Category: Institutions and Revolutions

How the Balance of Work Time Between Rich and Poor has Dramatically Changed

In previous centuries and roughly until the mid XXth century, the few rich were idle, bored, and enjoying sports and other ways to spend time; and the poor worked extra long hours in dire conditions just to survive. It is amazing how this has changed – nowadays it is almost the reverse: the upper middle class and rich people generally work intensely, while the working class has on average more leisure, or at least more time away from formal work.

Early 20th century leisure: a tea party

Although this might be changing with the gig economy regarding the working class, with working hours going up again for some categories, the amazing observation is more for the wealthy part of the population, which is generally working very intensely nowadays – with the potential exception of some super-rich billionaires.

Wealthy and upper-middle-class persons are nowadays most often very highly paid and very highly busy professionals, with little time availability for leisure – even more so when family requirements take up the precious remaining time. Of course this has significantly changed from previous times where wealth was often primarily derived from mariage and inheritance.

This trend for the wealthy to work even more is now being called by some “workism” as a psychological or even almost religious need to work a substantial part of the time, as part of personal values or education.

This trend seems to reinforce itself with the Fourth Revolution, which is in strong need of highly educated engineers, and which is at the same time automatizing manual labor tasks. The wealthy educated will work more, be more constantly on line, while the less educated will have more time for themselves.

Amazing how in less then a century, the balance of work has shifted!

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How Newspaper Paywalls would be a Paradox regarding Spreading Quality News

Following up on our investigation of the economics of writing (see previous post ‘How Writers’ Income Sources Are Changing‘), an interesting perspective is given in this article ‘How Paywalls are Making Us Dumber‘. The thesis of this paper revolves around the paradox that great journalistic content needs to be compensated -hence paywalls and subscriptions- but that this prevents many people from accessing it, leaving space open for much less reliable news and even fake news, which are all freely accessible.

I believe it is useful to come back to a historical perspective. Since the beginning, journalism has been financed either by tycoons – sometimes well meaning, sometimes with the objective to manipulate – or by advertisement. Sometimes by both. In certain countries there are also subsidies by government, with all the problems related to free press. In general, the income from readers or subscriptions has always remained limited due to the costs of physical printing and distribution.

Therefore, it does not seem to me that the overall balance of financing of journalism is shifting dramatically. Jeff Bezos – a tycoon – had to take over the Washington Post recently; same happens in France for the main newspapers. Nor that fake news and opinionated papers have been around for lots of time. The current newspaper crisis is mainly linked to the fact that advertisement dollars have migrated elsewhere, and newspapers are struggling to compensate.

Of course, the reach of internet and the easier spreading of fake news is a concern, as well as the difficulty to effectively regulate it. There are still many sources of quality information sufficiently open to benefit from it. Financing a news outlet only with income from readers has always been an illusion. At the same time it does not seem to me that paywalls are really a problem, in particular if they let read a few key articles per month for free if one investigates a specific subject. What do you think?

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How Writers’ Income Sources Are Changing

In this excellent New-York Times article ‘Does It Pay to Be a Writer?‘, the problem of writer compensation is analyzed in depth. There is a significant shift in writers’ compensation patterns at work over the last decades and faster even in the last few years.

There are less opportunities to write for a living – “Writing for magazines and newspapers was once a solid source of additional income for professional writers, but the decline in freelance journalism and pay has meant less opportunity for authors to write for pay.”

And those opportunities pay much less: “In the 20th century, a good literary writer could earn a middle-class living just writing,” said Mary Rasenberger, executive director of the Authors Guild, citing William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway and John Cheever. Now, most writers need to supplement their income with speaking engagements or teaching. Strictly book-related income — which is to say royalties and advances — are also down, almost 30 percent for full-time writers since 2009.” A survey in the US is also quoted showing the median compensation for writers to have fallen by 40% in a few years.

Writing has thus become more of a commodity. On the other hand we also need to relativise the statement that writer wan’t make a living – historically most writers have had to supplement income with other activities, except for those writing bestsellers or being famous for some other reason. Still, income gets lower for pure writing in the gig economy and one century ago it was possible to make a decent living just writing some pieces for newspaper, which is not any more the case today.

This reinforces the observation that writing today must be part of a global package of activity – some will be journalists, professional speakers, consultants, other professionals for which writing is a way to communicate to part of the public and spread their message.

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How it Becomes Important to be Informed When a Bot Answers

In this post ‘Truth in bots’, Seth Godin makes the point that since bots are increasingly common in answering messages and even voice phone, we should be informed that it is a bot answering rather a human before we start the interaction.

“You’re talking to a next-generation bot on the phone, and it’s only a minute or two into the interaction that you realize you’re being fooled by an AI, not a caring human. Wouldn’t it be more efficient (and reassuring) to know this in advance?“

It would be not only ethical, but, as Seth Godin rightly mentions, it will influence the level of emotional investment we will put in the conversation – and give us some clues as to the adequacy of the response.

Not that conversation with humans in service centers is necessarily more helpful or engaging, but at least it would be useful to know who we are speaking to.

As bots become more and more widespread this is becoming an essential aspect of service. Why is it not becoming a standard more quickly? It is not bad to have abot answer – it can sometimes be better. So why avoid giving this information?

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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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Why It is Better to Use ‘Disruption’ Rather than ‘Innovation’

I like this short video of Charlene Li ‘Truth Drop: Disruption vs Innovation‘. She explains why ‘innovation’ is not the right word because it looks like it is going to be easy. So she recommends to systematically use ‘disruption’ instead.

Basically, she states that “innovation is a false promise. It says that it’s going to be easy, we’re going to find the answer in a certain timeline with an investment.

On the other hand, “Disruption though is honest. It says, “If we’re going to create growth, create change, it’s going to be hard, it’s going to be painful and the journey ahead is going to be filled with obstacles and boulders that we have to climb over.”

I will listen to the advice, and use disruption rather than innovation the next time I will talk about digital transformation!

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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 Healing Requires Personality Blossoming: a Holistic Approach to Medicine

In an excellent book (in French) ‘les pouvoirs de l’esprit sur le corps‘ (the powers of spirit over the body), Patrick Clairvoy, a former army doctor and now emergency doctor in a leading French hospital, details the relationship between spirit and body when it comes to healing.

Beyond an analysis of classical healing miracles, he shows that real full physical healing requires personality to evolve and blossom. Concurrently, what prevents many people to heal is the avoidance of this internal work.

The core of the book is that while modern western medicine takes a mechanistic, organ by organ approach to medicine, there is also a need for a holistic approach considering ourselves as a complex system. In this system, there are complex interactions between organs through connections we only start to discover; and our mind and spirit also plays a large role in what is happening. Therefore, healing can be greatly influenced by our mind. The miracle of the intrinsic healing powers of our body can be greatly amplified by the way we deal with the illness.

I am sure that in the next few years, this holistic approach of medicine will develop as we increasingly recognize that the mechanistic approach of medicine, while it has brought many benefits, has to be supplemented by a systemic approach.

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How to Apply Ethics to Digital Applications in the Collaborative Age

Following up and expanding on our previous post ‘How to Deal with the Conundrum of Smart or Safe Cities‘, let’s expand about the issue of ethics in technology. This excellent post Medium post by Rachel Coldicutt ‘Ethics won’t make software engineering better‘ addresses some of the core issues: more ethics trainings for engineers won’t by itself address the issue.

She explains, “Ensuring more computer scientists have a rudimentary understanding of ethical decision-making will certainly broaden their horizons as individuals, but it’s not enough to transform how technology is made or how it affects society. A more radical proposal is to train arts and social science graduates in product and experience design, so that people who put people first have the skills to shape technology more confidently.”

Her point here is that even ethical computer scientists may fail without a proper ethical governance. And this governance must foster multi-disciplinary-based decisions. She fosters the presence of social science experts as part of the teams.

Whether this is only what is needed is debatable, but the point that ethics must be considered from a diverse viewpoint is essential, inasmuch as it is well known that computer engineering has a gender and ethnical bias, which needs to be checked. It is why governance and authorities must be diverse and not only engineering-centered.

In summary, Rachel Coldicutt states “Knowing what to do with tech must become at least as valuable a skill as knowing how to make it.“

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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 Internet Giants Disruptors Now Have to Address the Physical Economy

I love that post from Mitch Joel ‘A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To Disruption‘ that started from the issue faced by publishers over last Christmas: loss of capacity in printing shops made many popular books unavailable.

Uber buys thousands of cars

Internet disruptors have reached a disruption stage where their decisions have so much impact in the physical world that they now have to intervene in that world.

Mitch Joel quotes “Tom Goodwin (of Zenith Media) and his well-worn/well-used quote from 2015: “Uber, the world’s largest taxi company, owns no vehicles. Facebook, the world’s most popular media owner, creates no content. Alibaba, the most valuable retailer, has no inventory. And Airbnb, the world’s largest accommodation provider, owns no real estate. Something interesting is happening.”“

“What many people don’t know, is that Tom updated that quote this year to read: “The world’s largest taxi firm, Uber, is buying cars. The world’s most popular media company, Facebook, now commissions content. The world’s most valuable retailer is now Amazon, and has more than 350 stores. And the world’s largest hospitality provider, Airbnb, increasingly owns real estate. Things change.””

Things change indeed, and also show how internet disruption really impacts our daily life now. This may lead to another deep transformation of our economic setup: as internet companies will have to own much more physical assets, their business model will also transform.

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