7th November, 2021
Week 45/52
🗳 Choose
How do we decide what technology to use and what technology to avoid?
Back in the late 1900s Howard Rheingold wrote an essay for Wired Magazine called Look Who's Talking, about an Amish community in Pennsylvania in the US.
I've thought about it often since I first read it, and referenced it many times.
He described their unique approach to using technology in their day-to-day lives and specifically their criteria for what technology is accepted:
Does it bring us together or draw us apart?
So, for example, buttons on clothes are frowned upon, because they are a sign of individuality, but telephones are allowed, as long as they are located outside of the house, where they don't interrupt conversation between family members.
The article describes the drawn out process these communities use to come to consensus around these questions. Interestingly they allow for experimentation and for people to change their minds. Something new is used not because it’s been approved but because somebody tries it. Then they see what effect it has and debate whether that is something they thing is net positive or not.
We can agree or disagree with their view of the world (and there are some quite problematic aspects, for sure), but I don’t think we can fault them for having a values-based way of making decisions about this sort of thing.
We like to pretend that we are in control of the technology we use.
But, think about this ...
Are we in control of our TVs?
Are we in control of our inboxes?
Are we in control of our mobile phones?
Or are we mostly responding to all of those things whenever they demand our attention?
(One simple test I like is: when you are talking in-person with somebody else and your phone rings or buzzes, do you pick it up immediately and look at it? If so, what does that say about your relative priorities?)
The reality, for many of us, is we are not mindful about how we use technology and as a result we end up being controlled and manipulated.
There are actually quite a few historic examples of people who have thought about this much more deeply than we seem to in the modern era.
For example the Luddites. They became famous for damaging machines at new textile factories in the early 1800s, angry that these developments were destroying their craft and resulting in unemployment and poor working conditions. Now we just use their name as a word to demean anybody who is opposed to anything new.
It's easy to look down on the Amish and Luddites and think they are just fighting the tide of progress. But, we're all fighting the tide of progress - some of us just put up more resistance than others.
Not that long ago I used to mock my dad for his slow but contentious two finger typing. But now I watch myself fumble around in 3D-worlds that my kids can navigate so easily and realise that history has repeated, it's just the tools that have changed.
The difficult news is there will be more and more of these decisions for us to make, individually and collectively, as new technology waves break:
Smart Devices, Social Media1, Robots, Drones, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Virtual and/or Augmented Reality, Remote and Distributed Work, "Smart" Assistants, Plant-based Meat + Milk, Machine Vision, Autonomous Vehicles (Cars, Trucks + Boats), Genetic Modification + Bio-hacking, etc etc.
All of the things I'd be reading about in Wired if I still read Wired.
How confident are we that we will make mindful decisions about which of these things being us together and which draw us apart?
In the meantime, I wonder what the Amish would make of a Substack newsletter?! 😥
🧛♂️ Count
I don't generally read much fiction, but once a year I make an exception.
This week the latest version of the TIN Report was released.
As always there was a catchy headline which was dutifully reported: “NZ tech industry enjoys record growth”.
For many years this report has claimed that tech sector is our third biggest, behind dairy and tourism. That truthy fact has been repeated so often nobody stops anymore to ask if tech is actually a sector at all.
Anyway, according to StatsNZ, which doesn’t define tech as a sector, exports from tourism (counting visitor spending in New Zealand including spending by international students) dropped from $15.2b to $5.2b during the year ending March 2021. Ouch! But good news for the imaginary tech sector which has jumped into second place.
Those of you who have followed what I’ve written this year will know by now that I think this whole exercise is a bit silly.
To recap…
The TIN report is compiled by a privately owned business, largely funded by public sponsors, asking private companies to contribute their own data for free, so that it can be packaged up into a report that is sold back to them (at $400/copy, more if you prefer a printed version). Ironically TIN themselves have refused to disclose their own revenue, but presumably given that business model it’s pretty lucrative.
Because the data is supplied on trust it’s impossible to verify - I know of multiple examples where very round numbers have been supplied and printed, and other examples where no numbers have been provided at all, so they’ve presumably relied on educated guesses.
Greg Shanahan, who is the founder and managing director of TIN, has admitted that the report measures exports only in the “colloquial sense” - i.e. it includes revenues that are earned and spent offshore and never touch New Zealand - see Kate MacNamara’s excellent reporting on this for example.
Even the decision making about which companies are included and highlighted (or not) is opaque. This year, in media interviews, he defined a technology business as one that is: “invested in change, not the status quo”. Which seems … quite broad. There are surely many big NZ owned companies who could rightly feel disappointed to not be captured by that categorisation.
Putting aside what is and isn’t a tech company, it’s also not straightforward to define what is and isn’t a New Zealand company.2 This has been highlighted again this year by the number of companies previously featured in the index which have been sold to new owners: Seequent, Bentley Systems, EzyVet, Vend, Ninja Kiwi and Timely. A couple of those are quite familiar to me! According to reporting in the NZ Herald “all will stay in the TIN Report, as long as they continue to headquarter their operations in New Zealand”.
Which begs the question: What is the value we all get from companies who keep headquarters in New Zealand? Or, is there actually a better measure of success we’re overlooking here?
Note: If your immediate gut reaction is that a company like Vend, which is now no longer owned by New Zealanders, should no longer be counted by the report, consider that Vend has been partly owned by different international investors for many years. So, despite the headlines, that sudden change this year is a continuation of the gradual shift in ownership that started many years ago. And also keep in mind that several of the biggest companies that are listed in this report every year are either entirely or predominantly owned by international investors. Ownership is complicated!
I haven’t yet splashed out the $400 required to read thist years list. At least this year, thanks to COVID, we’re spared the Puy lentils.
You can read what I’ve written previously on this topic, now all in one place:
🌲 Offset
I thought this was a clever tweet by Greta Thunberg this week:
My first thought was: Why should teenagers be forced to make these sorts of compromises, when boomers have been swearing freely their whole lives?
FFS. (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻
But, then, after a bit more reflection, I couldn’t help but feel like she missed a huge opportunity. Perhaps there are other people who will be motivated to do the same? Can we make it easier for them to achieve this net zero outcome?
So, I’m excited to announce the Cuss Offset Fund. If you don’t want the hassle of saying nice things to compensate for your swearing you can just invest in the fund and we will pay other people (who, let’s be honest were likely nice already) to do that for you.
There is even a solution here for those in traditional industries, who may struggle to communicate at all if they are restricted from swearing. In those cases we will mint NFTs of your bad language and use the proceeds from those to purchase the required offsets.
Forget about agritech and cleantech. This is surely New Zealand’s moment to shine!
What am I missing? 🤨
Top Three is a weekly collection of things I notice in 2021. I’m writing it for myself, and will include a lot of half-formed work-in-progress, but please feel free to follow along and share it if it’s interesting to you.
See my previous comments about media vs social-media.
Perhaps, as Nat Torkington suggests, we need to adopt a togs vs undies categorisation for these sort of questions?