Jeff Degraff's Blog, page 7

Jeff-ism Video: How to Look for the Next Big Thing

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Big Brother is using technology to watch us, but we’re also watching each other

Approximately 70% of all Americans have a smartphone: 24/7 internet access, touch screen apps, and a video camera. A quick glance at any news feed or social media site reveals how these small, cheap and mobile devices are putting everything in our lives on the record. Teenage altercations in the cafeteria, body shaming photos taken in the women’s locker room, and racist epithets at the grocery store. It’s now reasonable to assume that everything you do or say in any quasi-public space is being recorded, either inadvertently or intentionally.

Big Brother may be watching you, but it’s the guy eavesdropping on your personal conversation at your favorite java joint that that puts you on display. There is no way of framing the discussion, putting things in context or curating the production fairly. It’s an improvised clip or a meme created and distributed in real time. Big Brother isn’t directing the epic behind the camera like Cecil B. DeMille. We are.

It’s easy to see the hypocrisy of our political figures who use social media to advance their aims, but who cry foul when they themselves are the unwitting subjects of the omnipresent gotcha moment. Everything is on the record when every place has a camera. It’s not just that we have become a nation of paparazzi. We’re also the voyeurs who readily consume these indiscreet images.

Last summer I was in Manhattan with my family. A couple of young men took a photo of a homeless man near the New York Public Library. Much to their surprise, the homeless man violently confronted them. “What gives you the right to take a picture of me,” he yelled. The two laughed and moved on. It was clear that these young men thought that what they had done was perfectly acceptable.

Network news programs are now a montage of swanky high definition productions wrapped around shaky images moving in and out of focus. The video clip of Dr. David Dao being forcibly removed from a United Airlines flight is a prime example. While we applaud the visual evidence that leads to justice, we also extend the victimization when we put these pictures into syndication. Battles, crashes, rapes, suicides and murders are now routinely posted to social media sites, and rebroadcast by reputable news organizations.

Why worry about Big Brother when we are spying on each other? Ironically, there is mounting evidence that the world is actually getting less violent. Just think about the wars of the last century to put our current situation into perspective. However, our views are not created by numbers or facts, but rather the ongoing narrative fed by the stories we tell each other. The world may be less dangerous today, but the images we see make it feel much more immediate, intimate and arbitrary. Our view of ourselves feeds our paranoia, and we can’t look away.

It’s reasonable to assume that these image-capturing technologies will become smaller, cheaper and more difficult to uncover. There is little the legal system can do to remedy the situation, and while there may be a niche market to develop detection technologies, this trend of inexpensive photographic gadgets will continue into the foreseeable future. So, it’s up to us. We can continue to witness the most sordid aspects of the human condition until we are emotionally numb, or we can cultivate a more discerning eye, develop perspective, and look away. And, if we happen to see Big Brother, chances are, he looks a lot like us.

This article was originally published on The Next Idea.

Jeff-ism Video: Harvesting Winning Ideas

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Jeff-ism Video: The Future of Creative Collaboration

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The invisible employment crisis that threatens the auto industry and our economic future

A very strange article in The New York Times caught my eye the other day. It noted that while unemployment has fallen to 4.7%, the lowest in a quarter-century, that’s actually an ominous sign of trouble ahead. The article used employment data to suggest that while almost everyone who wants to be employed is currently employed, millions of high skilled, strategically essential jobs are going unfilled. More so, the new xenophobia is making it increasingly difficult to import talent from other countries.

Nowhere is this talent gap more challenging than in the automotive industry. A recent BusinessWeek story says it all: “Detroit Is Trying Really Hard to Woo Young Workers.” It points out that the lack of qualified new hires has become so pressing that it now part of the weekly executive briefing at General Motors. At this year’s Mackinac Island Policy Conference, Michigan Governor Rick Snyder highlighted the need to train, recruit and retain proficient young engineers, and other professionals, if Detroit-based companies hope to win the connected technology and autonomous vehicle race.

As the Baby Boomers who created the post-war economy retire in ever increasing numbers, the ramifications are clear and unsettling. If America hopes to keep its prized position as the innovation leader of the world in key industries such as automotive and aerospace – and keep the standard of living that goes with them – it had better find a way to quickly develop the competencies required to advance technologies faster than its competitors.

That brings us to the specter of a new innovation leader: China. Less than three years ago, then-vice president quipped: “I challenge you, name me one innovative project, one innovative change, one innovative product that has come out of China.” Well, anyone who attended this year’s Consumer Electronics Show can probably name a dozen: industrial robots, 3D printing, and various types of consumer prosthetics, to name just a few. And these aren’t even close to the whole story. Chinese advances in material science, naval engineering and deep space satellite killers are all currently considered issues of national security.

In fact, during the past three years, China’s expenditures for research and development, and the patents awarded for innovations, have significantly outpaced our own. In their book China’s Next Strategic Advantage: From Imitation to Innovation, professors George Yip and Bruce McKern intimate that it may already be too late for the U.S. to regain its position as first in class.

Perhaps the most telling change of fortunes recently occurred when President Trump decided to pull the U.S. out of the Paris Climate Agreement. Within the week, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, declared that China was ready not only to meet its obligations, but would lead world efforts to reduce global warming. While China is widely known to be of the most polluted countries on the planet, what is often overlooked is that is clearly a global leader in clean-technology. Premier Li knows that the Paris Climate Agreement is good for business, and China has a young and skilled workforce capable of taking advantage of the situation.

As we move towards a populist ethos, it’s easy to forget the fact that high wages accompany high skills. Full employment with declining wages and lagging industries is a poor bellwether of our economic prospects. The actions of our government are of little consequence if we lack the talent and culture to participate in the highly competitive, and lucrative, world of innovation. It’s time we moved beyond measuring what percentage of us have jobs, and look at the more telling key indicator: the number of jobs that have gone unfilled because of a lack of qualified applicants. This is the innovation gap. Once we look at it this way, we could realistically address the difficult issues of education and immigration that will determine our fortunes in the not-so-distant future.

This article was originally published on The Next Idea

Jeff-ism Video: Embracing Failure

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Don’t tax robots to save jobs… they might just create new forms of employment

In a recent interview, Microsoft founder Bill Gates created quite a stir when he suggested that robots be taxed because society will not be able to manage the speed and magnitude of the impending automation of everything.

While his intent was to suggest ways to stave off the massive social unrest that will surely come with wholesale unemployment, it wasn’t a week before the editorial staffs at the Economist and BusinessWeek weighed in on impracticality of the idea, saying it would slow down technology investment and automation rates, and seriously damage American competitiveness.

Curiously, they framed the founder of the modern high-tech revolution as a Luddite. What the business press didn’t do was offer a viable alternative to Gates’ flawed solution. The reason is clear. Discussions regarding the obvious end game in this Age of Automation are ideologically divisive both in terms of economics and politics. Both sides move backwards to fortify their positions with principles first formed centuries ago. Conservatives see liberty as the pathway to equality, while progressives see it the other way around. The problem is that neither of these views provide anything close to a practical remedy.

Maybe it’s time that we developed some new ideologies to go with our innovations. Yes, we’ve seen revolutionary shifts take us from farm to factory, and more recently, from corporate cubicles to the wide-open digital spaces where free agents gather. But we’ve never seen a future without us in it.

Well actually, maybe some of us have. Over 9 million jobs were lost during the Great Recession. Many of these positions were simply replaced by technology. According to the Economic Policy Institute, millions have fallen out of the workforce and those fortunate enough to find new positions are experiencing wage stagnation. For these folks who are increasingly downwardly mobile, the robots have already taken over.

There are always inflection points where society pivots to catch up with technology. It not only requires sufficient time to develop a new approach, but also for us to get our collective heads around what’s happening.

There are encouraging signs that robots will produce new forms of employment.

First, there is fierce competition in the online learning space. Digital distribution companies, as well as community colleges and intermediate school districts are focusing on the delivery of inexpensive and ongoing training. Artificial intelligence, virtual reality and the Internet of Things are simply the machines of this Age of Automation, and must be operated and maintained.

Second, the cost of technology continues to fall. What were prohibitively expensive machines five years ago, such as 3D printers or drones, can be purchased for about the same price as a laptop. Consider how anyone can record a professional quality song on their smartphone. It’s the record company with millions in overhead that suddenly finds itself at a disadvantage.

Entrepreneurs are now using cheap component parts to assemble complex systems to manage energy grids, autonomous vehicles and even control air traffic.

Finally, you can’t take it with you. In the Gilded Age, Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller gave much of their amassed fortunes to create some of our most important research institutes, libraries and universities.

Similarly, the Giving Pledge, a campaign for billionaires to leave most of their wealth to philanthropic causes started by Warren Buffett and Bill Gates – yes, Mr. Robot Tax himself, is currently donating hundreds of billions to eradicate diseases, educate the underserved and further advance technology – those rascally robots – while avoiding government glad-handing.

For now, let’s not tax the robots. It might cause an automated populist rebellion of their own. And none of us are qualified to deal with that.

This article was originally published on The Next Idea

Jeff-ism Video: How To Do More With Less

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Jeff-ism Video: Do More With Less

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Jeff-ism Video: How to Create an Idea Space

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