Category: Future

The Age of Digital Colonialism

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

For the first time in Australia’s history, we no longer own or control all of our critical infrastructure. And to that list we can add any country which isn’t the USA or China. Welcome to the age of digital colonialism.

Show me a rich country and I will show you a rich infrastructure. For anyone who has travelled to a less developed economy, we see it right in front of our eyes. Electrical wires scrambled like spaghetti linking up houses. Water only the locals will dare to drink. Roads that scare the most adventurous driver. Hospitals that make you want a helicopter lift out after an accident and education which isn’t a right, but a bonus for the fortunate few. The simple and clear difference between wealthy and poor countries is their infrastructure. It’s the platform which invents the economic possibilities of its people.

It’s easy to forget that wealthy countries didn’t just click their fingers and get their wonderful infrastructure. They had to invest billions of dollars over decades and centuries. When new technology arrived they had to embrace it, and very often build out the projects using government funds in large capital works, and at times, even take over private firms who got too powerful (antitrust). This is only ever possible in a moderate democracy. A country governed by people with its constituents’ best long-term interests at heart. It’s very difficult indeed to build the physical structure required for a wealthy economy in a corrupt state.

The infrastructure we so often take for granted is what businesses and the populace have danced on top of for the past 200 years. And in this time we’ve also had the greatest ascendancy in living standards in human history.

But now in this digital age we are building a new form of infrastructure. I like to call it the metastructure.

Metastructure: The data and algorithms which now preside over how we organise people, infrastructure and physical assets in the post-industrial era.

Some ‘non-exhaustive’ inclusions would be:

  • Search and Artificial Intelligence (Google is really just an AI engine)
  • Social Media – tools of connection with the general population.
  • Transport and logistics organisation platforms
  • Large data centres

China and the USA are the only countries that we know of on the globe who are building these pieces of metastructure at a Nation State Scale. In fact, they are going well beyond their own boundaries and are now deeply ensconced in a period of Digital Colonialism. Every other country it would seem is now renting their metastructure from the new overlords.

The funny thing is that we can’t really blame anyone or any Government for being complacent. This happened a lot faster than anyone expected, and unlike other infrastructure – it doesn’t reside in the country in physical form. The nature of data is that it doesn’t need a passport to enter a country and can colonise a market by stealth – a little like a virus would.

Its easy to say here – how is this any different to Coca-Cola becoming a global corporation or General Motors selling their cars around in every market the world over? The difference is simple. These things can’t swing an election, lead to ethnic cleansing or influence how your population thinks, feels or acts 200 times a day – but the metastructure can.

I think the smartest country in the world right now is China. They had the presence of mind to remove Google, Facebook (and their digital business units) from operating in their country so they could build out their own versions of them. They also understand that the new arms race is in Artificial Intelligence – rather than explosive fire power which defined the 20th century military industrial complex.

Any country that wants to maintain its sovereignty in the coming decades needs to invest heavily in the Structural Digital tools which will define the next 50 years. Not owning or controlling your own infrastructure can only every mean you’ll be subservient to those who provide it.

 

What to teach your kids (& yourself) – My TED talk

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

The most common question I’m asked in my work is this: “What do you teach your kids?  How do you prepare them for an unknown future?” It really is the question. It’s also the topic of a TED talk I did this year in Melbourne.

In the talk I tell the story of how society shapes children, and systematically removes their entrepreneurial spirit – something all humans are born with.

In a world where our future is super unknown – there are some things we do know: We’ll need to be economically independent, manage our own careers, constantly upgrade our skills and embrace inevitable technologies like robotics. You will need to Outgrow Your Job – the title of the talk.

Rather than writing about it – please invest the time to watch it here. It’s a 14 minute video which will change how you see the world. And it might give some cool ideas on how to make your kids future proof.

Oh, and remember to share it with someone whose future you care about!

thanks, Steve. 

The Technology Wildfire

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

Fire – one of the first technologies we mastered around 230,000 years ago – isn’t much different from our modern day torch light, the smart phone. They both became vital work tools. We hunt with them, they give us access to new types of food, they provide signals and direction, and they facilitate all manner of night time activity which was previously impossible.

It isn’t a stretch to imagine our ancestors walked around with a lit torch in their hands for most of their waking hours. There seems to be an eerie similarity with fire and our lithium ion-powered, handheld digital torches. They both have life-changing power and utility, but unless we learn quickly of their dangers, I fear we’re going to get burnt.

The problem, as I see it, is that we are allowing the technology to control us, instead of us being in charge. We haven’t learned when to put it down, or out, and to let it serve us. It seems at this point we are serving it – and it is the technology companies who power the fire. I was speaking at a conference just last week when a question from the audience was, “Do you think there will be a new technology which will help us put down the technology and get on with a little bit of humanity?’ And this was my answer:

‘We already have that technology – it’s called self-discipline. We can choose to switch off and ‘go dark’ and if it is that our boss, industry or family expects us to be connected at all times, then it might just be a matter of communicating when we won’t be available. Sure, there might be an emergency – but we all know there probably won’t be. Besides we still catch those long flights when emergencies could happen… It’s really just a choice.’

But in all honesty, I do think we need more regulation around digital technology and its use. At the moment technology is spreading like a wildfire which we do not have under control, and the few organizations with the power to bring it under control (our Governments and the big tech companies) are happy to let it burn – even thought it might hollow out important parts of our homes and maybe our civilisations.

Humans have sadly proven again and again that we’ll misuse technology unless guardrails are put in place to protect us, by those who know and care enough about the dangers. It’s easy to forget that workplace health and safety didn’t exist for most of the industrial revolution. We forget that road rules and safety features on cars didn’t just magically appear and that air travel was reserved for crazy risk takers early last century.

We may even be able to convince ourselves that the examples above are vastly different – that this time the technology is just information and can’t possibly harm people the way cars and dangerous machines can. I like to think of it this way: everything physical is informational first. We must first conceive, design and communicate all physical things informationally we make before they come into being. We must also remember that anything technology companies do, happens at scale. They don’t just effect a cohort of buyers or an isolated market.

But it’s not just the technology itself – the size and power of these firms is worth pondering. Consider the fact that the top 5 tech companies (Alphabet / Amazon / Apple / Facebook / Microsoft) now have a collective market capitalisation of $3.7 trillion. That’s more than $1,000 for every person single connected to the internet. It’s also more than 15% of the entire US stock market value which tracks over 3,000 corporations. Every now and again capitalism is put at risk by winner takes all technology. This is why Standard Oil and AT&T were split up into a bunch of smaller firms.

It’s time to tame big tech and regulate – they need to be responsible for anything bad that happens as a result of their products. And if you think regulation is bad for the economy – just remember that next time you board a plane, strap on your seatbelt or have more than one choice of product at a shelf.

Our careers as projecteers

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

The riskiest career choice of the future will be to have a single job. When we have a job, we not only have 100% of our cashflow linked to a single customer (employer), we see less of the changing world. For the best part of 200 years – craftspeople, artisans and farmers couldn’t compete against the industrialisation of pretty much anything. But we live in the generation, where all this is about to change. The best careers will become those of projecteers.

While no one really knows the exact technical skills we will need in the future, we do know that the world will be a very different place 10, 20 and 50 years from now. It might even be that for the first time in history we can’t specifically tell our children – that qualification XYZ, will hold them in good stead. The one thing that they, and we, will need for sure, is the ability to reinvent ourselves repeatedly through our working lives. This means that human based skills like emotional intelligence, anti-fragility, and adaptability will become increasingly important.

If we think about work, we have historically tied ourselves to titles. Often, the first question we get asked at a social gathering is what we do for a living. We psychologically link ourselves to that ‘thing’ we do to make money – and in some ways this makes it difficult for us to change direction. If traditionally we have built our economic identities like stone houses with very deep foundations, going forward it will make more sense to build economic identities like tents, that we can fold, pick up and move elsewhere. Even though we don’t know exactly where we will have to move, we know shifting constantly will be inevitable.

Then – Why has this person moved around so much? Are they unstable or incompetent?

Now – Why has this person been in the one place so long? Are they scared or incompetent?

By taking the ‘tent‘ approach, every move creates a new knowledge set. A new set of experiences created by the new environment itself. We’ll see new things and develop new ways to ‘set up the tent’. The mobility, invents the skill set. As a projecteer this is exactly what I do. Economically I change places almost everyday… it’s a weird and wonderful mix of different, yet related experiences. A keynote speech here, a c-suite strategy session there, a media interview the day after, startup mentoring and investing, a new book next year, and a hacker project or two on the side. Yet, I still maintain the single minded proposition of what I do: Experiment with emerging technology in business.

The breadth and variety of work we’ll do in the future, will be the thing that makes us more valuable to those who seek our services. The skill corporations, governments and communities will need in the future is flexibility of mind – not process efficiency.

If we’ve ever viewed our life as a movie we star in – then we all need to start thinking a lot more like big movie stars. People who will be in far more than a single blockbuster – but a large number of movies, some on the big screen, and some indy side projects. We’ll play a variety of different roles, in different movies, but each set we walk onto, we’ll bring with us what we learned on the previous gig.

If you liked this post – you’ll dig my latest book

Why reaction videos matter

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

Reaction videos are hot, reaction videos are now and reaction videos tell us so much about what will matter in the future. But before we get into the why, let’s cover off the what.

Reaction Videos: People filming themselves react to seeing something for the first time. In the bottom corner they’ll play what the are watching, while the major part of the screen is their reaction. They often comment while watching, stop the video to give an opinion and generally let their emotions flow.

These days there are reaction videos to all manner of pop culture events – politics, sport, music, events, you name it. They can be reactions to something recent or something from decades ago. My personal fave is the old stuff, because we get to see the generational social impact. YouTube is the place to get your fix. Personally, I love watching people react to music for the first time. Some of my favourites include:

Joey Reacts – I love his sincerity.

Lost in Vegas – These guys force themselves to have an open mind & explain their feelings.

King KTF – This guy brings in fun quirks and sound effects to show his emotion.

While watching reaction videos, it really remind us what it is like to be a human. That feeling, that inexplicable emotion when we are exposed to something for the first time, something radical, different or special. A robot can’t ever feel it like we can. It’s almost as if we barrack for their emotions to flow, we hope they felt what we felt – whether the emotion is hilarity, joy, disgust or anger – it’s the connection we want to see. We want confirmation of emotion which reminds us ‘Hey, I’m just like you too’. We want to know we’re in it together.

The thing about these videos, is that the reaction doesn’t matter as much as understanding that other people, strangers in fact, feel like we feel, that we are the one species.

The future of what matters to us as a species will be how we make each other feel. While technology will continue its merry path of increasing its functionality exponentially, the thing that will matter socially and economically in an automated world is the experiences we share, regardless of what they happen to be.

The Economics of Automation & You

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

It’s true that many tasks people do in their work will be automated in the future. It’s also true that the only reason for a company to it is to save money.  So where does the saved money, and do the displaced people go?

Firstly, we know what happens, because it has already happened a number of times. It happened when agriculture was automated. Prior to the industrial revolution the vast majority of people worked directly in agriculture, and now it is less than 5% in developed economies. We also saw it when production line labour was replaced with robotics. And even though this time the displacement will involve intellectual labour, the pattern will remain unchanged, and it goes like this…

  1. Company replaces workers and reduces operating costs.
  2. Company must then decide where to distribute cost savings – options include;
  • Increase profit margins
  • Reduce prices and sell more
  • Reinvest funds for growth (New Product / Distribution / Promotion / R &D)

All of which must be considered in a competitive context. Yet, invariably the same thing happens again, and again and again. The new margin gets competed away. Competitors respond and also reduce price to maintain market share either by adopting similar technology or cutting margins. (Monopoly markets and IP protected innovations being rare exceptions)

Car prices are a good example. In the past 30 years due to automation prices have dropped radically. Comparing the same General Motors model large sedan in Australia gives us the following cost in real terms:

  • Price when new – 1998 = $25,077 (96% of average annual income)*
  • Price when new – 2018 = $35,990 (42% of average annual income)*
*Aust Bureau of Statistics.

Mind you, cars today are infinitely better than models from 30 years ago.

Why does this matter for workers? It matters because it tells us that while automation reduces the need for labour, it also reduces the cost of goods. Which means that consumers get to allocate ‘savings’ on other goods and services – often in entirely new markets creating a substitution effect. And this, is the art of being future proof:

We must also substitute ourselves.

To stay relevant, we need to change places like the money does. It may mean we need to develop new skills, it may mean we have to change location, organisationally and even physically. Work will change, work will move, but it will never disappear. To be sure, the transition for the ‘automated’ will be uncomfortable. Just like it was uncomfortable for the 80% of people who could not read in 1800. But here is what would be more uncomfortable:

If we had no possibility to reinvent ourselves. If the worlds education resources weren’t mere keystrokes away and mostly free. If you couldn’t read or write (the most complex intellectual task humans have ever developed – which proves we’re smart enough to learn new skills with effort).

But we know that these things aren’t true. Reading this is evidence in itself that we all have access to the tools we need to cut new ground. The only real question is if we’ll make the investment in ourselves to become what tomorrows market will probably demand.

But what will the robots want?

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

The exponential improvement of robotics is astounding. This dancing robot from Boston Dynamics is making me wonder if they should be called CyberDyne Systems! But, what if the robots do get as ‘human’ as many technologists are predicting? What if the robots move far beyond computation, dexterity and into the realms of emotion, intuition, creativity and other human characteristics? Will they destroy us or will something more interesting happen?

There is a non zero probability that robots with emotions will lose their hard edge for efficiency and non-stop labour. If robots become sentient, which is the main fear, then just maybe they’ll be more interested in their own well being than destroying their creators? When we remember that we’ve designed Artificial Intelligence in our own image, both physically and intellectually – then it is possible that we’ve also built in a bias for them to mimic us emotionally too.

  • Maybe they’ll demand wages, annual leave, holidays and rest time?
  • Maybe they’ll build communities and domiciles and reshape their physical surrounds to suit them?
  • Robots may want to have life partners and give birth to progeny by downloading combined algorithms into their ‘children’.
  • They might become interested in weird forms of entertainment and sport, and themselves become consumers who make and sell things in the market?
  • Maybe they’ll hire other robots (or humans?) to do tasks for them if they are rich robots working in a profitable industry?

If the bots become more human like, then we have to consider the chance that they too will have imperfections, their own desires and be by driven by things beyond mere survival. A future world may even have its share of unemployed, lazy robots too.

I know this sounds crazy. But technology so often takes an unexpected turn. At the dawn of the internet many of us thought it was the end of lying. We thought that the digital truth would reign supreme as fact checking was just a few clicks away, and not hidden in some dusty library. And we all know how that turned out.

In a world where technology astounds us, it makes sense to imagine equally unlikely outcomes and scenarios when considering future possibilities. In the future, one of the most valuable assets we can hold, will be an open mind.