MSP122 [] Gen-C: The Dropout Generation

This is a download from the FM 89.9, the Business Station. It's Friday, my name is Jazandu. In last week's show, MSP's Matt Amoteach put forward his theory that the coronavirus is forging us all into a single unified generation, his generation C, based around the shared experiences of the virus. This week, we're having to take a look at some of the wider and potentially longer lasting cultural and business impact of the virus.

Matt, last week we ended by talking a little bit about gesture interfaces and other potential screenless technology that the virus might prove to be a tipping point for. Hey, Jeff. I mentioned, I think, the company UltraLeap and some of the technologies that it has been developing now. Ever since technologies like the PlayStation, I came out in 2007.

We've been anticipating this world where we can interact with computers and screens using gestures rather than having to touch screens or keyboards. All that, wave your hands in the air and windows slide across. You can scroll web pages. All of that kind of cool stuff.

As you mentioned last week, in the movie Minority Report. Yeah, it's kind of weird how movies and fiction in general become our grounding point for scientific and technological advance. Yet that world, despite a lot of advances in the technology, still seems to be maddeningly far away. We can put these cheap sensors in or on pretty much anything, but really we're still just using evolutions of those 1970s wired keyboards and very simple basic mice.

If you venture back into the pre-virus world in your head and try to remember when you last had to use a public touchscreen, maybe it was an ATM, maybe it was an information terminal somewhere, you probably gave the hygiene aspect, maybe a nanotherm before it blew away, and you took the cash out and you went off the bar, you take out coffee. But how often were those screens maddeningly slow or really buggy? It might have been something to do with the operating system or the actual underlying PC or the program sitting on it, but most likely it was actually the screen itself. Because they have to be so delicate?

Yeah, and not just delicate, costly as anyone who regularly drops their phone, which I guess is probably 90 odd percent of us. And of course they bust the screen in the process. You'll know how expensive those things are. And that's a device that you value and you're usually reasonably gentle with.

It's not the case with public touch screens, which we tend to prod and pour with about as much force as our fingertips can actually take without causing us pain. So in a lot of ways, touch screens are not really well suited to that kind of public use. Even less so right now? Well, precisely, we're seeing this pressure as we start to resume some kind of normal external life to adopt new technologies.

And gesture technology is one area that's really interesting and looks as though it's pretty much ready to go. In that we have the first generation of usable mass production ready products that go beyond those impressive proof of concept displays that we tend to see at tech conferences. You also mentioned voice tech briefly last week? Well, yeah, we've been saying for the last couple of years that we're on the verge of a revolution in screenless and voice assisted technologies.

According to my extensive research... In other words, Google? Well, unfortunately, I don't have an army of assistants and interns who carpet the floor with rose petals as I wander around like the great Jeff Sandoo. So yes, I comprehensively researched it with a Google search.

And Amazon has sold more than 100 million Alexa-equipped devices worldwide. So that's 100 million primarily voice-activated devices just from that one company. And I'm sure Apple has sold probably at least a couple of its much more expensive Siri-equipped home pod speakers as well. But there are countless other manufacturers adding voice functionality either through Alexa, Google, or their own proprietary voice integrations.

Many of us can ask our cars to call people while we're driving. Although, nine out of 10 times, we end up speaking to somebody we only added to our phonebook out of courtesy or we actually stopped speaking to for some reason years ago. But we're starting to become more accepting of our phones, tablets, and computers having those voice systems on and activated by default. Even, you know, especially as many people now wander around with true wireless headphones and earbuds in.

And, you know, I'm guessing here because I haven't seen any data. I'm guessing here would probably be a more accurate name for this show than Matt's plane. Oh, you are on fire today. Or at least the version of you that's in my virtual reality is currently on fire.

As I said, anyway, I haven't seen the data, but I'm guessing that a lot more people are using the voice tech in their phones simply because they don't always want to take those phones out in public places right now. So for simple stuff, like reading messages or asking what the time is, or is this weird brand of pasta sauce going to take okay, that's okay for using these kind of devices for, you know, you can do all of that quite simply over your headphones or your smartwatch and leave your phone in the decontamination pouch in your bag. But I do want to touch on accessibility a little bit here. In what sense, Matt?

Well, I think we have to be very careful that people don't get left behind at this moment in time. Technology is fantastic as long as you actually know how to use it. And this is maybe where my generation's C and L.A.G. does fall down a little bit.

You know, different apps and technology solutions relating to this pandemic have literally been raining down around us. Apps from different government departments, there's overlapping functionality, they're unclear or overlapping jurisdictions. We're seeing regulations coming into force to govern how many people are allowed in shops and places of business at any one time. And many of those retailers are turning to technology solutions like scanning QR codes, for example, that then take you to an online form as part of their contact tracing requirements.

And you're concerned about the people who don't have access to dose technologies? Yeah, you know, I'm part of that generation whose size inwardly every time they see a QR code. It just seems like an extra layer of hassle. It's like whenever I see a QR code, it's always something that someone else used to do for me, you know, like a waiter would come and take my order in a restaurant.

But now they want me to do it on my phone because somehow that's more efficient. Now, of course, this case will vary from country to country here in Malaysia. Most shops are required to take the details of every customer who comes into the store for the purposes of that contact tracing. So this is also one of those measures of how tech savvy businesses are, something we again touched on last week.

As I mentioned, a lot of stores now have this process where you scan the QR code at the entrance. It takes you to that online form. You give them your name and contacts and send them straight to that company's database. Which kind of gets the voice tech example you just gave?

Well, again, this is where the integration aspect of the technology falls down. And it's part of not being able to negotiate the world in ways that make us feel completely safe right now. But it is a balance. You know, there are stores using this Web App model, and there are others that just ask you to write down your details in a shared book, usually with a shared pen that certainly I haven't seen getting wiped down.

So you start to ask yourself, you know, how much confidence does that give me about this particular company? But as we race down this path to use technology to bridge the gaps that the pandemic has created or exposed in our society, you know, are we giving enough thought to the people that these solutions make exclude? So for example, this is just an anecdotal example. But a friend told me about his experience at a supermarket in front of him was an older man, and he was struggling to figure out what was going on with this registration system via QR code.

Now that could have been for any number of reasons. Perhaps it was a language issue. A lot of the QR based apps that I've used have been in English. Perhaps it was something simple.

Maybe he didn't have his reading glasses, or maybe, you know, he's got declining eyesight. Or perhaps it was just the concept of giving all of those personal details online, which many people are simply not very comfortable with. Do you think this is a widespread problem? Well, again, you know, it's an anecdotal.

So my friend said that the particular store didn't have enough staff on hand to explain the system to everyone waiting. I've been to other chains where they actually have two or three staff at the entrance who are going up and down the queue of waiting customers and explaining and assisting where required. But we do know that older people are less likely to buy goods online. So they're more reliant on bricks and mortar retailers.

So it's like incumbent on those retailers to make sure their stores are still for everyone, and not just for people who are tech savvy. You know, I don't like to use the word community. It does tend to be overused and it does get abused by people who think community means that everyone should just be like them. But you think this is the time where we should all be looking out for the more vulnerable members of the society?

Well, it's certainly, I mean, any time is a good time for that, really. But this isn't the time to start excluding people. You know, right now going to the supermarket feels like a military expedition. You don't want to add another layer of stress to that experience for someone who is panicked by the technology or push them to the point where they decide to make do or go without essential items rather than face potential humiliation at the door of a retail store.

You know, that forces people into a place where they're going to feel even more isolated by what's going on at the moment. You know, we're all in a weird place right now. And as counterintuitive as it sounds, now is really about getting businesses back on track. But also it's about looking at the needs of the the can nots and not just those that can.

When we come back, surveillance society and the business models of the post Corona will stick around BFM 89.00. Breakfast for masters, BFM 89.9. Welcome back. It is MSP.

My name is just under together with Matt Amatich. Before the brick, we were talking about some of the technologies that are probably going to help reshape the post pandemic landscape. Matt, you've called today's show the dropout generation. Isn't that something we associate more with the baby boomers and the flower power generation?

I guess so in terms of that, you know, turn on tune in dropout kind of thing. But I guess I'm using it in a slightly more kind of tech centric context. You know, at one level, we've suddenly all dropped out of society. I mean, you're in the office every other week.

So one week out of two, we have to record this show with your head literally stuck and covered. You know, so we've all kind of dropped out. Another reason is more prosaic. We're all working on video chat connections that drop out all of the time.

In fact, trying to set up this session, our connection wouldn't originally work. You know, so this high tech working solution is increasingly starting to resemble one of those scratchy 1980 type filters on Instagram or Snapchat. But I think on a more kind of serious note, we're all suddenly dislocated from that society that our identity was rooted in, which makes it all the weirder. I think that I nearly always bump into someone I know when I'm queuing up to pay at the supermarket.

So we're dropouts in the sense that we're reforging our identities to some extent. You know, we're developing these kind of stay at home and work from home personas. And that ultimate blurring between home and work life is really causing people to reassess. Well, yeah, I read an interesting report this week that one of the sectors of business that has received a corona boost is actually home furnishings in some countries, at least.

So people are spending all this time at home. So these online retailers have seen the expected increases in demand for things like home office or garden related furniture, but also a more unexpected rise in things like soft furnishings and all kinds of other pieces of a homewearn. Isn't it the social media thing, the Instagram reading hall? I think that might be a small part of it, but it wasn't what the piece was actually driving towards.

It was actually a little bit more obvious than that. We've become a lot more aware of the places we live in. You know, that sofa with the ripped cushion is fine when you're coming in from work and you crash at 9pm every night and you sleep in at the weekend and then head straight out to see friends. So there's always something higher on the priority list than fixing that.

Now your home 24 hours a day and that scratch coffee table is driving you insane. But beyond that, it's about what the furniture itself looks like. What people wanting are more fashionable or now look? Well, no, I mean, the realization that when your video chatting that your work colleague has the same vase as you or your friend has the same shelves, we're supposed to be living in the so-called era of the individual.

But all this enforced at-homeness is demonstrating that we aren't as individual as we think, that many of us are defining our individuality within the limited framework of the same big box stores. So as I was saying before, we're having to reinvent ourselves and define those at-home personas. And part of that is by not having a home that is an identicant reproduction of someone or everybody else's. Which brings us not so neatly to surveillance.

Yeah, thank you for bridging that gaping chasm for me. So unless you've really tuned out the news over the past couple of months, you'll probably have some inkling about the raging debates over surveillance and privacy. weren't you saying that we have little choice but to give up some of our privacy right now? Yeah, and I'm not backtracking, you know, at the time and still at this time, I think it's the right thing to do.

Again, it's those concepts of community and society again, is my desire to keep a positive COVID-19 test private more important than societies need to know that I'm sick and to trace people that I may have been in contact with. But what we have to be very careful about is how this technology gets normalized. So for example, China has ushered in extraordinary surveillance measures during this pandemic. And the question is, are those measures likely to be rolled back?

You know, we heard a few weeks ago that Chinese tech companies have developed facial recognition systems that are highly accurate at identifying people while wearing masks. And those same systems can be automated and managed by artificial intelligence. But you can take that same technology and apply it, say, to democracy protesters in Hong Kong. These are not necessarily benign tools that we're designing here.

I think you said in the previous episode, COVID-19 has become an enormous social experiment. Well, yeah, you know, it's given countries the opportunity to try out, you know, processes and technologies that would normally be considered maybe too politically insensitive in normal times to force us to use location identifying apps to track us on camera and video to make us record our presence in public spaces, to physically limit our movements and our rights and ability to gather. I mean, when you look at something like the Patriot Act enacted in the US in the wake of the New York World Trade Center attacks, those were supposed to be temporary extraordinary powers for an extraordinary situation. But extraordinary quickly becomes normal.

Most of those temporary powers are still in force. And it tends to be that big centralized organizations, whether they're governments or corporations, they're very low to give up power, especially when it means returning that power or those powers to the people. So I think that's something that we have to be very conscious of at the moment, especially as many governments around the world are operating under emergency laws and extraordinary ordinances. You know, we have to balance the reality of this disease and its impact with any narrative that those big organizations may be using to limit our personal freedoms in the long term.

When you say organizations, you mean companies as well? Yeah, I do. I mean, I think just before the show went on hiatus, we discussed how this crisis could make technology companies stronger, give them more power over our data, capture more of our attention. And in the case of the gig economy, you know, we're already seeing companies that were being forced to statutorily formalize the employment of their workers, starting to push back against those new norms.

Because there's this one of the few sectors of employment that's actually growing during a period where tens of millions worldwide are losing their jobs. So suddenly they have this increased power and they can flex it. Let's stick with the data aspect. Where's the risk there?

Well, we've seen that in some countries, there has been a lack of political ability to respond efficiently and adequately to this crisis, my own home country, sadly being amongst them. But this is where the risk of technology being that new God comes in. You know, many governments have turned to the Silicon Valley gurus to help turn them around, to help rebuild education systems and health systems to build tracking and tracing apps, and of course, to create kind of smart city solutions. Which brings us back to the social experiment?

Precisely, because you know, we still have the same issues of data accountability with many of these companies. Yes, there is a pressing need for distance learning solutions so that kids don't lose out on their education if anything ever happens like this in the future. Many countries have seen, you know, their health services pushed to the limit or beyond the limit. So reform is really needed in many areas.

But that doesn't automatically mean the tech titans are the ones who are up to the task. For instance, I think Facebook took another stab at convincing the world it can self-police itself last week in an effort to fend off circling legislators in some jurisdictions. And you know, we've seen so often with tone deaf tech responses in the past, Facebook's oversight board of content decisions seems to tick the boxes of an organization that does what the company thinks we want rather than what we actually need it to do. So for the present, it will adjudicate on matters that arise from content that's taken off the company's platforms.

But as the academic and tech writer John Norton points out in a piece in the Guardian, our real issue with Facebook is actually the content it chooses not to take down. And while that content will be something they'll consider eventually at some unspecified time, it's not something they're looking at now. But that's potentially where the greatest need currently is with the content that remains on the platform. And that's where we really need legislators to come in and intervene.

You are assuming a worst case scenario mindset? I always do. But you know, it could even just be in some senses a business as usual mindset. You know, we're talking about private companies with vast resources adopting roles that the state usually occupies during a period where there's a political power vacuum.

So these companies are not democratically accountable. And let's not be in any doubt. You know, these reforms will all generate data. They create invasive information about people who participate, sometimes willingly, sometimes unwittingly.

And that information translates into both power and money. So if you're okay with that vision of the future, that's absolutely fine. You know, I don't have a problem with that. It's your choice.

But we've seen much more of a concentrated pushback by voters and consumers against this encroachment over the past couple of years. So not only is the pandemic an opportunity for those companies to roll back these user gains, it's actually the ideal time to strengthen their hand while we're all preoccupied with our physical and economic survival. It doesn't look like there is going to be much time to talk about technology and business. No, we'll get to that next week.

It's okay. I wanted to bring back one of our old friends, Universal Basic Income next week. So it actually dovetails quite nicely. So for now, I guess I'm just going to drop out until we meet up here again next week.

The dropout generation that was MSP episode 121. We'll be back next week, BFM 89.9. Thank you for listening to this podcast. To find more great interviews, go to bfm.my or find us on iTunes, BFM 89.9.

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