we idolise the new. The wonder created by what was once the realm of science fiction, are todays most shareable artefacts online. Cool stuff we see for the first time like an Amazon drone delivery, a Google driverless car, or an Uber air taxi get viewed millions of times, voluntarily, without media expense. These companies are telling the market, we are inventing the future. If you’re a large corporation today, and you’re not inventing the future, during such a revolutionary time, then you just might be inventing your own demise.

But here’s a few questions worth asking:

  • When was the last time you had something delivered via drone?
  • When was the last time you took a ride in a driverless vehicle?
  • When did you last hover above traffic in your air taxi?

If you’re like most people, you haven’t, yet. That’s not to say that these things aren’t on the way – they certainly are, but in truth these companies have purposely talked up the technology many years before any of them were actually functional, let alone a commercial reality. This is where the trick part comes in. The time lag between the concept phase and the reality of these innovations being in market is a great brand building exercise for the firms smart enough to do it. Cleverly, their R&D has become their advertising. They’ve earned free global media attention and further ensconced themselves as innovators.

The perception this creates in the market isn’t just nice to have. It can also have a massive economic impact on the firms financially. Just compare the unit sales, price earnings ratios and valuations of firms serving the same set of customers:

Automobiles:

  • Tesla makes 245k cars per year, and has a PE ratio of infinity (no dividends yet), and a market cap of $48 billion.
  • Ford makes a 7.9m cars per year (one per 4 seconds) and has a PE ratio of 9.3x, and a market cap of $34 billion.

The market has clearly voted on how it values innovation.

So could an old world industrial company use innovation as a brand communication tool? Could they be seen as on the cutting edge of technology and reap the valuation benefits? Of course.

But it requires some shifts in attitude.

It requires the firm to set lofty goals in their innovation efforts, it can’t be incremental. They also need the courage to share these innovation dreams with the market and own them publicly. It also requires the vision to shift investment from traditional marketing and advertising budgets into innovation arenas and moonshot product developments. All of which can not only become an exponential product improvement, but be an effective form of advertising in the interim. But mostly, it will send a strong message and provide a new confidence to the firms customers, employees and investors that they have a chance at inventing the future too.

Top 10 tech trends for 2019

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

Last week was what piqued my interest in 2018 – and here’s 10 things I will be looking out for in 2019. Of course predictions are a tough business, especially when they’re about the future!

  1. Algorithms as ingredients: Seventy years ago we didn’t know what was inside our packaged foods. Likewise, few of us understand what algorithms are, and more importantly what’s inside them. So let me be very clear here – They are more dangerous than food with bad ingredients because we don’t have natural reflexes like taste buds and sense of smell to warn us about the bad ones. They infiltrate the mind by stealth. I predict this year we’ll see the first regulation where algorithms must be communicated with end users of digital products – like we have an ingredients list and nutrition panels on boxes of cereal. The black box is about to be opened up. I’m certain many will be horrified by how it’s decided what we see and consume on line.
  2. Big Tech Anti-Trust Action: I expect the first Anti-Monopoly case this year against a big technology firm. The most likely candidate is Facebook. Even though Amazon and Google are just as predatory in their behaviour, Facebook has made the most errors in handling their power. In the end, it’s humans that decide who to fight and perception matters more than reality. This is why Zuckerberg better get ready for another tough year in 2019. His services will might be blocked in a country or two, but I expect some US law makers to propose a split of What’s App, Instagram and Facebook. It’s overdue.
  3. Social Back Channels Emerge: Robin Dunbar proved many years ago we physically can’t manage close relationships with more than around 50 people, and wider relationships with more than around 150 people. This is why social media doesn’t really work for us. It’s not social, it’s just broadcasting for the masses. I only use it to share my work for those who are interested in it. Real relationships are something I do in the back channels: Texts, Private Messages, Small groups, DM’s. I’d imagine you’re already doing this and it will only increase to the chagrin of social media forums which harvest attention for revenue. In 2019 I expect traffic declines in public social media and actual social conversations to be in back channels and in person. So let’s just be honest here and admit that everything else we see on social media is really just ‘advertising‘.
  4. Buttons go missing: As voice AI’s like Alexa, Siri, Cortana and Google get exponentially better – then we can expect these API’s to be opened up and embedded into white goods and all manner of electrical devices in our homes. At the CES next week – smart white goods, ones we command via voice, will make a bigger than usual play. We already saw the start of this with the Amazon Basics Microwave which has Alexa built in. Buttons will go the way of dials and disappear as devices listen to our instructions. (Which will help big tech invade us further – see 1 & 2).
  5. Electric Mobility: Scooters, skateboards and other small electric transport devices will pop up in cities around the world very quickly and provide an entree into electric mobility. An infrastructure will pop up around it to support the shift, essentially teaching consumers about the upside of electric mobility versus combustion engines. A trip in Shanghai, China is a great example of the shift to electric – 90% of motorbikes on the road are already electric there.
  6. The last 10 Steps: Will becomes the e-commerce go to phrase of the year. I wrote about it here a few weeks ago.
  7. Blockchain evaporates: Funding around Blockchain and Crypto projects will decline markedly. This will allow the true believers (me included) to get back to work on product in a non-speculative environment. We may even witness a Blockchain based service which is useful, and consumer friendly. In all probability food supply will be documented on a blockchain as the first commercial use. Walmart have stated it will be mandatory for suppliers in 2019.
  8. 5G Flow on: The impact of 5G isn’t faster downloads to watch youtube videos on the train – it’s all about new possibilities. With speeds up to 100 times faster than what we are used it will facilitate low latency, quasi-real time augmented interactions in our world. The big winner here will be automotive. We’ll see new models of cars come with more augmented features – interactive real world head up display advice, and move us closer to autonomy which requires faster connectivity. It will also facilitate changes in education and possibly ‘geographically displaced’ surgery.
  9. Personal Robotics gets real: Now that voice AI is very good indeed, I’d expect to see the first consumer facing ‘domestic robot’ hit the market at affordable prices this year. Some type of mobile humanoid robot which offers mechanical capabilities around the home. Think lifting, carrying, sweeping.
  10. AI Job stealing fears moderate: Expect a flip where articles start talking up how AI will create more jobs than it removes. The naysayers will realise humans have a never ending list of things which need done. Even with machine learning robots need to be taught, and are better at efficiency – what we really want from each other is nuance and humanity – which requires humans.

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Make a splash in 2019, Steve.

My Top 10 for 2018

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

I was thinking about some of the cool things I saw, read, noticed and digested around the world of tech for 2018. A bonus blog post for your holiday perusal.

You’ll notice underlying the top 10 is what I regard to be the biggest shift in tech at the moment is the realisation that we have a technology wildfire raging. We need to learn to control it and ensure that what we are building serves the many, and not just the few. We can do it – but first we must understand it.

So here it is, the Sammatron’s Tech Top 10 for 2018…. enjoy:

  1. Blog Post of the year: Survival of the Richest by Douglas Rushkoff, who contends that the one percent are plotting to leave us behind. It’s a compelling read that unearths the dangers of the schism between us and the one percent.
  2. Podcast Series of the year: The Dream by Stitcher is a brilliant review of the history of Multi-Level Marketing (MLMs), pyramid selling and their total dodginess. Think Amway. The thing I found most compelling is how hackable the human mind can be when an organisation is selling ‘hope’ instead of an actual product. The ironic thing about these MLMs is that the philosophy they sell is all true (in relation to business success), but the business model they attach to it is a total fraud. And that is their trick. A mind blowing story that is very well researched.
  3. Podcast Episode of the year: Joe Rogan’s interview of Dr Ben Goertzel. Dr Ben Goertzel is a mathematician and leading Artificial Intelligence researcher. They go deep on everything that matters on tech and our future. Ben might just be the most informed, intellectual, articulate, compassionate and humane individual I’ve ever had the pleasure of listening to. It’s two hours of wonder. The world is lucky to have people like Dr Goertzel in it.
  4. Book of the Year: Winner Takes All by Anand Giridharadas. The elite charade of changing the world. This book couldn’t come at a more important time in our history. It’s the one book I’m recommending at the moment. In this book Anand explains from the inside how the emergent global elite pretend to try to ‘change the world for the better’, but in doing so really just obfuscate their desire to preserve the status quo and their role in causing the problems they pretend to try and solve. Jaw-dropping stuff.
  5. Documentary of the Year: The Cleaners by Hans Block and Moritz Riesewick is a timely film which investigates the shadowy and disturbing world of content removal from popular social media sites. An ugly underbelly of outsourced, low-paid workers deciding on whether a beheading constitutes news, free speech or inappropriate content. Another reminder that these are not technology companies but media organisations that are long overdue some serious regulation.
  6. Software of the year: Well, it’s more a shift than a singular piece of software – the Low Code / No code app movement. This is the arrival of software platforms that allow anyone with basic computer literacy to develop software or apps without any coding expertise. Put simply, if you can read, you’re about to become a software developer too. An important evolution for the masses where software is eating everything
  7. Tech Fail of the year: Crypto currency price crash – Ok ok, this is actually good – it means we can now focus on the important technology which underpins it – Blockchain. I actually believe that this is a bit like the Dot Com crash in 1999-2000 and is almost a pre-condition for crypto and blockchain to be everything it can be. Yes, it will come back even stronger.
  8. TV Show of the Year: Black Mirror. In fact, it’s not even close – it’s Black Mirror and daylight. By far the most insightful and important TV series in decades. The most recent episode Bandersnatch just snuck into 2018 a few days ago. If you haven’t seen it, then do yourself a favour.
  9. Smartphone App of the year: Surprise….None, zero, zip. I can’t think of one, and I checked my phone too. None have been good enough in the past 2 years to even make it onto my device! Actually I lie, a new parking app in my city Melbourne called PayStay is quite useful, but it’s more a reflection of our city being 5 years behind the times than an innovation. It’s another reminder that the halcyon days of app development are over, and that the real game in the coming few years is beyond the app economy. It’s probably worth looking at your own phone – I’m certain you’ll also be underwhelmed about how little it’s changed in the past few years.
  10. Technology Shift of the Year: The move to Voice as a primary interface. It’s early days – but I believe it is under-hyped and will replace the screen as our primary interaction in years to come. Don’t forget, language is Humanity’s killer app. Best you get onto it now.

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Have a great 2019, Steve.