Alexa, How Can We Stop Becoming Dehumanized?
We've
all benefited from the wonders of smartphones, algorithms, and a gig economy
that puts people at our disposal on an app's notice. But we seem to have
stopped noticing the people.
Executive director, Ed Kaplan Family Institute for Innovation
and Tech Entrepreneurship, Illinois Institute of Technology
It
seems to me that we hear more tales all the time about the accelerating changes
in social behavior and business etiquette brought about by the many ways that
new disruptive technologies saturate our lives. Tech today is realistically
unavoidable, critical to our livelihoods, shamefully extractive and obviously
manipulative. And, of course, utterly addictive. We're all suckers for the
stuff and all we ask in return is that it work smoothly most of the time. But
we need to ask a lot more of these new tools and of ourselves because the
long-term impact of the incremental, and seductive, changes they're making in
our daily activities is beginning to undermine our mental and physical health
and how we relate to each other. Vaping is killing kids, social is screwing up
their psyches, product and service quality yields every day to convenience and
comfort. Most of the systems and solutions, such as the state and federal
regulatory agencies, that theoretically protected us in the past are broken or
corrupted. You'd think that, if they were doing their jobs at all, we wouldn't
have gas stations selling CBD snake oil and every kind of vaping device
imaginable to all comers.
For all
that these new platforms and programs were intended to help connect us, improve
our access to knowledge, and bring us all closer; what we're seeing instead is
nothing of the sort. When Lady Gaga calls social media "the
toilet of the Internet", she's not just talking trash; she's reflecting
the realities of a tech-enabled medium that's largely out of our control. One
whose unintended consequences are just now beginning to be understood.
But
social media is just one simple and relatively obvious symptom of the much
broader set of concerns and changes we are facing. While many of these
enhancements are quite compelling and relatively easy to incorporate into our
activities; they are also very hard to abandon, restrict, or limit to their
ideal use cases once they are launched and sent into the wild.
We
know that we're all captives today of a growing set of tools, networks and
platforms (operated by a very few private entities) that are already largely
beyond our power to fully control or regulate. The prospect and promise of tech
augmentation - constantly enhanced and expanded capabilities in so many areas -
is both exciting and frightening at the same time. Once you've seen the
prospective freedoms of the future, your perspective and your attitudes are
unalterably changed in many ways and there's no going back. In addition,
competitive (and increasingly) global business considerations, changes in
market conditions and financial circumstances, and constantly increasing user
and consumer expectations of bi-directional speed, immediate access and cost-effective
solutions are accelerating many of these changes. If you want to stay and play
in the game, you have no choice, but to try to keep up.
It's
also human nature to fall in love with the functions and features of any new
shiny thing and overlook the flaws, trade-offs, and failures that are always
present as well. In our entrepreneurial and naïve enthusiasm for constant
change, we foolishly and too often believe that, over time, everything gets
better and that trees actually grow to the sky. The fact is that some of these
emergent issues can get better and be dealt with in straightforward ways, but
only if we recognize that they need to be addressed.
A simple everyday example: in inter-generational business
meetings, we have a new protocol to protect our eager young team members from
running afoul of their elders, one which requires us to explain to the old
folks that the newbies often take their meeting notes on their phones instead
of on the old foolscap paper legal pads we all used in our youths. If we don't
explain this at the outset, the uninitiated will quickly conclude that the kids
are checking their email and texts or updating their social profiles and news
feeds instead of paying attention to the business at hand. It doesn't matter
how diligent you're trying to be if the geezer sitting across from you thinks
you're shopping, socializing or checking out sports results. This is more about
clear explanation and communication than anything else, but it's amazing how
often these kinds of confusing situations lead to unfortunate outcomes because
we don't take the time to get things squared away at the outset. As we always
say about hacking, it's happened in your business; it's just that you may not
have realized or discovered it yet.
Also,
it's clear that you can't start too soon. The growing adoption of voice as the
principal interface for the command/control systems of the smart home and smart
car has us growing more and more accustomed to no longer talking through machines
to other people, but instead talking simply to the machines
themselves. A new generation of children take Alexa and Siri inquiries and the
"living" interactive devices in their homes for granted. The only
open question you might ask their parents is whether they are teaching their
kids to say "please" and "thank you" when they make their
demands for songs, stories or other social interactions with these systems. If
they aren't taught some basic courtesy when they're toddlers; they'll be
absolute tyrants to their teachers by the time they get into school. We already
know that their slightly older and inordinately entitled siblings demonstrably
have only the most fleeting acquaintance with the concept of gratitude,
so that
boat may have already sailed. And, if we're not at
least a little bit attentive and responsive to the next group coming down the
pipe, they may turn out to be even worse.
But, to
me, the harshest and most dehumanizing risk we face from technology is the
resultant interpersonal disconnection. We're starting to regard workers in the
gig economy - ride-sharing drivers most of all - as mere extensions of our
phones or, worse yet, as drone drivers to be summoned as and when we wish. It's
frightening how little person-to-person interaction is actually required to
take an Uber or Lyft from place to place and honestly, but for the very modest
and tiny drivers' images that appear on screen (mostly for liability reasons),
there could just as easily be a trained chimp sitting in the front seat taking
directional instructions from their own mobile device or - to hear tell in the
near AV future - no one driving at all. Somehow, I keep hearing Springsteen
singing about evolution in "Part Man, Part Monkey" in the background.
So,
here again, the choice is in our hands, but only if we extend ourselves and try
to stem the powerful tech tide. It doesn't take much to make a difference and
to help make a little daylight in someone's day - even for just a few moments -
and to change a rote and robotic experience into a few shared minutes of
connection. You don't have to decide to sit with the driver in the front seat
or become his or her next best friend. You just need to invest a few minutes of
conversation, make some eye contact, and offer a smile or two to change the
nature of the whole experience.
As
our world gets bigger, broader and more automated-- canned and clickable
suggested responses to texts and emails are my latest favorite examples-- we
have to be extra careful to understand the value and importance of individual
connections and conversations and how quickly and easily these new technologies
can wash away the warmth and even the perceived worth of others we encounter
daily.
The way
we treat the people we barely know and may never see again will have a lot to
do with the world we'll see in the future and whether it's a place we really
want to be a part of. Even if you're super busy, multi-tasking, and frazzled --
and who isn't -- you can still invest a few moments to be "present"
and to pay attention to the people you meet. Your time and attention are much
more important than the amount of your tip.
