MSP60 [] Carpool Diem [We Own The Future]

This is a download from the FM89.9, the Business Station. Today is MSP's equivalent to a state-of-the-union address. It's where we get an idea of what Matt's obsession is going to be over the next 12 months. I believe that Matt's message for today is Carpool DM, which seems to be big Latin for Carpool DM.

Matt, welcome to the show. That's your obsession for this year. Carpooling. It's a bit of an old hat.

Hey, Jeff, happy new year. No, actually, I'm going with a whole bunch of things and they have nothing to do with Carpooling. I thought Carpool DM might get me a bit more attention from Gen Y and Gen Z listeners than saying Carpool DM and Quiz Custodiet Ipsos Custodes. It sees the day and who watches the Watchmen.

Yes, exactly what they mean. I thought Carpool DM might appeal to, I don't know, James Corden fans. Yeah, we're always happy to broaden our audience a little bit. It's not the message that matters.

It really is about the people. So Carpool DM who watches the Watchmen, all of those things, both of those things, they're just about us. So the obsession for this year is you, me, it's the listeners and of course the changes that together we can all affect. So we ended last year with a note of hope.

Are you hopeful for what we can achieve this year? Well, as I said on the show last week, this is still the greatest time to be alive and I really do stand by that belief. We're surrounded by ideas. There's so much innovation and we have the technology that's allowing us to achieve all of these unbelievable things.

So if 2018 was about the big tech companies and their failings, I think 2019 can be the year that we kind of flip our relationship with them and it becomes the year that's about us taking the power back from them. Is there enough realization that people can actually do that? I think there's this kind of growing realization. I mean, we see in these grassroots movements across the world, one of the benefits of the age of Twitter politics is that that relationship goes both ways.

If you choose to govern by social media, then you can also be held accountable on social media. So for social media to remain relevant, I think people and the social media companies are going to have to embrace that concept of people power. You don't think that people are prepared to be passive anymore? Well, technology has become dominated by a small group of really powerful companies and that's not really the vision of the web that any of us had in mind when we looked at the potential of this kind of technology.

We bought into the ideas of democracy, self-empowerment, freedom. But what we increasingly see are all of these walled gardens that compete for our attention and they do everything they can to stop us leaving these kind of specially built digital campuses. So as we said on the show last week, people are waking up to their own value and they're starting to realize that they're actually being shortchanged in this relationship or sometimes downright cheated. What is this realization?

Well, I've been thinking about this topic for today's show for actually for a few weeks now. I read a piece by one of my favorite journalists, a guy called John Harris back in December. Now, I've been reading him for decades because he was a music writer when I was a kid. And in the past 10 or so years, he's become an award-winning political and social commentary on political journalists.

So I read this piece back in early December, I think. I think it was probably on the Guardian. And it was about this subject that tech companies don't have to own our future, that we're not their subjects. So that's where I came to this kind of idea that we can both seize the day and be the watchman.

I know they're not terribly original concept, but it's about reminding those companies whose interests they really need to look out for. Or we re-please them. Well, if I was Facebook and Twitter, I would be really scared that the younger generations don't want to sign up and use those services. Partly because they see the platforms as belonging to an older generation, to my generation, to your generation, but also because of those privacy issues.

So this is the first generation that has grown up in the exposure of the internet and the digital age. And they want more protection and a lot more granular control. Isn't that also the generation that doesn't think they can change the big tech companies? Well, it's a generation that sees Facebook as a pillar and an institution, and not just Facebook, Google and Twitter and Apple and a lot of these companies, because these companies have always had a powerful role in their lives, even if they're not actively using those platforms.

Whereas for older generations, these companies are still the new kids on the block. So I see kind of emerging of the viewpoints, the older generation that knows companies like these can be transient, that they can be changed, that their power can be reduced or reigned in, and the younger generation that puts limits and costs on the information that they're willing to share with these companies. Okay, let's say, assuming we have the power to change, what should we be asking for? Well, let's start with Facebook.

So Mark Zuckerberg sets himself a challenge every year. Sometimes it's reading books. He's had learning a language I think it was Mandarin before. One year it was to travel to every single US state.

Last year, he challenged himself to tackle issues like hate speech and election interference, the things of bedeviled Facebook and other social media platforms over the last year. So yes, you're laughing. So I'm not going to comment on how well he's achieved those things in 2018. And I'm sure that all of our listeners have their own opinions on that.

So what's his challenge for 2019? Well, at the time that we prepared this, he hasn't come out with it. I've been looking at his posts every single thing, but nothing just that recap on what he achieved in 2018, which went on for a lot of paragraphs. Probably going to go back to visiting every state.

Yeah, I think that's the safest bet. But I did read an interesting piece again on the Guardian, where they asked entrepreneurs, politicians, activists and academics, what they thought his challenge would be. But more importantly, it asked them what they thought his challenge should be. And what do you think it would be?

Well, in terms of what it will be, more of the same old, same old, do better, learn another language. What they think it should be was actually a lot more interesting. Because sometimes it's easy to think that you're screaming in the wind when you're saying a lot of this stuff. So it's interesting to hear mainstream voices not just echoing the sentiments we have on this show, but going a lot further than the things we said.

So I was surprised at how many of the commentators suggested that Zuckerberg should simply stand aside. Resign. Well, why not? I mean, it's not that far-fetched idea.

So Elon Musk was pressured to step aside at Tesla. That was down to activism of a sort. His shareholders lost confidence in him. The public was losing confidence.

And what has he done since then? Well, they were probably taking an hour to this. Precisely, you know, I'm sure that he's annoyed that he's no longer running the car company's day to day operations. But it does free him up to get back to the wild and crazy visionary stuff that we love him for, some of which are actually going to be speaking about being geeked after the break.

So, you know, let other people spend all day looking at spreadsheets and go and look out of a window. I don't know. Imagine the future instead. So you want Mark Zuckerberg to go off and imagine the future?

Well, yeah, when you phrase it like that, one of the things we talked about last week was CEOs being more than the face of tech companies. They kind of become their brand. And I think it's time that Facebook moved past Mark Zuckerberg. Sure.

Even if he resigns, he still controls most of the shares. And for sure, he would remain a constant presence on the board. But maybe it's time to let the platform grow and to be more than just the personality of its founder. Is there any guarantee that it would make Facebook a better company?

No, no, no guarantee at all. I mean, it might be way, way worse. I mean, you don't know. But it would make it much clearer for users, I think, that Facebook is a company.

It's not Mark Zuckerberg's plaything. And I think that would allow us to be a lot more dispassionate about what we expect from the company and what we expect it to give us in return. And I want to go back to one of the things you mentioned earlier about technology being dominated by so few big players. Well, I think this is one area where the changes are already starting to push in our direction.

So a few shows ago, we talked about US Congressmen, Rokana and his legislation to set up tech universities and training centers across the US to try and spread the benefits of new industries and technologies and make those available to people. So they don't have to migrate to Silicon Valley. It comes at a time when lawmakers seem to be serious about raining in some of the worst successes of the technology industry. Parallel to this realization is that us, the users, our information is being misused, mishandled and misrepresented.

So yeah, I think the time is right to make some changes and perhaps to remap that vision of our future. So put an end to the wild west nature of the internet? Well, I wouldn't want to put an end to all of that chaos. In fact, by loosening the grip of these kind of tech titans, we might actually have more chaos.

What we do need, I think, are more rules and much clearer rules. At the moment, the rules tend to favor the big players. For example, some of the recent copyright legislation that the EU brought in in 2018 could make it harder for new players to enter the market because even though they were designed to prevent the big players from abusing or using third party content, there's actually a very real fear that those laws could limit free speech. Because for example, just by quoting from an article on a third party site, it could be judged to be infringing copyright.

But it's unlikely. Yeah, but you see people don't set up businesses for unlikely, ideally, if you're setting up some kind of tech business or a portal or a nap, you want to know if your business model is going to get you sued or not. You want to know if it's legal. You need that clarity.

But the good thing is, and I think it goes back to what we were saying about Twitter diplomacy, lawmakers are also getting instant feedback on what they say and they do. And the results are not always pretty. Does that mean they're listening? Well, that's kind of where the next step comes in because if they're not listening, then we have to unseat them, vote for someone else, vote for people with the skills and the policies we're going to fight on your behalf.

Because when it comes to voting, you know, things like taxes and jobs are important, but don't vote for people who are making it easier for big companies to automate jobs and avoid taxes. And that just puts more of the burden back on to the people like us and of course the governments that support us. We own the future. That's today's topic.

We'll be right back with more after this, 89.9 burning for more BFM 89.9 the business station. And we're back. It's one Friday. My name is Jocelyn together with Culture Box Man.

I'm a teacher before the break. We were looking at MSP's latest obsession, you the listener, the user, the boss, and we were looking at ways to break Silicon Valley's dominance of innovation and development. So Matt is Silicon Valley's power starting to decline now. I don't know if decline is the right word.

I think there's still a role. I mean, there's definitely still a role for venture capital and angel investors, but we're too used to it being presented as a kind of either or equation. There's no reason for Silicon Valley to dominate technology either in terms of location or in terms of funding. What I think we may see is a change in terms of the kind of wild funding and the expectation for huge results.

I think investors are getting fed up with betting on potential rather than looking at balance. And that's a good thing. Well, I think so, because you know, all investing is a bet ultimately, which is why you look to mitigate risk. That's why you look at income and profitability.

With some tech companies, it seems investors want to get in early and head for that quick exit. That's fine. Some companies are designed to ride trends and fashions and everyone can get rich very quickly. Other companies who end up with multi-billion dollar valuations, but very little money coming in.

People are rightly wondering when those companies are ever going to turn the investments into profits. You think we'll see fewer entrepreneurs with a quick exit in line? Well, I hope we're going to see a change in focus and more of a return to long-term sustainable businesses. I mean, that's kind of the part of the Wild West period that I'd like to see coming to an end.

To get that sense, the entrepreneurs founders are essentially trying to flip companies and get rich and get out. I think BFM is a great example of a startup in the digital era. It's a sustainable business with a very bright future. It has a community focus, but it's harnessing both traditional radio users and those that prefer the bite-size on-demand convenience of podcast.

So it's not a binary offering. You can appeal to that old world while successfully entering new markets and bringing in the potential of technology. And of course, without losing that focus of who you are and what you're actually doing this for. Does that open the door for most socially focusing, perhaps less aggressively profit oriented businesses?

Absolutely. I mean, it doesn't mean that those businesses will have more access to funding, but that's where we come in. We've chatted a little bit over the last few months about the ways that blockchain technologies can be used to empower refugees or give access to banking and money transfer services to those who aren't in the regular banking system. So those inventions, those apps, those systems have a really important place in our future.

But they're unlikely to meet your inventors' billionaires. Yeah, exactly. Because we've got this kind of backwards view of technology startups that they're worthless unless their founders can cash out to the tune of many millions. We forget that most traditional entrepreneurs, most business owners, are not rich.

Their businesses support them. They support their families and they support the people they employ. They provide a valuable, sometimes invaluable service for the people they serve. And we have to start treating tech startups like normal businesses in that sense that becoming a sustainable but small tech business in the heart of a community is a success and not failure.

Surely by connecting people, companies like Apple and Facebook also perform an invaluable service. Well, we talk about social media connecting people and overcoming loneliness. And I get that and there is some truth to that. But when you think about somebody who's older on their own, Facebook or Twitter or a smartphone may connect that person to their friends, their family, it may even connect them to health and other essential services.

But are those services more valuable to that person than their local shop or post office? You mean places where they can have genuine social contact? Yeah, or the local pub or cafe where they can sit and chat with people. Those community services, they are commercial businesses.

So why do we treat them as being less valuable than a Facebook or an Apple or Huawei? At a global level, some politicians or trade envoys may say, yes, those big companies are more valuable. But in terms of their influence on individual lives, maybe not. So you want to see more socially focused startups?

Well, I don't think there's actually a lack of them. I think what we should all be doing is doing more to publicize social startups. More importantly, I think we should be helping to fund them, whether through crowdfunding or through our taxes. And I think people are ready to have those conversations.

They're already reassessing the social value of companies like Facebook and Google. So maybe the idea of the role that these companies should play in our societies is shifting too. And that's not really our decision though. We can't direct the actions of Facebook or Google.

Well, I mean, we say that. But earlier when we were talking about the experiences of the Gen Y and Gen Z as the experiences of the baby boomers and Gen X and all of those experiences coming together, well, that's kind of where we can start to direct things because we are all using these services because they're the most popular. But there are plenty of alternatives. And as much as we deride them, Bing and Yahoo do have serviceable search engines.

A lot of people have started using that go, a search engine, which is focused on privacy. So these big companies are successful because we make them successful by using them. That gives us enormous power because we can choose not to use them. And that then gives us the power to unmake these companies again.

Why do you think we're hearing more calls for privacy from Europe rather than the US? Well, one of the reasons I enjoyed the John Harris article that I mentioned at the start was because he was putting this into the context of Europe's post-war history. So the US has enjoyed pretty much continuous freedom since independence from the British in 1776. The same cannot be said of most of the rest of the world.

Europe, Asia and Africa had a really turbulent time in the 19th and 20th centuries. Countries conquered each other and were vanquished. Their peoples were annexed and taxed and controlled. And of course, a large chunk of Europe was under communist influence for the best part of 50 years.

So there's a greater respect for individual rights. I think there's a more current memory of being denied access to those rights. Those personal freedoms, the power to stop the people in power from controlling the flow of information, governments that effectively denied you the right to a private life in the name of the state or the party. Those are all powerful memories in a lot of countries around the world.

You see those same freedoms being nurtured and valued across Asia and Africa and the struggle to obtain those freedoms in a lot of countries. So unlike the US and I guess the UK as well, most people don't have the benefit of hundreds of years of freedom and protection to take their privacy for granted. In the broader sense, how can we use this power to improve our lives and our society? Well, as I said before, not all technology should be for profit or at least not for massive profit.

So I'll use some of the examples John Harris discovered when he attended one of TechCrunch's Disrupt Conferences in Berlin recently. So he was talking about a team from Lebanon that has an app for diabetics. It does the usual stuff like monitor blood sugar levels, sends you push notifications to remind you to take medicine. But it also accesses local location data.

So it will recommend restaurants and food choices that will actually meet with your dietary requirements. There was another one where a group of developers in Berlin were using the same principles that power autonomous vehicles to create a navigation system for the blind. Or one of my favourites, a new startup called Nuzera, which looks at your profile, it looks at the kind of information you like, and it deliberately pushes you out of your comfort zone over time. So it learns your preferences and it adds information from sources you wouldn't normally go to.

So it's introducing you view points and voices and opinions into your reading material. So there's some really interesting things out there, but not things that are likely to turn anyone into a tech billionaire. And where do we fit in? Well, because these apps and services, they can't exist in a bubble.

Great ideas still need money to develop them. And that's where our Silicon Valley and venture capital and angel investing culture falls down. Google could come up with a navigation project for the blind, but only if it was looking to do it as a write off or if those blind users created data that it could monetize. So our role is in deciding how these things are going to be funded.

Like a social development fund. Well, we could demand that our nations have social development funds for this kind of application in the same way that we have sovereign wealth funds, because those funds could come with the caveat of affordability. If you accept the money from a state organisation, then the results, the findings, the products, the services have to be affordable and accessible to everyone, because too many tech advances are priced beyond the reach of most ordinary people. Another option that we discussed before is to fund companies directly.

So most crowdfunding sites allow various tiers and types of investment. You can donate and forget, you know, just give somebody $10 or you can become a more integral part of that development and ownership process. And of course, there is the academic route as well, the kind of training facilities and locally based acceleration and development opportunities that politicians like Ro Cana are suggesting and putting forward. All right.

So what would this version of society with us in charge look like? Well, obviously I have an idea, but you know, it's not about building my dream of the future. The point is that it should be everyone's to determine. So I think rather than looking to Silicon Valley, which let's face it, for most of us is really remote.

I mean, how many kilometres away from Silicon Valley are we? We're what? 15,000 kilometres from Silicon Valley? I mean, it literally means nothing to us.

Tech innovations and startups should be a normal feature of most towns and cities. And they should be serving up projects that meet the needs of those towns and their populations. And it's kind of ironic that we're at this point where technology and apps are so finely tuned that they can serve you information that is specific to a radius of literally a few metres from where you're standing. So we have this amazing ability to be hyper local and hyper relevant.

So it seems really weird that we're concentrating ownership in the hands of a few global giants. So as the synth philosophers and De Berlin Vince Clark once said, it doesn't have to be like that. Man, I'm a teacher says we own the future. But if you've heard any of his shows before, it actually he owns the future.

I don't know all of it. Most of it. Yeah, as long as you accept King Jafar, then all will be good. Yep.

And we'll be right back with Geekswax after this. 89.9.