Tag: technology

Houses of the Future – COVID-19 series

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

If you’re like me, you’re probably thrilled to start seeing something other than the four walls of your own home. The Covid-19 crisis will be a long overdue start to influencing changes to the buildings we spend our time in.

The Merger – Now that information work has finally reached its mobility phase, houses and offices will start to change shape. The major change is that spaces for work and living will start to replicate each other, with differences in size and scale. We can already see it in the home. Technology that used to solely reside in offices has begun to spring up in our homes. The technology we now have in the home is usually as good and often better than what we have at work. Offices are starting to look less like cubicle farms with the arrival of lounge spaces, entertainment zones, eating areas – somewhat replicating what we see in boutique hotels. What’s ironic is that this is how things used to be pre-industrialisation. We lived where we worked. Craftsmen had workshops out the back of houses. Bakers lived on top of their shop front. Now that many of us are becoming modern day digital craftspeople, we are going back to that model.

The first part of the process was the delineation of working and leisure hours evaporated. Now it’s about to happen to our spaces and they’re starting to replicate each other.

Caves with Widgets – We’ve been living in caves for a very long time, albeit these days they come with modern day comforts. It is valuable to remind ourselves of how we got to now by looking at how long some of the current technologies in our homes have been around:

  • Letterboxes – Mail services started encouraging their installation in houses for deliveries in the mid-1800s.
  • Indoor plumbing – In the 1860s, only 5% of American houses had running water. Flush toilets were still uncommon until the mid 1900s.
  • Driveways – Only became a standard inclusion fewer than 80 years old ago.
  • Electricity – Uncommon in suburban homes until the 1930s.
  • White goods (electricity needed) – Rare in modern economies until post WWII.
  • Televisions – In 1956 in Australia
  • VCRs – Early 1980s
  • Home Computers – Mid-1980s
  • Internet – Mid-1990s

So what’s coming?

Zero Energy Buildings: The ZEB movement is a system where a building generates all of the energy it requires. In the near future, the walls and roof of every new or retrofitted building will be capable of generating power. This will be primarily through solar and micro wind turbines, as well as piezoelectric technology that converts kinetic energy generated by raindrops hitting a building to electricity – yes, this already exists. The energy rating of buildings in the future won’t just be about efficient use of energy – it will be about creating an excess, more than it needs. It will become the new normal.

Houses that Change Shape: Walls will be moveable in most apartments to maximise space usage across different hours of the day, like hotels often do in its meeting spaces. They’ll become modular. Houses of the future will be designed with non-permanent room sizes, allowing us to get more from less. Kitchens and eating spaces will be able to expand and converted back into lounge rooms or even cinema rooms.

Delivery Boxes Replace Letterboxes: The letterbox is sorely in need of an upgrade. Our houses now are the recipients of packages, not letters. You’d think e-commerce hadn’t happened yet! In the future, letterboxes will have three sections: dry, fridge and frozen, so it could take all kinds of deliveries. Letterboxes will likely be as big as a fridge and possibly underground, with a button for the courier to press, so it could rise up to take the delivery. When a delivery arrives, the recipient is notified and can view live video footage, to verify the delivery person’s identity. Using a smartphone, the recipient could open the delivery unit and check that the delivery is as ordered, using near field communication readers (RFID) and image recognition cameras. The delivery unit would be secure as a safe for delivery of high value items and be powered under a ZEB doctrine.

Upgraded Home Office and Virtual Reality Room: We can expect the home office to receive a massive upgrade. High-end home offices will be as common as gourmet kitchens, given their importance in generating income for many households. We’ll have virtual reality meeting rooms with travelator floors to make us feel that we are in the same room as someone else on the other side of the world. These spaces will lead us to question why we need to go to the office at all. These video studios will be capable of creating content to make even the most advanced YouTuber salivate. We’ll also use our VR rig, including haptic gloves and suits, to shop online for things we want to touch and experience before purchasing. We’ll also use it to exercise and browse holiday accommodation and experiences, using a treadmill to keep us stationary while we seemingly explore other places.

A.I. Enabled: Automation utilising voice and gesturing will replace traditional interactions and buttons to manage re-ordering of household items. We’ll literally be talking to the walls! This is a battleground Amazon, Google and Apple are already deeply ensconced in. Convenience will be high, but privacy and security concerns will need to be overcome for mass adoption.

Drone delivery and landing pads: Our growing parcel deliveries need to land somewhere. Apartment buildings are already being designed with landing pads on rooftops and your house will be no different. Maybe it will have an automatic opening lid that closes over after the drop off has been made or the package might go straight into a delivery box. We can also expect new houses to have rooftop landing pads for Vertical Take Off and Landing (VTOL) vehicles that will become common within 20 years. In fact, ‘flying cars’ have a high probability of beating autonomous vehicles to deep market penetration, given they don’t have to work around existing infrastructure and pedestrian safety issues.

Smart Toilet: I’ve written about this before. We can expect it to be our health partner in life and since Alphabet had a patent approved on the smart bathroom last year, this is one of those realities which will surprise with its speed of arrival.

Smart shower: One that takes a photo of you every day… not to invade your privacy, but to ensure it knows you have a dangerous sun spot long before you do.

Glass = Screen: If you’ve always wanted a house with a view, it’s about to become a lot cheaper than anyone expects. All the glass in our homes will become web-enabled screens. The resolution of our windows will be indistinguishable from an actual view into the real world. All of a sudden, anyone can have a real-time harbour view that changes perspective on different windows in the house to deliver a very lifelike experience. Maybe owners of actual harbour mansions will monetise their views via a live feed cam? Or maybe nimble entrepreneurs can set up HD webcams in places of great beauty? Live feeds of idyllic vineyards in the Loire Valley, anyone?

Charging Stations in All Driveways: Our driving future is all electric, as is our entire economy. Expect that every place cars stop will have a charging facility on hand. If they ever stop – I’ll probably send mine out to work for me when I’m not using it.

So, if you are wondering how buildings will change, wonder no more. The exciting part is that there’s many more changes we could add to this list. In a changing world, this is where tomorrow’s jobs and industries will emerge. The opportunities created are equal for existing companies and startups. The technology for all of these ideas already exists. It’s not a question of if – it’s a matter of who and when.

I had a fun radio interview on this topic you can listen to here.

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Keep thinking.

Steve. 

Perception and Your Career – COVID-19 series

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

Perception is a powerful thing: What we do, where we live, which school we went to, which company we work for and who our clients are paint a picture of where we belong in people’s minds. Rightly or wrongly, perception is reality. Perception also informs finance.

A thought experiment: You meet someone at a function and ask the obligatory question of what they do for a living. You get the following answers:

  • I work for a large warehousing and logistics firm
  • I work in the energy industry, primarily focused on electricity
  • I work in consumer electronics sales
  • I work for a large taxi services firm
  • I work at a very large information indexing firm.

Some people (not us) nod politely and move onto the next conversation. But of course, the above statements could also read like this:

  • I work at Amazon
  • I work for Tesla
  • I work at Apple
  • I work at Uber
  • I work for Google.

Same job, different description, entirely different perception.

If someone works at a ‘hot’ company, surely they must be smarter, better, more competent. A possibility few people consider is that they might just be lucky to have ‘a seat on a rocket ship’ – simply riding the success of what happened before they got there. Maybe the more competent person is working damn hard and smart in a failing firm with fewer resources and a worse brand perception. Reality is rarely as it seems.

The economics of perception: Perception doesn’t only change minds – it also influences the economic value we assign to something. People, careers and especially corporations. If a firm seems ‘futuristic’ enough, the market can be incredibly irrational. Uber has lost $38 billion since 2013 and yet still has a market valuation of around $60 billion. As I discussed on The World on ABC News, I don’t believe Uber will ever recoup investors’ money and I still stand by this. But the reason Uber is valued so highly has little to do with reality and more to do with perception. In the short run, perception is more profitable than reality.

Now let’s compare Tesla with its closest competitors. The figures below represent the market capitalisation of the biggest car companies in the world, divided by how many cars they sell per year.

– Tesla $ valuation per car sold = $302k
– GM $ valuation per car = $5k
– Ford $ valuation per car sold = $17k
– Toyota $ valuation per car sold = $15k

Even though Tesla makes terrific cars (and has a wider portfolio) – its valuation is seriously inflated. Tesla plans to make 500,000 cars this year, while Toyota will ship around 10 million. Even if Tesla sold 5 million cars (10 times more than it does today), it would then have a valuation of $30,000 per car sold, which is still double that of Toyota. It just doesn’t add up. We must also remember that Tesla’s advantage in electric cars is quickly being eroded. You don’t have to be a maths major to understand that the economics of this will eventually drag their share price down. Likewise, it’s a lesson in the importance of brands, and being seen as technologically competent and future-centric. It’s one of the things our economy values most highly today.

Here’s the kicker – this isn’t just important for companies, it’s vital for you.

The Economic Perception of You: Being seen as future-focused and technologically literate in your career is a bankable asset. In uncertain times, people want to back those who have a handle on the future. It gives them confidence in you and gives you outsized opportunities. Being good at what you do today isn’t enough. People need to believe you’ll be good at whatever they’ll need tomorrow. This is a perception game – a matter of personal brand. How ‘Elon Musk’ are you? Our work lives used be based on qualifications, experience and competence. Increasingly, having a personal brand is becoming a core competence for everyone.

The World Just Got Flatter: Twitter, Facebook and other large technology firms have just announced their staff can work from home ‘forever’. Once we start to work from home, employers can hire staff from anywhere globally. It’ll be harder to build relationships, so having a personal brand will be even more vital. What we know from consumer culture and technology is that the most impressive brands command the highest price, not the most functional ones. This means that the marketing we do for ourselves might even be more important than the marketing do we do for an employer.

Keep thinking,

Steve. 

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P.S – My Post-Covid-Economics briefing is getting rave reviews. I’ve now done with Fortune 50 firms and Governments in the USA, India, China, Singapore & the UK. I have a few corporate slots left for the month of June. Details here.

Commercialising the Afterlife – COVID-19 series

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

Life is fragile, and COVID-19 has been a stark reminder. When mortality looks us in the eye, we’ll do almost anything to avoid it. We’ll even lock ourselves away for weeks at a time. Our instincts tell us to do whatever’s required keep on breathing. Brands know this. Some of the worlds most powerful brands have been built around the fear of our humanity – our need for security, safety, love and hope that everything will be ok. And in the not too distant future, technology companies will be able to offer us something much more profound – everlasting life, albeit, in the cloud.

We’re about to become the first immortal generation. Before 2050, most of us will have the option of extending our life beyond death. It will be a virtual existence, but for all intents and purposes there will be no noticeable difference to our reality in meatspace. I say most people, because this opportunity won’t come free. Your friendly big tech firm will be the purveyor permanence for a tidy, everlasting, monthly fee. In the coming decades we will finally commercialise the afterlife. 

What will happen: Much like we do now with our computers, our lives will be backed up to the cloud everyday. A lifetime of memories, experiences, relationships, knowledge, physical ability and everything inside your skin, will have a digital copy in the cloud. All in readiness for that fateful, unexpected moment, when it all comes to an end. At which time, your life 2.0 will commence.

The type of life you live in the cloud, just like earth, will depend how much money you have. Different Afterlife Platforms will have different costs and benefits. They’ll be 5 star VR’s and digital ghettos with platform insecurities and bugs. There’ll be a general carriage fee for living, and separate fees for what you choose to consume in cloudspace. Of course, your family, friends and loved ones will be able to visit the new you via logging in with a haptic suits and a neural lace – for a fee of course. Lifetime customer will have an entirely new meaning.

We’re well underway: This is not as crazy as it sounds. We only need a few ingredients for this to be possible. The first, is a place to live. A computer system our virtual selves can call home. At a rudimentary level we’ve already built thousands of these – video games and virtual reality platforms. Increasingly we are creating virtual versions of the physical world we live in. Google maps could well be the software seed of a virtual replication of planet earth. As for ourselves, as each day passes we are recording more of what we do, mostly externally, but within the next 2 decades, computers will enter our bodies through Brain Machine Interfaces (BMI’s) . These can take various forms; from neural connections, to brain wave reading devices or even with computerised nano-bots in the bloodstream. A number of tech firms including NeuralLink funded by Elon Musk are deep into developing such technologies. Today BMI’s already do far more than store information. We can already turn a humans thoughts into live pictures, and a man in America made a chatbot with his now dead father who he now has post mortem conversations with. The seeds have been sewn, it’s only a matter of time.

It could fantastical, or disastrous: Our life, after life might even be better than the one we had on earth. We could have super powers, new skills, be able to fly, live in a mansion, anything. Or we could become prisoners to the past, trapped with painful memories, in never ending quasi-reality which sends us mad. Maybe the tech firm in charge of our afterlife will sell certain memory deletions, or allow us to buy someone else’s former reality?

Of course, it raises important questions; Would life insurance still be valid if you chose to upload after death? Would we become misers in our meatspace life to ensure a comfortable afterlife? And what about kids eager to inherit their parents wealth? What if an afterlife platform got hacked, and killed millions of virtual people? Should they have a backup to re-spawn, or would that violate their singular existence? The implications are endless.

Tech is the new Religion: It turns out Big Tech and Religion are more similar than we imagine. Neither of them pay their fair share of tax, and Big Tech is about add everlasting life to its brand promise, just like Religion does. It could well be the end of faith as we know it. It’s ironic given that the worlds biggest religion (Christianity) only has 10 terms and conditions and Facebook has terms with over 20,000 words which no one reads, let alone understands. The Facebook empire now boasts 2.45 billion users and has recently overtaken Christianity which now has 2.3 billion adherents.

The finances tells the same story. Since the COVID-19 crisis, the S&P 500 has lost $2.5 trillion in market value, yet just the top 6 technology firms have added $215 billion to their market capitalisations. These 6 firms are well on their way to representing 30% of the market. If you ever had any doubt as to the power of technology, then it’s time to reconsider who the new Gods are.

On a long enough timeline, the probability of death for everyone is 100%. It raises a serious ethical question as to whether we should want to escape it, and if we do, should this be something a corporation can own, control and monetize?

– – –

Keep thinking.

Steve. 

Escaping the Cubicle Farm – COVID-19 series

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

Nothing happens in decades, and then decades happen in days. We often get stuck in yesterday’s habits when a better option already exists. Especially when it comes to technology. It’s only when a transformational moment occurs do we embrace the shift. That moment has arrived for the modern day corporate office. We have finally escaped the cubicle farm – with a little courage we can make it permanent and change the shape of offices forever.

Why offices exist: It’s worth remembering that centralised offices exist, because once upon a time that was where the ‘tools to do our jobs’ resided. Typewriters, expensive photocopiers, computers, printers, internet connections, and even phones where all once things we didn’t have in our homes. Only a company could make the requisite investment. These days we nearly always have better technology in our homes than our office!

Weirdly, when that changed, we still kept going into our offices – mostly through habit and managements’ desire to watch over us.

All of a sudden – this changed. 

History of office hours: The amount of hours people worked was never tracked before industrialisation. We worked until it was done. We got paid when we sold what we made. It turns out that office hours where set to when the sun shone in the window of the office. Administration work was linked to daylight hours long before they became formal office hours in the mid 1900’s. So, now that we have electricity, a serious question needs to be why are we still slaves to 9-5? Especially given most of us are expected to check emails in bed, and answer the phone long after dinner. Surely people who do work which isn’t a time scheduled interaction ,can choose when to get the work done, just like a grown up should.

All of a sudden – we choose the hours. 

What causes traffic jams: They aren’t caused by the roads not being big enough – they are caused by everyone starting and finishing work around the same time – funny that. The major traffic jams around the world aren’t on the way to factories or retail outlets, but to CBD’s with high rise buildings filled with people doing information work. Crazy fact, the average office worker in Australia spends the equivalent of an entire work day commuting every week. We don’t need wider roads, we need the wisdom to realise we can work our own hours, and choose where we do that work for much of the week. Offices need to be a place where people collaborate, connect, plan and inspire – not type on laptops and make phone calls. Once we focus on that, we’ll realise the office is a sometimes place, not an everyday place.

All of a sudden – the roads are clear.

Truth about open plan offices: Offices are expensive to own run and operate. They are costly to the firm and the people who need to travel to them. The economic response to costly offices was the rapid growth of the open plan layout – sold in, as a shift towards collaborative work – the reality was more about getting more chickens in a smaller coup. We always knew we could collaborate miles away from each other and without being squashed into cubicles.

All of a sudden – we are distributed.

Offices of the future: These won’t just be smaller given we’ll frequent them less often, their shape will change too. They’ll be more open – be more like a house – hotel lobby – lounge room – cafe – the kinda space you want to spend time in and be inspired by. They won’t be a place where you do work, but plan and review it. We don’t even know what they will look like yet, we are about to invent them. They will be modular and change their shape based on the day, week, month, season and which firms and people happen to be using them. They’ll be what co-working spaces should’ve been – not the cubicle farms disguised with kombucha and pinball they turned out to be.

All of a sudden – we have an opportunity to reinvent work spaces.

A post COVID economy will be one where information work is as mobile as the tools we use to conduct it. The benefits for society will be enormous. We’ll have less commute time, spend more time and money in our local communities, and we’ll enjoy the interspersed office time we do have much more. We can have our cake and eat it too. But only if we don’t slip back into old habits.

The biggest benefit of all? That will be that we can unlock ourselves from office proximity. We can live where we choose even if we work at a city based firm. We can go regional and drive ,or even fly in when required and still have money and time left over. And most important of all, it could take pressure off house prices in and around major cities. A simple shift like this might just give the next generation a chance at owning a home – wherever they choose that to be.

– – –

Keep Thinking,

Steve. 

Globalisation vs Nationalism – COVID-19 series

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

Last week I was invited by TED to lead their live Circles event discussion. The topic was Nationalism versus Globalisation. As preparation, all participants had viewed this TED talk on how nationalism and globalisation can co-exist. I then led a discussion to take a deeper look at the subject, in the context of a post-COVID-19  world.

These are my conclusions, which I think provide a solid template for examining the global economy:

The False Dichotomy: We don’t live in a world that is either strictly global or national. It’s a false viewpoint to assume there can be only one or the other. Both co-exist and have done so for a very long time. Instead, it is a pendulum that swings back and forth over time and it often backtracks when we’ve gone too far in a particular direction. The direction of the swing is largely determined by politics and social sentiment. It is fair to say that things are swinging back to the nationalism (or more accurately, de-globalisation) side, as can be evidenced by Brexit, Trumpism and divergent national policies in tackling COVID-19. However, we can expect to see government interventions to secure supply chains and manufacturing returning to high-cost labour markets, facilitated by automation and increasingly protectionist policies. However, it won’t stop the culture of globalisation. Many of the things we regard as local actually have more global origins. For instance, the languages we speak and the number systems we use. Even tomatoes weren’t used in Italian food during the Roman Empire – they arrived much later from South America!

Change – it’s what happens after we were born: Often there is a fear response to change. But change, as I define it, is something that happened after you were born. Everything around us was new at some point, but it’s only scary if it arrived after you did. Whether this is food, language, work, industry, technology or social norms, the things we fear most are things we must learn about beyond childhood.

We’re all suffering from Future Shock. The future is arriving so fast that we are having trouble coping with it. A natural reaction is to hunker down, fight change, push back and develop a nationalist viewpoint to protect ourselves from the unknown. It’s a rational response for those who are hurt economically by the changes. Remember the word economics means ‘management of the home’. For example, if I lose my job to a factory that is moving to a low-cost labour market, it becomes very difficult for me to manage my home. To me, it matters little that my country’s GDP grew. While the narrative of change is often sold as positive by those pushing for it, it always has winners and losers. Even if we are the losers, the most constructive response is still adaptation – mainly because we don’t get to choose whether or not the world will change.

Relative Advantage: Globalisation itself is the natural evolution of basic trade. In its simplest form, it can be explained by the relative advantage different geographies have. Warm climate economies trade bananas for potatoes with cold climate economies. Now they both have bananas and potatoes – they are both better off through exchange. This is also true for commodity materials, expertise and production capacity. In recent decades, relative advantage has been usurped by a singular relative advantage – cost of production. It has become less about which country or region can or can’t do something and more about who does it cheaper. It’s true for industries at the bottom and the top of the technology stack. This is why we have oranges imported from Mexico being sold in Australian supermarkets. It’s not that we can’t grow them here – it’s that we can’t do it for the same price. It’s also why our car industry closed down. This is part of the reason we have a financialisation of developed economies.

Globalisation in Established vs Developing Economies: Given the shift toward low-cost labour as the driving force behind globalisation, it would appear that developing economies benefit more than developed economies from globalisation. As production shifts from high-cost to low-cost markets, a larger percentage of the developing economy’s population tends to benefit. In the high-cost markets, a smaller portion of the economy – largely the owners of capital – tend to win. In this instance, it is incumbent upon governments to ensure displaced workers find a place in the new economy. They must move their populace up the employment value chain as industries wind back. If this doesn’t happen, the net result tends to be increasing income inequality – a trend that has been well-documented over the past few decades.

Two Places at Once: Globalisation is at its best when it allows something to be in two places at once. This is the case with international cuisine, language, skills, expertise, products, machinery, procedures and techniques. When globalisation expands horizons, access and capability, we all benefit. Often though, it’s a zero sum game when jobs in industry X leave one place and go to another.

The Substitution Effect: If an industry can only be in one place, then we need to pay close attention to the substitution effect. Who will be the primary beneficiaries of the shift? Consumers, producers or both? Where will the former participants in industry X go? Will the benefits of something changing places be shared or hoarded by a fortunate few? Something becoming cheaper doesn’t make the economy better unless the new efficiency gain has a multiplier effect.

Co-operation or Competition: We need a stronger co-operative effort when it comes the global economy. The shift towards global competition has lead to increased nationalism and radical actions in home states. If people feel as though they have to compete in a rigged game, they often arrive with pitchforks. A global economy will need to have rules that all participants abide by if globalisation is ever to be the utopia economists claim it to be. The most important issues of our time don’t require competition, but instead co-operation. This is a hard thing to do when sovereign countries have competing objectives and incentives.

The Matching Principal: The most important thing we must consider when it comes to nationalism or globalisation is that we must match the issues. National problems need to be solved with national policies. Likewise global issues, like the climate crisis, require an international effort to succeed. Trying to solve issues with a mismatched geographic boundary are doomed to fail.

Closing Thoughts:

We are often told we can’t compete against other markets because we’re not efficient enough. This is not really true. What is true is that overseas countries have lower costs, because they don’t have to abide by the same rules. How can we expect a countries like the UK, USA, Germany or Australia to compete with lower-cost countries like India and China when we have higher wages, stringent occupational health and safety standards and environmental regulations that they do not? Of course we can’t compete.

We are all playing the same game. With different sets of rules.

It’s an unfair game. Always has been. While the game of capitalism needs winners and losers, it’s all important we know which rules each side is playing by. We need to remember that in any game, we must protect our own players, pay respect to the competition, and know that players change and join new teams all the time.

– – –

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.

Post Covid Possibilities – COVID-19 series

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

At time like these no one has all the answers as to what’s next. What is useful however, is asking a lot of questions. The art of scenario planning and being ready for a number of plausible trajectories and future realities. So I’ve bunched them into the of categories Data, The Economy, Work and Society.

So here it is – Post Covid Possibilities from the Sammatron. Consider, discuss and debate.

The Data & Surveillance:

Digital Sovereignty – Governments around the world (excluding China & USA) will realise that they don’t have digital sovereignty They’ve essentially been colonised by ‘Big tech’ – in that they don’t own or control the most powerful tools in the modern economy – Digital Infrastructure. Hardware / data / social / search – they’ve had to rely Big Tech (Alphabet / Apple / Facebook / Amazon / Microsoft) to gain access to data to control the virus. It will (should) facilitate nationalisation of digital infrastructure and or create a desire to build out and create their own versions.

Permanent Surveillance – A new era of digital surveillance will enter the economy and become very sticky. All our personal connections & locations and data will now be a permanent fixture in Gov. databases. Providing existential risk for overreach. Algorithms matched with other existing data sets will provide near perfect summaries of most citizens.

Biometric Scanning – Will be a new norm like scanning for weapons except this time they won’t be checking for weapons outside of our bodies, but the weapons inside our bodies – potential viruses and infections. Biometric testing will be present on public transport, stadiums, schools, universities and workplaces. We’ll walk through temperature sensors, breathe into analysers, look into iris scanners and be monitored by any other device you can imagine.

Big Tech Anti-Trust – Governments around the world will realise that they had to go cap in hand to big tech to use their resources to implement tracking and report on the covid situation. They are the only sector to have gained financial ground and market capitalisation during the crisis. This will further ensconce policy calling for their break up and or nationalisation.

The Economy:

Securing the Supply chain – There will be a push to have a stronger domestic supply chain and local production in most countries. Countries have realised how exposed they are if they don’t produce essential goods – such as food, medicine, health care materials, transport, energy etc. Local Manufacturing will make a comeback and be facilitated by new levels of A.I and automation.

De-globalisation – Married with borders being restricted and closed in many cases for an elongated period of time, we can expect a decade of de-globalisation. This shift already aligns with current US and UK political trajectories (Notably Brexit) and will accelerate the trend. Expect manufacturing and production to strengthen in home markets as a respond to supply chain risk and geopolitical and racial undertones.

Post-Efficiency Economics – Our obsession with efficiency of everything, and leaving no margin for error or ‘fat’ will be exposed as flawed. In the new economy we can expect a balance of safety to be built into systems which are inefficient on purpose so we can cope with Black Swan events such as COVID-19.

End of the Consistent Taxation Decline: The Ragan inspired era of reduced tax and trickle-down economics will be exposed as a lie that favours the rich and drives inequality. Due to necessity taxes will be raised globally regardless of what Liberal and Republican governments currently claim. We’ll realise that tax actually provides a base for economic stability and severely needed structural investment.

Nationalisation of Infrastructure – A new form of civic federalism will emerge. We’ll start to revalue to importance of infrastructure not run with a profit incentive, but the service incentive of the populace. Starting with Healthcare & Education, people will realise natural monopolies like Energy, Roads, Public Transport, Telecoms, may be better held in public hands. We’ll start to value access and control of critical infrastructure as the fabric of a civil society. A renewed respect for our trusted Institutions will also emerge.

A New Frugality – In both business and consumer spending. Financial fear associated with more frequent shocks will reduce the incentives to take on debt and aim for capital growth. This will impact corporate investment, consumer spending and house prices. The end of mass consumer culture could eventuate. A post-depression era style conservatism could emerge. The economy will be driven more by yield, than growth.

Bailout Pushback – Citizens will rally against the Gov. bailing out publicly traded stocks, and call it out for what it is Cronyism – or shall we call it – Corporate Socialism. This time the crisis has really hit street level and any bailout of a failed firm that isn’t an essential service will be heavily derided. This crisis jump start traditional two way capitalism, The take your wins, and swallow your losses – the antithesis of the GFC – where private profits and end up public losses via bail outs.

The Philanthropic Charade Exposed – billionaires who use philanthropy as a PR strategy will be exposed as the fraud they are. The tiny percentages of the wealth they offer up, pale in comparison to what they ought be paying in taxes, and the fact that philanthropy falsely allows rich people to decide where we need the money, (Choosing to give where it suits their business & political interests) instead of letting Gov. allocated their resources. All the while generating political favour for them.

Work:

Shrinking Offices – Companies will realise they don’t need as much office space. They’ll loosen the reigns on where office staff work, and take the financial advantage of having smaller offices people can come to for interactions and meetings X times per week. They’ll have collaboration spaces, not cubicles. This will negatively impact city real estate prices. The work from home revolution will accelerate.

Front Line Workers – Increased respect for healthcare workers has emerged, but sadly those in low skilled front-line work (grocery clerks, warehouse workers, drivers et al) continue to be put at risk with little safety considerations and zero financial recourse. We can expect logistical front end workers – the unsung heroes of COVD-19 – to push back hard and maybe even ask for danger money. Could unions re-emerge to protect gig workers?

Teachers, Nurses, Paramedics, childcare worker Revaluation – Social carers of the informed, young and sick might finally get the pay and respect they deserve, at a minimum they’ll have a stronger argument to their cases forward. We can live without many services, and these aren’t on the list.

Telemedicine Gets Real – Covid-10 will been seen as the long overdue birth of telemedicine. Our current necessity has provided proof that many of our healthcare needs can be performed remotely – firstly with GP consults going online– and eventually with robotic surgery becoming normalised.

Scientific Community – Expertise will start to get the respect it deserves. Even though some politicians have been working against their advice in many cases. Because this case is real, and has an immediate and direct impact (bodies piling up) – the truth will emerge that scientific advice must be adhered to in a modern society. We can hope that science will usurp the idolatry of celebrity and billionaire philanthropy. Throw us a bone why don’t ya Bezos!

Social Impact:

Personal Space – The handshake and kiss hello, and even the Bro Hug might evaporate from society. It’s already being espoused as a good time to stop it forever by healthcare experts. We can expect post corona social interactions to only be quasi-physical.

Increased Authoritarianism – Given the fear and solution authoritarian rule game to the virus, it opens a space for the acceptance of authoritarian rule. We’ll shift away from hyper individualism and the corporatization of society. We’ll revalue structure, control and certainty of risk avoidance.

Strengthened Family Units – Extended family lock downs will strengthen the value we put on the family unit and provide a war like and permanent bonding experience which will be generational and strengthen the value we put on the nuclear family. Historical evidence suggest that authoritarian regimes have stronger family units as a counter balance.

Digital Divide Exposed – COVID has exposed a digital divide amongst demographics. The most financially disadvantaged workers are also those who can’t work from home, and tend to be customer facing. Home schooling has also created a dearth for less well-off families whose kids lack access to basic technology to assist in home learning. This will become a focus of Gov. to ensure internet access and access to portable hardware such as laptops becomes part of the standard educational resources provided by Gov.

Re-Birth of Essentialism – Covid-19 have proven everything outside of food, housing, energy and healthcare are largely optional. By learning what we can live without a new era of essentialism will both be a cause and result of the new post covid frugality.

Decline in Celebrity Culture – The moved towards essentialism, will be a start reminder of the little value celebrity adds to our daily live. With a lack of production qualities in their covid-19 media output we’ve realised few celebrities have special talents – the celebrity herd will thin and influencers will see they are the most expendable as marketing budgets get cut.

Revival of Public Spaces – The increased usage of public parks and spaces will provide a new interest in protecting these resources and upgrading their facilities.

Cracks appear in Life Optimisation Movement – The idea of Life hacking and optimisations emanating out of Silicon Valley will become exposed as a flawed way to turn yourself into an economic robot. We’ve been reminded that just being and having freedom to move around is far more important than using digital tools to track how many steps you do, how well you sleep and counting other measures our bodies already track for us.

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Stay safe & keep thinking, Steve.