Tag: technology

The Decade in Tech

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

It’s pretty easy to forget how much a new technology changes our lives once it’s adopted. Sure, some new technologies are like shooting stars, but some change everything forever. So, for posterity’s sake, I’ve laid out a list of new technologies that changed how we do things, and maybe even the direction of our species. Enjoy!

2010

What happened: Google leaves China + Uber launches in App Store

Why it mattered: Google leaving China was the start of a New Cold War. China pushed hard to create clones of Western online services and even made better ones – see WeChat. This time the Cold War isn’t an arms race, but a race for quantum and data supremacy. The weird part is that USA and China both surveil their citizens, though the Chinese government isn’t making a secret of tracking their citizens, while the USA is pretending it’s about security when clearly it’s not.

Uber hitting the App Store was about much more than putting taxis on notice for terrible service. It was the start of the immediacy economy – anything and everything on demand, delivered to wherever we happen to be. The start of a massive GPS-driven logistics and mobility revolution.

2011

What happened: Twitch is launched + Steve Jobs dies

Why it mattered: For the uninitiated, Twitch is an online streaming service to watch people play video games. If it sounds ridiculous to you, then just remember that in many cultures we gather in giant stadiums to watch teams of adult humans dressed in co-ordinated attire kick dead animal skins through white sticks (football). It really was the start of the meta-economy where online activities are starting to gather layers and blur with the ‘real world’.

The death of Steve Jobs cemented his legacy as a quasi-Jesus figure for tech fans the world over. The problem was this created a dangerous idolatry of any innovation big tech companies launched at us. From this, the negative externalities have been ignored for far too long – including the massive issues we are now facing with Big Tech’s monopoly powers on par with nation states.

2012

What happened: Facebook buys Instagram for $US 1 billion + Tinder launches

Why it mattered: An open and fair internet took a massive hit when Facebook bought Instagram. This was the start of a serious economic consolidation of power while regulators were asleep at the wheel. The fact that we have a single ‘media’ organisation – and yes they are a media company – with massive influence over 2.4 billion constituents should make all of us lose sleep at night.

We’ve been finding mates online and in personal columns for decades, but Tinder normalised digital as a preamble to the physical meetup process. Meeting online went from weird to just plain ordinary.

2013

What happened: Edward Snowden’s NSA revelations + Facebook goes public with IPO.

Why it mattered: Snowden’s revelations of a mass surveillance programme targeting US citizens was the first time the wider population saw the downside of digital. While most people still don’t care, or at least act like they don’t, it did signal that privacy and security will eventually become the workplace health and safety of the modern era. If we are fortunate, it might spawn a new industry to protect our civil rights, while society and lawmakers catch up with the the reality of the risks.

Facebook goes public. Interestingly, its founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg sends a letter to shareholders claiming that its mission of connecting (controlling) the world is more important than profit – but he fails to mention in said letter that he can never be removed from office or voted out. Just think of this: Mark Zuckerberg is in control of more people than anyone, ever, in history. To date, its market capitalisation has now increased fourfold since the IPO. Welcome to the Zuckerberg Dynasty.

2014

What happened: Facebook buys WhatsApp + Amazon Echo is launched

Why it mattered: It’s strange to me that Facebook was able to make an acquisition valued at $US 16 billion and still not capture the attention of antitrust regulation. They also said it was ‘impossible’ to integrate FB and WhatsApp services and data. Then, just like magic, they were able to do it a couple of years later, lolz… see 2012 above.

The launch of the voice services with Amazon Echo will be remembered in the future as the time when we truly started to communicate with AI. This was that moment. This will be when it got real.

2015

What happened: Google driverless vehicle hits the road + SpaceX lands first rocket

Why it mattered: When Google (now Waymo) put its driverless car out for all to see on a real road, industrialists sat up and took notice. We realised that cars were very quickly becoming rolling computers, that the digital world now shaped the physical world too. That was the moment that every business knew it too was now in the technology business.

The Space Race was once the exclusive domain of Big Gov. After a few decades of neglect, it has been miraculously revived as a private industry. If anything – this should signify the era of the bodacious billionaire where they have as much (or more?) power than elected governments.

2016

What happened: Donald Trump elected President + Theranos implodes

Why it mattered: In my view Trump is an inevitable symptom of crazy times and a radical pace of change. But it was the moment the wider world realised that news isn’t news anymore. We all live in echo chambers of existing belief systems and our minds can be hacked by the power of algorithms.

When blood diagnosis health startup Theranos was exposed as a scam – everyone started to understand that not all unicorns would live up to their hype, valuations or even their product promises. It was time to be very aware that in the real physical world beyond photo sharing apps, it’s very important that products actually work.

2017

What happened: Cambridge Analytica scandal + Bitcoin bubble

Why it mattered: The Cambridge Analytica scandal particularly annoyed me because it wasn’t the Cambridge Analytica scandal – it was actually a Facebook scandal. I don’t know how The Zuck pulled it off, but it was a stunning exercise showcasing the dark arts of blame deflection.

The bursting of the Bitcoin and crypto bubble was one we had to have. I liken it to the dot-com bubble of 1999. Cryptocurrency too will come back and change our lives, and this new financial system might change the world even more than the internet has.

Here’s the history of Bitcoin price:

2018

What happened: GDPR + Deep Fakes arrive

Why it mattered: The EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) put surveillance capitalism on notice. While the opening gambit was small and probably affected the competitors of Big Tech more than those it was aimed at, it was the start of a movement to give power back to the people.

The first flurry of deepfakes hit the world and blew minds. But just wait until they are free and anyone can do it. It might just spell the end of audio visual truth. A few years from now, we’ll be asking people if they were actually there to prove it happened. This could put a massive schism into the entire web and anything news-related.

2019

What happened: Antitrust actions commence on Big Tech + Greta Thunberg named Time Magazine’s Person of the Year

Why it mattered: Antitrust actions taking place this year are a classic turning of the tide and the realisation we are in the middle of a gilded technopoly. The next decade will be one of regulation versus innovation – with the former taking precedence over the latter. It won’t be about stopping or slowing down technology, rather about civilising it so we can have progress for all humanity, not just the fortunate few.

Greta showed the world than even a child can command attention on issues vital for humanity. It’s amazing what can be said when words are not guided by vested interests. Here’s what I know for sure: we have all the technology we need today to have a low carbon emission economy. The kicker is that such a shift to a new energy model is probably the only way to maintain the economic growth the grownups seem to love so much.

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For me this is an era where the development of technology won’t slow – but its implementation might and it will certainly be more considered, competitive and wide-reaching for whom it benefits. I can’t wait to push deeper into the next decade and help build a future we all deserve.

The ATAR Disaster

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

I was once invited into a major university to lead a discussion on the Future of Education. I was excited by the prospect of exploring deeply and honestly what higher education is really for, and how it should look in the future. Ironically, I almost go chased out of the room by the same academics who invited me to challenge them.

The short version of the story goes like this: We started out by first workshopping what education was for. As expected we broadly agreed that it was for the enlightenment and betterment of society. To provide opportunities for people (students) to learn, grow and make a positive contribution socially and economically. They also agreed that purpose was more important than profit.

After this I then challenged them on why they even have an ATAR score? I continued, surely this is an outdated idea based on a model of scarcity which no longer exists? This is when things got ugly. They turned on me like I was the devil.

For those who don’t know the ATAR is a ranking system of students which is based on their academic performance in year 12. The rankings are then used to decide who gets into the ‘limited’ places Universities have for students in various courses. The more popular the course / university the higher the ATAR becomes to get into a course. To be clear, the ATAR requirment for courses is a popularity measure, not a minimum level of competence required to pass the University course. 

Back to my session at the University: After I asked about the ATAR, the attendees made lots of arguments as to why rankings and limiting numbers of students was absolutely vital. I remember this day like it has been carved into my brain with blood. So I thought I share some of the discussion which followed given that the ATAR numbers for 2019 were released just yesterday.

Academic Argument 1: Students with low ATAR’s wouldn’t be capable to pass the course they want to do.

My Counters: How do you know? Maybe the kids passion for the subject will motivate them more, maybe they are more suited to the independent study style and methods of assessment of Universities? If they do fail, so be it – why exclude them before they have a chance to prove themselves?

Academic Argument 2: We’ll end up with too many people in certain industries & areas of study.

My Counters: That’s fine – it’s a free market economy, why not let demand and supply sort out where things land, let the market decide. Economic incentives will naturally balance the market. In any case many jobs people will do 10 years from now don’t exist yet, and a large percentage of students never work in their area of formal study.

Academic Argument 3: Universities can’t fit every student that wants to study at it. Also, it would be too difficult to tutor the students, run ‘pracs’ and mark their work.

My Counters: University is like ecommerce now – we can run effective on-line versions of most courses. The size of the buildings is a limit in your minds, not our digital reality. Even so, why not have two divisions of study. On campus (those who got the ATAR) and off campus for those who didn’t make the cut. Most students don’t attend lectures these days anyway – it’s mostly done online and they submit work online. Surely a growing student base also creates employment opportunities for tutoring and marking? Why couldn’t we build new labs in alternative locations required for practical study as well?

Academic Argument 4: It’s not just the study, it’s the social element of the university, people learn from connections and being in the space.

My Counters: Let students self organise, provide forums for them to connect on, potential links with industry bodies. In any case, the environment might not be as important as you imagine.

Academic Argument 5: It would cost way too much to let every student who wants to go to University to get it.

My Counters: Expensive, yes. But hardly unaffordable. Education is our 3rd biggest export and our top 5 Universities alone have an endowment exceeding $10 billion.

You get the picture. This went on for the best part of an hour. It even got weirder at lunch, I had to sit at a table by myself, in fact some people got up and left the table I sat down at. I guess some people don’t like reality, especially when it may change how things might operate where they earn their living. I’m still glad I had the courage to do what I was asked. Mind you, I’ve had some terrific experiences presenting at Universities and even taught undergraduate students at Australia’s number 1 ranked University for a number of years. My views are not coming from some outsider who ‘doesn’t understand the system’.

Why this Matters

But here’s why I’m so passionate about the problems with the ATAR and its use for ultimate entry into Universities: It doesn’t just measure intelligence or effort. It’s really a measure of financial discrimination. The ATAR is a total disaster, designed to exclude, perpetuate false scarcity and maintain the power structure of higher education institutions.

No doubt, students with great year 12 results earn them. But the ATAR rankings by school look more like a rank for household income than anything else. In this country, we start the a process of financial discrimination from the first year of school. Just look at the top ranking schools for ATAR and the pattern is clear. Those with the most resources, get the best results. I don’t buy for a second that kids from less resourced back grounds couldn’t get the same results if they had the same access.

While we talk a lot about ‘A Fair Go’ in this country, we clearly ignore that when it comes to education. It’s a clear caste system, perpetuating generational advantage long before kids become independent economic agents.

My conclusion is that every single reason we restrict study isn’t for the students or the potential of society, but to maintain power structures in society and within educational institutions. Sadly, those with the power to change it are the beneficiaries of the existing system. If we really want to solve the massive problems we face as a society and ecologically, then we should probably aim to have as many educated people as possible and not restrict the opportunities to higher learning.

The Biggest Tech Trend for 2020

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

The biggest tech trend in 2020 won’t be a new widget or a shiny piece of glass. It will be one of the oldest technologies from civilised society: governance.

One of our species’ oldest and most important technologies is language itself. Our ability to write and document knowledge is what puts us on top of the food chain. Part of the documentation process is the rules, regulations and boundaries we use to govern the market place. 2020 will be the year we remember for how we ‘civilised’ the technology we all love so much.

In the past 20 years we have metaphorically discovered fire. The internet has become a tool which is so vital for mere economic participation, that no one dared asked if we should be careful about its consequences. But this fire has got a little out of control recently. While we want its heat, we need to make sure we don’t all get burned in the long run. Fire can keep our houses warm, cook our food and power a combustion engine, but it can also burn down a city if we don’t build in thoughtful safeguards.

Finally activists and governments are starting to take notice. Next year we’ll see actions which will make the GDPR look like child’s play. We can expect a number of market changing actions to commence. Things like antitrust action, algorithmic regulation, digital advertising standards, tax on data holdings, bans on data surveillance, outlawing of facial recognition and social media content standards, to name a few. Ironically, this will be a huge challenge for the disrupters themselves, as they have built entire business models around this largely unregulated territory. When it comes to tech, the ‘EPA’ is about to arrive to take a good close look at how they’ve been polluting our society with their data economy externalities.

So will there be any big tech shifts in 2020? Of course, they’ll keep coming thick and fast: digital twins, mesh architecture, hyper automation, human augmentation,  bio-tech interfaces, and autonomous things. But next year, the big issue will be the management of the political, social and economic consequences of the exponential technology in businesses.

Good news:

Tommy McCubbin and I have developed a new session we call 2020 Vision.

A year in review – A year in preview.

In this session, we review 2019 and preview 2020 by looking at what happened, what it means and what’s next. Many of the insights will surprise even the most agile of technology observers. The entire thing is presented in GIFs – yep, you read that right. It’s a fun session to end the year with your team, and sew the seeds of the thinking needed to thrive in 2020. We only have 6 slots available and I expect them to be gone by Monday.

If your team is up for it, hit me back with reply email and get ready to have your mind blown.

Steve.

Why No One Cares About Data Hacks

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

No one cares about getting hacked for 1 simple reason: Data is one of the few things that can be stolen and yet remain in its original location.

You’ve been hacked, your data is stolen, and yet you still have it. It’s very unusual. So when it happens we don’t feel violated. When something physical is stolen from us, or broken, the problem is obvious – there’s a void, we get emotional and we take action. One type of hack we care far more about is ransomware attacks. In this instance we are forced to pay a ransom to regain access to our files. And you guessed it, the reason we care is because the data is gone. But in the case of 99% of data hacks the victim is totally unaware it has even happened.

Hacking isn’t really hacking, it’s stealing. The incorrect naming is part of the problem and while segments of our society care deeply about hacking (me included) we generally care far less than we should. So let’s conduct a couple of quick thought experiments.

Senario 1

You get on line one morning only to discover you’ve been hacked. All the pictures of your family for the past 10 years are gone from every device, forever. All of a sudden you care.

Senario 2

You get to work only to find that every email you’ve ever sent, received, saved and filed is gone. All your projects, all that corporate ass covering, everything gone. All of a sudden you care.

Senario 3

It’s Friday night you go to watch a movie, put on some of your music, the digital versions you bought, but the files are all gone. Stolen. All of a sudden you care.

Scenario 4

Imagine you go to buy something with PayWave. Yet, all your money in digital form (read here all of it)  has gone to zero overnight. All of a sudden you care.

Scenario 5

Your autonomous car starts driving somewhere you didn’t ask it to. It’s gathering speed heading towards a bunch of pedestrians. All of a sudden you care.

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This last scenario is the is the best example of why we need to start caring much more than we do. It’s a glimpse into the future of hacking. Hacking with real physical and immediate consequences. Digital stuff is about to control our electricity grid, drive our cars, run our houses and maybe one day regulate our heart beats and augment our brains.  We have to fix this stuff now, while it’s relatively easy and long before we finish building the computational cage we’ll be living in.

 

Zero External Energy Buildings

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

Our buildings are a great reflection of where we’re at technologically. Once a revolution is truly mainstream, we see it in our homes. In the past century, we’e added electricity, indoor plumbing, white goods, entertainment devices, and even computational power and AI. But we are about to do something so different, it might require new language to describe it.

Zero External Energy (ZEE) Buildings

In the near future, buildings will be rated not just on their efficiency, but on their energy generation-to-usage ratio. But this will be for the entire building and essentially, an input/output measure. As the cost of going off-grid with solar panels and battery storage plummets, fossil fuels’ days are numbered. Once most houses are powered by renewables, a new measurement will occur. We’ll want to know how much external energy the building uses. We will enter the world of the ZEE building.

A Zero External Energy building is one that generates all the energy it needs to sustain itself entirely – 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Most will be via solar, but some buildings will employ wind, geothermal and other emerging renewables like artificial photosynthesis. Expect to hear someone say, ‘My new house is fully ZEE’ within 10 years. In this world, walls and surfaces of a building will have a purpose beyond keeping the weather out. Every inch of the roof will capture energy and so will our windows. An amazing Australian company called ClearVue already produces solar panel windows as seen below:

ZEE buildings will:

  • not have an energy-based carbon footprint
  • have enough energy to charge electric cars
  • eventually produce more energy than they need.

So, what do we do with all that extra energy? We’ll trade it.

Enter the Energy Internet

No, we won’t trade this energy with power companies. Instead, we’ll trade it with each other across an energy network, as the grid becomes decentralised, looking and behaving a lot like the internet. It’s often referred to as the Energy Internet. Just like we produce content that we trade with each other over the communications internet, we’ll trade the excess energy our buildings produce with other services, markets or places who need it when we have an excess. But in the long run, the exponential improvement in energy capture will lead to buildings using this energy to grow food.

A New Kind of Calorie Count

Many spaces in buildings will be deployed to grow food with new types of urban agriculture. These will be managed by AI and robotics so we don’t need to attend to them with human labour. Green buildings will have a yield which isn’t a return on investment from tenants – but food grown on walls, top floors and even in car parks.

As cars become autonomous, many car parking spaces will be converted into urban agriculture – even car spaces which are underground. Remember, we don’t necessarily need sun – we just need light, energy and water which we will have an abundance of. Once this happens we’ll also start valuing buildings based on how many calories they produce each year. “I live in an 180 million calorie house – it can feed a family of four.”

While this might sound weird – compare how weird it would have been to own a refrigerator just 200 years ago, let alone an energy rating for it. For this and ideas like it to happen, we have to start thinking sideways. We have to look for ways to apply technology it was not designed for. When we start cross-fertilising tech ideas like this (and yes, that pun was totally intended), then we can take giant leaps towards solving our biggest ecological challenges.

The problem with corporate climbing

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

A weird fact about corporate career hierarchy climbing is this: the skills you need to get to the top are not the skills you need once you get there. Some leaders are true polymaths who can adapt to the different behaviour needed. But we’ve all experienced managers who make us wonder how the heck they ended up running the show.

So there are two parts to the problem: skills and politics.

The Skills Problem

Think about the work we do at lower levels in most organisations. It’s about managing process and executing with excellence. But as we climb the ladder, it becomes about managing strategy, people and finance. While they feed into each other, you need to prove your executional skills before you get a shot at the strategic tasks. But what happens when people excel at the more capstone strategic tasks but not the rudimentary executional elements? Here’s what happens – they never get a chance to show what they’re made of. It’s why many talented people who just don’t quite fit the corporate mould end up going it alone as freelancers or starting up their own firm. In this instance, Big Co misses out on great talent.

The Political Problem

Another way people climb the hierarchy is via the political process. The people good at managing up tend to advance further than those who don’t, regardless of companies claiming they promote purely on merit. Political performance in many companies outweighs all other factors. But the problem is that once they ascend to the stratosphere of leadership, they need to be very effective at managing down, motivating and empowering the troops to form a strong team. These are two very different sets of skills that are challenging for one person to master.

What’s this got to do with the future and what to do about it

Technological disruption is most often a top-down phenomenon. It’s the leaders of the organisation who choose the strategic direction and allocate capital for their future revenue streams. Getting to the top is a long journey. The winners tend to believe what got them there in the first place is what they need to continue doing.

Board members of established firms looking to survive disruptive change might need to rethink how they staff the C-Suite. Perhaps the dissidents who never made it past middle management or who left disgruntled are just what they need in times of rapid change.

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Be sure to check out and subscribe to Future Sandwich Now-Soon-Later my weekly web series to keep you up to date on the latest tech news to give you sound bites of brilliance for the boardroom!

Never grow your vegetables in someone else’s garden

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

In an attention economy it is a compelling offer for a website to offer access to an audience of 2.4 billion people (Facebook) or promise that 90% of all internet searches start with you (Google). It would seem as though the only rational choice would be to do business on their platform.

It’s here that the most important business lesson my father taught me comes to mind:

Never grow your vegetables in someones else’s garden.

The advice is exactly as it sounds. Make sure your own and control where you build your assets and revenue streams. If you don’t there is always the risk that the landlord will change the rules without notice and pull up your roots.

In the digital platform economy most people and companies are growing their veggies in other peoples gardens. While it is very clear there’s an upside to this strategy; speed, simplicity, scale. But the downside is obvious and almost always comes to bear. Eventually the platform landlords increase the rent, or kick you out – but only after you’ve tended their garden, or renovated their house.

The weird thing about this, is that it keeps on happening and people and businesses keep on falling for same trick. Let’s go through a little bit of internet platform history to remind ourselves of the downside and even help us with our Future Proof Platform Strategy Development.

The Likes Deceit:

Marky Zuck said; “Yo, brands out there, generate ‘Likes‘ for your brand on our platform, and you’ll be able to have constant contact with the consumers and fans of your brand. Whenever you post an update, they’ll see it, and you’ll have a direct connection.” Then after brands spent many millions of dollars building a brand following on Facebook young Marky changed his mind. He said “Yeah, about that – well, I’ve changed my mind, and now to reach those same people you invested in my ‘Platform’ to connect with – you need to pay me again – to advertise to them. They are no longer going to see your updates in their news feed.”

Boom – just like that – he pulled up their roots.

The Google Page Rank:

Sergey & Larry said; ‘Yo, businesses out there, we are different to Yahoo and other searches engines (there used to be many). We’re all about helping people find exactly what they are after and sending them immediately to you – We are not a portal like Yahoo. Get on board. Then every website in the world optimised for Google. Then Google became so good at everything and so big, they changed their mind. Google is rapidly becoming a portal where they scrape their suppliers information and keep customers in the Google ecosystem – increasingly they don’t send people who search anywhere. They satisfy their needs right on the Google homepage. Just check out the first listing for my searches today for the Snow reports, Weather reports, The AFL ladder and even Flights.

Sorry about that Snow & Weather Channels…

Thanks for the stats AFL…

Introducing the Google travel agency…

Instagram influencers lose their ‘influence‘:

The latest change to remove the likes count on Instagram has hurt so called influences who get paid on this metric. While facebook have claimed that this shift is to improve users well being and remove the stress of expressing themselves, I can’t help but think they don’t want the leakage of advertising revenue going directly to their users instead of the mothership. I wouldn’t be surprised if they launch an Instagram Influencers dashboard with metrics in the back end to control the money flows in the Influencer economy.

So, it seems the only thing we learn from business history, is that few people learn from business history. Just this week Australian TV news channels joined up with the Facebook platform to get their news to a wider audience. This too won’t end well for those providing the content. Contrary to what many people believe, content is not king. Distribution is more powerful than content – always has been, always will be.

How to manage the Platform Predicament?

So, do I practice what I preach? Yes. The most important piece in the Steve Sammartino portfolio is my own webpage and this blog. I own and control it. Around 5000 people read it each week – not a huge amount, but it’s enough to serve my personal business model.

Of course I use other peoples channels; Linkedin, Youtube, Twitter and Instagram – but my primary goal in using them isn’t to grow a business inside it, but rather to grow some seedlings which I’ll transfer into my own garden.

My advice here is simple. Always spread your platform and digital risk. Ensure you take a portfolio approach and invest in your own channels that you control. Always remember that incentives shape commercial behaviour and we should ensure we remember this for our own purposes too.

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Be sure to check out the Latest Ep. of Future Sandwich Now-Soon-Later – we talk about how in the future you won’t own anything – 4 mins of goodness & insight click here. I’d love if you made a comment on Youtube as well.

Cheers, Steve.