Category: Collaborative Age

How Innovation Cycles Became More Frequent Than Generation Cycles

I recently read an analysis of the current issue facing our societies which I found interesting: the fact that in recent times, the innovation cycles have become shorter than the typical 25-30 years generation renewal cycle.

Accelerating innovation cycles since 2 centuries

We know that it can be difficult for a generation to accept new ideas and concepts and that it often takes a generational renewal to transform beliefs and usage (by the way this effect is particularly important in scientific, academical and research circles).

With innovation cycles now becoming shorter than a typical generational cycle, we raise the challenge of people having to transform their worldview, way of working and usage of technology within their own generation. And it is clear that our society is not particularly well prepared for that challenge: for example, the lack of adult education and the fact that studies are generally uniquely undergone in younger years.

I like the idea to consider this observation as a potential root cause of many tensions and issues we observe in our current society. It is powerful enough to create a lot of good questions about the need to support current generations through a workplace and social transformation that will create 2 or 3 major transitions through their adult life.

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How AI-based Systems Show Substantial Limits in Addressing Extremes

In this interesting post ‘Deepnews.ai, progress report #3‘, Frederic Filloux explains the struggles to get an AI framework to actually work on a specific subject which is to check the veracity of news.

The idea is to develop an AI based application that would be able to give a rating of quality to broadcast news. As stated in the post, using a neural network the system is able to measure accuracy of a news article with a 80% accuracy. The interesting part of course is that the system fails sometimes on pieces of high accuracy and interest, but are way different from the average – and those can be highly valuable, Pulitzer-price potentials.

There are two learning points from those experiments:

  • “The mysterious and dangerous beauty, so to speak, of A.I. models is they are rarely fully understood by their creators“
  • once trained, an AI will correctly appraise information close to the average, but will be at a loss to consider data which is significantly off the charts, rating it in an absurd way – AI algorithm thus promote conformity.

AI is a great tool but its limits need to be understood. I am particularly concerned about the fact that it may force conformity into social systems.

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How Dangerous It Is to Define One’s Identity by Work: Workism

Following up from our previous post ‘How the Balance of Work Time Between Rich and Poor has Dramatically Changed‘, this excellent Atlantic article highlights concerns about workism: ‘Workism Is Making Americans Miserable‘. Workism is about work becoming an identity and pervading all aspects of our lives, becoming an obsession.

“The economists of the early 20th century did not foresee that work might evolve from a means of material production to a means of identity production. They failed to anticipate that, for the poor and middle class, work would remain a necessity; but for the college-educated elite, it would morph into a kind of religion, promising identity, transcendence, and community. Call it workism.”

Specific american aspects are quoted in the post – with which I do not agree totally: in my travels to the US I have observed that while american engineers don’t take holidays, their working day is generally shorter and ends on a fixed time, which may not be the case in other countries.

Nevertheless, the issue of work having become a means to personal identity is an important issue; and the article also develops the case of millennials trapped in student debt exhausting themselves at work. Advice like finding your passion to justify long hours at work may be subject to caution.

In any case it is certain that if work is your only identity, you face a problem, because you may get retrenched or face a substantial issue some day. In that case it is better to have one’s identity defined in a more robust way.

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How to Regulate the Algorithms that Shape our Lives

The issue of controlling the algorithms that increasingly shape our lives to avoid bias is now recognized (see our previous posts ‘How Algorithms Can Become Weapons of Math Destruction‘ and ‘How We Need to Audit the Key Algorithms That Drive our Lives‘). A proposal is contained in the Quartz post ‘We should treat algorithms like prescription drugs‘.

“For decades, pharma and biotech companies have tested drugs through meticulously fine-tuned clinical trials. Why not take some of those best practices and use them to create algorithms that are safer, more effective, and even more ethical?“. In addition, a strong regulator enforces checks and verifies that the testing has been done properly before allowing drugs to be put on the market. Then, a surveillance network also feeds back unexpected effects of a drug which may lead to reconsider its use or for which symptoms it is really useful.

On interesting aspect of this analogy is to recognize that algorithms like drugs have side effects. In a systemic view of the world, an algorithm that aims to solve a problem may – no, will – create unforeseen effects on some other aspects, especially if its use becomes widespread.

As the article mentions, drugs regulators have already started regulating devices that use algorithms for medical purpose (for example, sugar regulation apps for diabetics). This may produce a framework that could be spread to other types of algorithms.

Still, regulating algorithms may be a huge endeavor and setting up this framework will take time and effort – and require to develop new ways to efficiently evaluate algorithms for bias and for unexpected effects. An interesting field of research for the years to come!

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How the World is Really Improving

The world is improving. There is much less poverty today than there was a few years or decades ago, and it is much more visible. Yet, amazingly, there is substantial controversy on this positive message. For example, in this article ‘Bill Gates tweeted out a chart and sparked a huge debate about global poverty‘, this controversy is expressed in length.

The controversial chart from Bill Gates

The interesting aspect of the controversy is that most of the counterarguments are based on moving the signpost: while there was a standard for defining poverty globally, some argue that it is not sufficient any more and it should now be raised substantially. Of course, we don’t define poverty in the same manner in developed countries and in less developed countries. Of course we need to improve further. Yet, why move the signpost when the situation is improving?

In addition, many studies show that in most aspects, the story of the chart is true and that all segments of poverty are seeing their situation improve. I read not so long ago the enlightening book by Jack London, ‘the people of the abyss‘ about his experience in the poorer districts of London at the end of the 19th century. So say the least, the situation has improved greatly!

It is good to be demanding on the subject of poverty, but let’s not underestimate the substantial progress that is made. It deserves some celebrating, even if it is never enough.

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How Digital Detox May Not Be Effective

“Digital Detox” is a growing trend, a manner to unplug from our increasingly hectic and 24h way of life and find back our balance and ‘real connections’. This extreme process is increasingly trendy (although it just implies unplugging from our screens and internet), and this certainly reflects some level of anxiousness. Yet the effectiveness of this process is disputed, or at least not proven scientifically, as exposed in this Quartz post ‘Digital detoxes are a solution looking for a problem‘.

The point is to examine whether digital detox really improves mental health, like other detoxes do (by the way, the terminology assumes that digital is an addiction).

The article mentions quite a number of excellent references on the impact of digital and social networks on mood and other factors such as sleep. It is clear that in some ways, social networks impacts mood, in particular as people tend to post only the good things that happen to them. Still, the amount of impact on mental health is controverted.

I like the thesis of the article which takes the view that as always when a new technology is introduced, its effect on health is controverted, and adequate usage rules must be invented (one will remember the famous articles in the early 19th century about the fact that running on trains above a few mph should result in certain death).

My view is that digital services are part of our way of life and provide us with significant services that improve our lives (for example, navigating in an unknown town, knowing the latest infos on local transportation etc). They also make it more hectic. On the other hand, excessive usage is certainly harmful. Cutting off entirely is not any more an option; however, making sure we have spaces with lower usage such as on week-ends is certainly a good idea for balance. There is so much to be learnt in that respect that it will take years of learning to understand really what is harmful and adapt our behavior. Let’s use digital in a measured way in the meantime!

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How to Deal with the Conundrum of Smart or Safe Cities

Smart Cities is a big trend that influences nowadays a lof of cities’ development policies. It is aimed to bring many benefits to citizens and large city administration at the same time. In parallel the concept of Safe city has emerged – using the data to improve citizen safety through increased surveillance.

As always, technology comes with advantages and drawbacks. Like Internet allowed incredible 2-way communication advances, it came along with easier surveillance capabilities. Smart cities will thus come also with increased surveillance capabilities, in the name of pubic safety.

Ethics is becoming an increasing concern in our society, as a way to address democratic control on the modern surveillance capabilities. It has to be stressed that surveillance is not a recent issue – for long times, autocratic governments have controlled and opened private correspondence and spied on its citizens. As it becomes increasingly easy to implement surveillance programs, the setup of adequate ethical and independent control rules becomes even more essential.

Maintaining balance between the benefits of increased digitalization and sensors’ data, and privacy, is a essential challenge we are facing in the next few years. At the same time, fear of surveillance should not prevent us from benefiting from smart advances. The creation of new institutions to guarantee ethical treatment of the data is a challenge we all need to address.

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How To Benefit from Consensus and Diversity

Valeria Maltoni in her post ‘The Relationship of Value and Influence‘ addresses an important issue: while the best decisions require diversity, how can we get consensus in a very diverse group?

On one side, we tend to stick with people that are similar – and this is magnified by social media to a dramatic level: “While social media has enabled anyone to reach anyone else on the planet, the truth is that we tend to pay attention more readily to people who think and act like us. Nature has given us a compelling reason to do that — nobody survives alone. Humans band together, it’s our instinct.”

On the other hand, “Research has demonstrated that diversity enhances our ability to explore new ideas, allowing us to see a problem from different points of view. More variety in how people think about an issue is a strength“

However, “a meta-analysis of 108 studies and more than 10,000 teams# found that diversity hinders consensus“. How can we address this conundrum?

Valeria Maltoni suggests to have some diversity, but not too much, so as not to hinder the consensus-building mechanism. This may not be the best solution, and is definitely not applicable in some situations (e.g. democracy).

We need to make the effort to consider and learn from alternative views and include diversity in our intellectual consciousness. And we need to devise processes that fit with the requirements of decision-making in the specific situation, while allowing diverse viewpoints to be expressed. This is a major challenge for the collaborative age, as we can see daily. Specific research may be needed to provide new formats and tools for consensus building, that may include more direct voicing of opinions in a structured manner.

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How the Flip of the Digital Divide is Meaningful

Seth Godin’s post ‘The digital divide is being flipped‘ explains how the children of the rich are nowadays protected from the consequences of the screens, whereas the children of the poor are left to their addictive consequences.

I still remember a few years ago when digital divide was about the rich getting access to the wealth of internet while the poor (or the remote) couldn’t. It was a massive issue for governments who committed substantial resources to bridging the gap: “Privileged parents, those with time, education and money, were giving their kids access to the tools of the net while other kids were missing out on the wealth of interactions and information available online. The fear was that this gap would further magnify differences in opportunity.”

Nowadays, screens and internet access is almost ubiquitous, and the issue is rather not to get addicted to social networks, online games and other time-losing activities. Social network leaders are known to forbid screen access to their children.

The internet has moved from an incredible access to a wealth of information to a mass addiction machine. It does not need to be that way: what is important now is educating the younger generations about health rules when using screens and the internet, and how value can be extracted. This may need to be a new emergency for governments!

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How Virtual Creatures Invade Our Connections and our World

Virtual creatures start to be everywhere in our environment: major instagram influencers are hired by leading brands that are in fact virtual, virtual news anchor presenters appear. Maybe your next connection on your preferred social network will be virtual? Tough times for starlets, like exposed in this post ‘Brands Are Creating Virtual Influencers, Which Could Make the Kardashians a Thing of the Past‘.

Lilmiquela, a famous virtual Instagram influencer

Virtual creatures may look safer and more docile: no risk of personal crisis and unprofessional behaviors outside the screen, and full control of the behavior on screen. They can be made as attractive as needed, and may be fully adapted to the audience – many of those virtual influencers are colored.

At the same time of course we’re losing a certain dose of humanity, making interactions with those influencers and brands even more… virtual and distant from our day-to-day life. Those won’t have the same day-to-day issues and challenges we face as humans. Also, their perfection will look even more unapproachable for us poor imperfect humans.

I believe this trend is here to stay and will even be enhanced further with AI bots coupled with virtual creatures. It will also be harder to distinguish those virtual connections. Another reason to stay grounded in our humanity and being less influenced by the perfect pictures we find of others on social networks!

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How Creating Lateral Growth Opportunities Becomes Rarer in the Modern World

Following up from the previous post ‘How to Create More Opportunities in Your Life‘, I am concerned how modern technology rather tends to close us up to new opportunities.

Typical modern restaurant scene: everyone on their own screen!

This is extremely obvious in public transportation of even at restaurants: people are closing themselves in their own chosen world, sometimes including with headphones, and remain in their bubble. Human interaction and the possibility of chance encounters diminishes drastically.

In addition it is well known that most social networks tend to close us further in our bubble of interests and opinions. While they do give opportunities to meet with new people with similar interests on a global scale, they don’t encourage us to encounter contrarian opinions and views.

Therefore, there is a real premium to those that will know how to take some break off this modern addiction to create lateral encounters that can create substantial new opportunities and make oneself grow in new directions: read books that bring new ideas, participate and listen to meetings and presentations with new approaches, etc.

How much time to you take to create those lateral opportunities in your life?

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How You Should Journal in Your Blog

Many self-development authors and speakers describe the benefits of holding a journal. It is even a trendy occupation with journal notebooks being produced specifically. I agree and disagree: journalling is good, but why not doing it in a blog?

Holding a journal is a great way to take a few minutes self-reflection on current events impacting one’s life. It is also useful – sometimes amazing and sometimes sad – to come back to a former entry weeks or months afterwards. But nobody will ever benefit from your reflections and thoughts. So why not write them in a blog? Of course, deeply personal issues can’t be shared so easily, but what about your thoughts and reflections on what happens in the wider world? Writing them in a blog – even if no-one reads it – forces to reach a certain quality of output and thought which is a good challenge. And certainly, holding a blog with a fixed publication schedule forces me to sit down and reflect from time to time, even if I am very busy.

So, why not hold a blog instead of holding a journal?

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