MSP121 [] We Are All Gen-C

This is a download from the FM 89.9, the Business Station. It's Friday, my name is Jas Randu and for the past six weeks, MSB's Matt Amartich has reverted to his quantum state, searching the timelines to see what our world would look like in a post-COVID-19 landscape. His research only took him a nanosecond and he spent the rest of the six weeks locked in a badly-coded subroutine. Matt, welcome back.

How did you end up in that subroutine? Hey, Geoff, well, you know, one of the advantages of not being a real boy is that when I'm not doing these shows, I get to zip around at the speed of light. Now, one of the disadvantages is that, you know, digital life is a little bit like that movie in a space. You know, you come across all kinds of hazards at the particle level that you don't have to think about in your day-to-day existence.

For me, that has the advantage that the part of me that is human can actually dodge the coronavirus because, you know, I can view it at the atomic level. But moving at the speed of light does make stopping very difficult, which means that I can sometimes end up trapped in, you know, badly written areas of software and, of course, in the dark corners of the internet. I don't think the confinement order has had a very good effect on you. We'll just try imagining what six weeks trapped at the speed of light is actually like.

I mean, that's pretty much an eternity. The miracle is that I didn't come out more insane than I actually am. And, you know how difficult it is to find a psychiatrist who understands commands in SQL. We have this weird dichotomy in that over the last six weeks that we've been off air.

So much has changed yet so many things haven't moved at all. Notably, us, the race of couch potatoes that was formerly known as human beings. You know, millions of us have been folded into our sofas or our dining room chairs in our attempts to, you know, work or entertain ourselves. We've had to teach ourselves how to use collaborative tools and video conferencing software, how to conduct meetings when kids and pets are growing in the background.

You know, how many of us have had to put a group of people on hold? Because suddenly we're answering the door to a delivery of food or, you know, whatever else it is that we've ordered. And yet we're calling this the new normal. Fascinating as it is.

I don't think anyone really joined us for your fantasies about being computer code. Do we actually have a topic for today? Well, as listeners can hear, the global pandemic hasn't affected Jeff's good nature or his sense of humor. They're still as bluntly tipped as they ever were.

But as I said a moment ago, so much has changed and so much has stayed still. So as economies, including Malaysia, start to reopen and tentatively move away from this kind of lockdown position. I thought we could take a whistle stop look at what this new normal might look like. You know, some of it is probably very obvious and you may have heard it before.

But I'm going to try and stay away from the really frightening stuff today, because there isn't any frightening stuff. It's all going to be meadows and unicorns and lollipops forever. Seriously? Well, I'm going to talk more about how we can actually adapt and evolve to embrace this new era.

And I guess one of the first things is going to be identifying this so-called Generation C. Now, a lot of doctors and researchers are anticipating a baby boom over the next seven months to a year. And some cultural commentators are identifying those new births and probably the children who have been born over the last four or five years and classifying them as this potential Generation C. But I think we should probably extend that a little.

You know, it's very rare that we have events that have such a cultural effect on multiple generations at the same time. I think the last one I can remember is probably the death of Nirvana's Kurt Cobain. Seriously? Okay, fine.

We're going to have to send your humor chip in for a service. I think you're like a Singaporean robot dog at the moment. You know, you tend to see these cross-generational impacts during what are unfortunately the catastrophic events, you know, disasters, world wars, pandemics like this one, all the terrible stuff that tends to happen. But there is a unifying element to them.

So while we may not all experience them in the same way, for example, coronavirus has different impacts on people according to their age, their health conditions. There are perhaps even variations on how it impacts people across different racial groups, things that can't be explained away by social or environmental factors. And these are all things that are starting to emerge now. But the way that the virus has grand the world to a halt has become almost a universal constant.

So in that sense, I think it's fair to look at all of us as being members of this Generation C. Where do you think we will see the greatest impacts? Well, that's, you know, that's a really tough question. There may well be generational differences to what we consider to be the greatest impact.

I mean, we can take travel as an example for people of a certain age, air travel, flying is much more natural than taking a train or a bus. Well, that's because no one has invented the bus yet. Well, I'm sure there's a startup in San Francisco, co-share dorm, lockdown at the moment, and feverishly working up plans for a public transportation system that doesn't leave the ground. I guess we can all expect to read about it in the pitching press sometime in the next few months.

It'll probably have a snappy name like public urbanized traffic system, but they'll use a Z instead of an S for that last one to make it seem more zippy. But, you know, this expansion of air travel is actually a relatively new phenomenon. It was only in the, I think, mid to late 1990s that we really saw that kind of rapid expansion of budget airlines, especially those airlines specializing in short haul flights. And the sector really mushroomed during the noughties, the early part of this new century, to the point where you could literally fly for a dollar, giving rise to this bizarre phenomenon that flying was often the cheapest way of travelling between two neighbouring cities.

You don't think we'll see a return of that kind of behavior? Well, look at how much has changed. You know, many countries are now posing quarantine restrictions on travellers coming into their countries. So let's say you're, Jeff, Sandos, the CEO of Jefferson.com, and you want to travel to see some potential investors in Berlin.

You might be faced with quarantining yourself for two weeks on your way into Germany and another two weeks on your return to Malaysia. That's a month of quarantine for a two-hour meeting. Now, most of us, especially when we travel for pleasure, you know, we travel for relatively short durations. You know, that weekend break in Bangkok now looks surprisingly, you know, unattainable.

And of course, while there may be bug-infairs to be had in the short term as airlines scramble to fill seats on, you know, the kind of absolute minimum capacity they have to maintain. In the longer term, I think we're likely to see much higher prices because fewer flights are going to be put on and with much more stringent conditions attached to them. Over the last 10 to 15 years, airlines are trying to increase eating capacity on existing planes. In the post-coronavirus, well, are we likely to see social distancing on flights?

That is a really interesting question. You know, many of us have seen the pictures of the erasure flight crew in their virus-proof uniforms and, you know, queued us to the airline for doing its utmost to protect its staff. But the passengers also want to know that they're protected. If I remember right, there was a story that we covered probably last year where airlines were prototyping standing seats for passengers on short haul flights.

Now, I don't think the idea of standing on a flight is especially absurd. But if you're looking at a social distancing model, you know, standing might actually make sense. I don't know, I'm not an aviation engineer, but I think we are going to see a reconfiguration of what air travel is and actually what it means. So do you not think that once this virus dissipates or we find some kind of vaccine for it?

People will just go back to the all-behavirus, especially when it comes to traveling? Well, this is one of the discussions that have been raging between psychologists and behavioral scientists. How much of a long-term effect will this have? And it plays into that idea of breaking bad habits by disrupting them.

Because this is an enormous social experiment in behavior switching, a little bit more of which are for the break. But the preliminary consensus seems to be that we won't revert to those original norms, because a lot of those norms were actually quite recent themselves. And our addiction to flying is one of those new norms. And that's also borne out by aviation experts who are themselves betting that it will take years for demand for flight tickets for seats to rise to those 2019 levels again.

After the break, we'll get Matt out of his flying seat and onto other matters. Stay tuned, BFM 89.9. Brand-friendly marketeers, BFM 89.9. And we're back.

Before the break, we were talking about Generation C and we touched on aviation. Before we move on, Matt, do you think we'll see a resumption of domestic flights? Well, again, another interesting question. I'm something of an unashamed apologist for the aviation industry.

I know how much of an impact it has on the environment, but I've long argued that the end sort of justifies the means when it comes to the benefits of air travel. Now, you've been posting a lot about sell-it over this lockdown period. Are your spinach and rocket leaves airflow? Well, they are, but I'm not trying to justify an entire industry on the basis of my appreciation of non-indigenous greens.

I think the cultural gains from flying have had almost as much impact as the internet, more so in some ways, because we tend to find we like each other when we meet face-to-face, whereas online or default setting is more likely to be, you know, hate and mistrust. But I think that the case for domestic air travel is not a cut and dried one. For example, I think the French government has made a requirement of their bailout to Air France that they eradicate or at least massively pare down their domestic flights. But, you know, France is relatively geographically homogenous.

It has very extensive road and rail links, and its infrastructure is in pretty good shape. So you can argue the case that domestic air travel is relatively inessential for a country like France, but that isn't the same with every country. Some countries like the United States, Australia, Canada, Russia, China are simply enormous. You know, they need those air links because travelling across land would be very, very slow.

And other countries like Malaysia don't have the luxury of the kind of road and rail links that a lot of developed nations enjoy, not to mention that the country is, you know, literally split into by the South China Sea. But you think we'll see global growth in domestic tourism? For sure. Airbnb, the Global Gig Accommodation Site, laid off, I think, 1900 staff last week.

So that's an indicator of the scale of this kind of tourism problem globally. But domestic tourism could potentially absorb some of those losses. Now, we would have to assume that employment levels rapidly climbed back to their pre-coronavirus levels, so that's a big ask. But I think we will see people wanting to take trips, and those trips will necessarily be closer to home due to travel and border controls.

And also because countries that can will be prioritising their domestic tourism segments. We're already hearing talk about something called bubble travel. So countries like Australia, New Zealand, are weirdly even greased that have managed to keep their infection rates relatively low. They seem to be willing to forge new visa and travel conditions with each other to promote business and eventually leisure travel between those kind of approved or bubble locations, where I think we'll see the real losers are the countries that are usually less wealthy, the ones that are more dependent on international tourism and lack a wealthy enough local population to make up some of that shortfall.

Going back to Airbnb, what is the gig economy going to look like from here on in? Lots of interesting questions today. We tend to talk about the gig economy as this amorphous blob. We tend to group it as loose or irregular or contract employment.

As I said, we've already mentioned Airbnb. So that company gives you the power to rent out, underuse space in your home or even your entire home to strangers who want to pay to stay there. Services like Uber have marketed themselves on the power to supplement your income and work the hours that suit your lifestyle. So there's always this undercurrent of empowerment that runs through their messaging.

It allows families to work around their kids' schedules. It allows unpaid carers to get a foot back in the regular working economy. But as we've seen, working conditions in the gig economy are often far from equal, and they're generally far from equalling those of full-time or tenured employees. So the effects of the pandemic are unequally applied to the gig economy?

Yeah, absolutely. Some sectors have come to a literally a hard stop. So three months ago, you would not have placed money on Uber pivoting their business model. The company's growth looked pretty much unstoppable.

Yet last week, they took a substantial stake in the East Scooter ride share company line. They seem to be betting that two wheels in the open air are actually the way of the future for the company and for urban transport. You know, until we can come up with cars that self-cleans after every passenger journey, many people are likely to limit their use of transport options like e-hailing and taxis, long after this current emergency reaches a plateau. But it does look like the business is booming in the logistics sector.

Yeah, and I think we have to split that into two halves, you know, delivery and e-commerce, in terms of, you know, delivery and logistics. You know, wow, what a fantastic job those people are doing in keeping, you know, food and supplies flowing to our doors. Who is actually benefiting that from that? Well, you know, that's going to change company by company, but I would certainly be paying my workers some pretty hefty bonuses and incentives right now if I was running one of those companies.

But what we've kind of seen over the last few weeks is essentially a redrawing of the commerce sector. Over the last few years, you know, we've gradually been getting used to buying things online. You tend to get comfortable buying one thing at a time. You might buy some non perishable that are either cheaper or aren't available locally.

Then you kind of up your game, you buy a pair of jeans in a sale because, you know, they're so cheap that you can take the risk that they won't fit. And different countries are adopting e-commerce at different speeds? Well, yeah, exactly. You know, spend half an hour by your front gate and count the number of delivery vehicles flying by.

So as I said, you know, we've redrawn the retail map to an extent. My local supermarkets are all in malls and experience, I think many Malaysians share. And it's been an incredibly strange experience venturing into these kind of largely closed down and often darkened hangers. And now that the shops in them have finally started to reopen, it's a very different shopping experience from before.

You can't try clothes on, you can't sample most beauty products. So in a very real sense, these stores have suddenly become showrooms for their online versions. So, you know, it goes back to what we were saying before the break about that habit-breaking activity. What do you mean?

Well, you know, we buy fresh produce in person because we want to touch and feel it. But now you feel bad about touching something that you don't take. You know, occasionally I've picked up the wrong item in a store and I genuinely wonder, is it better to buy something I don't want than having the social pressure of being seen putting something back onto the shelves. You know, so now we go into stores, but we feel that we can't really touch.

So you ask yourself, what's the point in that? You know, you might as well buy it online and have it delivered to your door and you've got no potential contamination risk from handing over cash or putting your card on a public terminal or interacting with someone at the till. Go online, one click, pay and deliver. That payment technology, what kind of impact has it had on e-wallets and RFID payment technologies?

Well, obviously right now, most people simply don't want to handle cash. You know, one thing we've seen is I think a definite governmental deficit worldwide when it comes to electronic transactions and making them easier during this crisis. You know, we've heard various countries sounding off about adopting digital currencies. I think Sweden and their e-croner is probably a notable exception.

But what we've not really seen, or at least I haven't picked up on, are any real attempts to accelerate that digital currency adoption curve. And that's fair enough. You know, most countries are currently grappling with both health care and financial crises simultaneously. And I guess neither of those is really a good backdrop to start fiddling around with the currency.

But that's left us with this kind of vast number of stopgap measures. And it's, you know, it's a very fractured market. In terms of a huge number of service providers? Well, how many e-wallets are currently sitting on your phone?

I mean, I've got at least three, and I don't really even use any of them. One restaurant I grabbed take away from recently wasn't accepting debit or credit payments. It would only take cash or one specific e-wallet service that I didn't have. So I had to dig into a pocket of my bag to find cash for probably the first time in a couple of weeks.

But until we can come to some consensus about the services we use or create more interoperability between them, then I think that the impact is going to be, you know, kind of muddied and dissipated at best. That's just a shot on view, isn't it? Oh, absolutely. I mean, one of the most eye-opening aspects of the coronavirus has been its ability to highlight deficiencies in the way the modern world operates.

One of the most incredible success stories, I think, of the last couple of months has been the internet. You know, for the last few years, we've constantly been told that the internet is on the verge of melting down yet. And I'm sure this has also banned a lot of extremely hard work by teams of dedicated staff at the internet service providers. You know, yet the internet has shown itself to be remarkably robust.

Cloud services have kept businesses operational. We've experienced these huge increases in bandwidth use as the world starts working and socializing from home via video services. You know, the internet has kept us connected, entertained, informed, supplied and safe. But to go back to those electronic retail services, you know, Apple has quietly been releasing and updating its products over the past few weeks.

Whereas most consumer manufacturers are pretty much grand to a halt. But one of the things that gets an upgrade in most of those Apple models is a security chip that makes Apple pay transactions easier and safer. It's a conspiracy. Well, I imagine most of those changes were, you know, well in the pipeline already, but it shows that Apple is betting a lot of muscle on its payment technologies for the future.

You know, Samsung is another company that's trying to be a pioneer in this area as well, but it doesn't have quite that same ecosystem advantage that Apple has. No, you were talking about not wanting to put items you've touched back on the shelves. How are we going to deal with that whole aspect of physical touching in public spaces? Well, do you remember a couple of years ago during one of the haze episodes, you know, we started to see physical buttons on automatic doors again, you know, so that they wouldn't just open all the time and let all the pollution into buildings.

One supermarket that I've been going to has had a member of staff just to push those door buttons so that the customers wouldn't have to touch them because touch has become this real issue. Think about the number of public touch screens that we use on a regular basis or the buttons on, you know, the ATM machines or just pressing the buttons in something simple like a lift. I think this is going to be a tipping point for a lot of voice and gesture and motion activated technologies. Voice will talk about a bit more next week.

You know, I promised everyone that this episode would be a quick tour, but you know, as usual, I've headed out for a 100 meter dash, but taken everyone on a marathon instead. So obviously we're going to have to continue this conversation next week. Why do you want to cover voice next week? Well, time, of course, but also because, you know, there's an exclusionary aspect to some of these new developments going back to touch.

I think we'll see accelerated development of gesture control technologies. ATMs with a keypad that you can touch from an inch or two away, doors that you can wave open, information boards that you navigate, you know, again waving your hands through the air. I remember being shown a Leap Motion Controller by a developer friend a few years ago and thinking, you know, it was really cool, but having to wear this bracelet thing really kind of limited its functionality. But a few years later, you know, sensor technology is already probably a million generations further on.

So gesture tech developers, like OctreLeap, have created virtual haptic technology to accompany those devices and make them more user friendly. So just like that, you know, gesture interfaces are out of the niche curio box and into the mass adoption segment, which is where we'll pick things up next week with, you know, sliding air screens, edging generation C closer to Tom Cruise's world of minority report. That was my advantage. They're talking about we are all Gen C's back after six weeks, but I guess something's never changed.

BFM 89.9.