The Trust Gap

What has happened to trust in authority? And how will it change in coming generations((Zoomers, born late 90s to early 2010s, and Alphas following them))?This was what a client wanted to know on a recent consulting call. I thought it might be worth expanding on this issue here.

Trust in media

On the call with my client, I made an argument about distance. That we struggle to trust things that are distant from us, whether that is in terms of geography, class and wealth, or experience. In the last few years, we have arguably seen the distance between us in these dimensions rising. Just a few days later, I read the transcript of a debate between the journalists Matt Taibbi and Ben Bradlee Jr about the death of mainstream media. In his closing remarks, Taibbi talked about the death of local news across the US. He pointed out that the the journalists lost with local closures were much closer to their readers than the writers on the nationals. These exulted spaces are largely populated by a homogenous bunch: white, upper-class (in US terms), Ivy Leaguers.If these people share few of your experiences and values - religion, politics, culture, education - it's hard to connect with them. It is even harder to trust them. What do they know? They're likely based hundreds of miles from you. Maybe thousands. So you'll never encounter them. And they will never encounter you.

Trust in politicians

It was hard not to think about our own House of Commons when listening to Taibbi's description. Swap Oxbridge for Ivy League and you're pretty much there.The distance between government and the rest of the population can be measured in many dimensions. The first is geographic. Though we've seen moves towards devolution over the last twenty years, these have been offset by the gutting of public services at local level. The result, I would argue, is that power and spending have actually been further concentrated in London. Certainly, I think it feels that way to many.Europe may have been the target of many people's ire in the Brexit vote. But I think that was a proxy for Westminster in many cases. Easier and more appealing to believe your power has been taken away by some nebulous foreign entity than that it has been simply shifted to your own capital.And people's individual power has been taken away. Or rather the power and wealth imbalance has increased. Look at any measure of inequality in the UK and right now we are at or near 40-year highs, with the exception of the peak in the 2008/9 recession.This combination of disenfranchisement and disempowerment is one of the core theses explaining the rise of UKIP and Brexit, and Trumpism in the US, where similar phenomena are visible.

Trust in experts

If this distance in geography, power and wealth explains a lack of trust in media and politicians, what explains our lack of trust in experts? Particularly scientists. Through the pandemic I have been dismayed by the scale of conspiracy belief, anti-mask and anti-vaccination protests. I wonder if this doesn't also come down to some form of distance.This is just a theory, so take with the appropriate care. But it feels to me as if the gap between common understanding and expert knowledge has increased significantly over the last few decades. Take physics, for example. Most of the physics that powered our world until the digital revolution was Newtonian. It all operated within the bounds of things we could see and feel. If you could understand an explosion, you could grasp the basics of a combustion engine, or even a rocket ship. Now most of the physics that makes the headlines is quantum. And as Feynman said in 1965, "I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics."((Note: this may not have been true even at the time. Lots of people understand quantum physics up to the level of our current understanding today. But it remains incredibly difficult for the layperson to grasp - and I say this from experience))Even though more of us than ever go to university - over half of the population - the gap between basic knowledge and expertise feels like it has widened. And perhaps this rise has only reinforced for some their sense of exclusion from knowledge? How must it feel to be in the minority, not going on to higher education?

Trust in each other

This education inequality is just one of many gaps opening up in the population. Culture has changed fast in the last few decades, accelerated by the low friction production and distribution of new media, services and products. Not only is there perhaps now a widening gap between the expectations of parents and their children, there is also the potential for an increasingly large gap between social tribes of any age((Note I'm not saying that either of these gaps are at all time highs. The experience gap between those who fought in the Second World War and their hippy children would have been pretty extreme, for example. But it doesn't matter: wide and widening gaps drive conflict.)). Don't agree? OK Boomer.Nonetheless, there are still things that connect us. Any despair in the state of relations can usually be undercut by a glimpse at the Public Health England data from last summer, showing how many of us cared for our neighbours in lockdown.

The future of trust

So, where do we go from here? I confess, I am not optimistic right now. I see no political, social, or educational changes on the horizon that might increase our levels of trust in authority, or in each other. Though at the same time, there are some trends that suggest we shouldn't be too worried.Despite all the stories of corruption, the current government did very well in local elections this week. You may or may not like them, or agree with them, but trust in politicians clearly hasn't been that damaged by recent events. At least not in relative terms.Likewise, for all the vocal distrust in politicians and scientists over the vaccine, uptake so far is over 95%. Only some of those 5% will have failed to be vaccinated for ideological reasons. Distrust only stretches so far.  

If the future is female, then we need to deal with the past

“Ready or not here I come, you can't hide, Gonna love you and make you love me…”This song by The Delfonics came up on a play list the other day. And I realised just how creepy the lyrics were. I posted about it on Twitter and people immediately responded with other songs that were equally dodgy. One pointed to Roy Orbison driving all night to creep into a woman’s room. Another to Extreme emotionally blackmailing a woman into sex in More Than Words. And let’s not talk about the paedophilic overtones of The Knack’s My Sharona.We can dismiss these songs as just inconsequential art. Or as artefacts of the past. But they are a constant feature in our culture. And the lyrics of today’s music are no less troubling. These are earworms that constantly reinforce a set of cultural norms that continue to threaten women. That advocate for men taking what they want.I’m not arguing that we should ‘cancel’ these songs. But rather that we should hear them for what they are. That we should recognise what they are saying. And how resonant their messages are with some of the daily travesties that women face. Because men continue to take what they want from women.

Culture of violence

The story of Sarah Everard may have captured the headlines, but the Femicide Census shows just how common the murders of women by men remain in the UK. A woman is killed by a man every three days in the UK. One in four women in the UK have been sexually assaulted. There is a 1.5% conviction rate for rape, and victims are treated abominably by the criminal justice system, leading many to avoid reporting, as responses to this tweet showshttps://twitter.com/C_Kneer/status/1374856134952108033Outside the criminal domain, women continue to bear the brunt of the labour of care and running the household. Women have been disproportionately disadvantaged by COVID in many different ways. It might seem jarring to place such a banal example next to the shocking crimes above, but one woman’s Twitter thread documenting what happened when she stopped clearing up after the male members of her family just illustrated the daily contempt that men often show women. Even the ones we love.https://twitter.com/MissPotkin/status/1372311382406889474

"Not all men!"

Accompanying the stories of both horror and domestic disputes have been the voices of various men. There have been some noble attempts to get men to think and behave differently. But they have been largely drowned out by the fragile egos chorusing “Not all men!” The whatabouterists complaining that women should also talk about male-on-male violence. And for the most part, silence.I understand that silence. And to some extent, the desire to shout “Not all men!” Because what is the alternative? It is to admit that even if we are “good” men, we benefit from women’s continuing subjugation. I find it difficult even writing that. But it’s nonetheless true. if I look back over both my personal life and career with real honesty, I can see multiple occasions where being a man has been an advantage. An advantage that only existed because of the continuing inequalities between men and women. An advantage offered to me daily in a thousand ways I don’t even see.That advantage may have had nothing to do with violence on my part. But it is intrinsically connected to the violence that others commit. And to the culture that continues to promote men’s right to take what they want from women. We must acknowledge that these things are connected and not discrete phenomena.We can celebrate the progress made on women’s rights. Universal suffrage. The Equal Pay Act. But we shouldn’t be under any illusion about just how far we still have to go. This is a long, slow change process and it remains slow because the status quo advantages half the population – the half that retains the balance of power. And because we reinforce the status quo through our media, unconsciously imbibing every day corrupt ideas about what constitutes a healthy relationship between the sexes.If we want the pace of change to accelerate, we need to challenge it all. At the very least, in our own minds.

And so, this is Christmas...

Another year over and a new one just begun. Well, about to begin. What happened? And what does the new year hold?

Grieving for Christmas

I couldn’t write this post until I had finished grieving for Christmas. I know that sounds melodramatic but Christmas is a big thing for me. I haven’t missed a family Christmas in my entire life. Though we’re very close, we don’t actually see each other that much. We live a couple of hours apart. We all have busy lives. But every year without fail, we gather for Christmas. Drink too much bubbly. Eat too much of my aunt’s amazing trifle. Dance around the kitchen to Springsteen. Catch up with the neighbours and extended family. It’s just all the normal Christmas stuff, but it means a huge amount to me.The thought of missing Christmas has been hurting me for weeks. And my wife. So much so that we put off discussing it over and over again because when we tried, we both just got a bit teary. But eventually, we had to have the conversation. Make the decision. And get over it. In my case, with the aid of half a bottle of red. OK, three quarters.I know it’s the right decision, logically. One that perhaps should have been enforced, given the way the figures are going. And I recognise how lucky I am for this to be the sort of thing I have to grieve over. Many have faced much worse this year. Nonetheless, it hurt me.So, now that crappy cap has been sat on the head of what has been - some notable personal high points notwithstanding - a fairly crappy year all round, what can we expect from the year ahead?

Intersections

2020 was a powerful validation of my theory of change/foresight methodology, Intersections (find it in my book!). This theory says that the starting point for future change can usually be found by uncovering existing pressure points. Dramatic, disruptive change tends to come from the widening of cracks that already exist, rather than completely new fissures in an enterprise, organisation, or culture. Find those cracks and understand the pressures that might widen them, and you can see what’s coming.And so it was in 2020. Take retail: 47% of retailers were already facing financial difficulties according to the Grimsey review at the start of the year. Trends towards digital goods and ecommerce were already widening that crack. It was no surprise when COVID-19 stuck a crowbar in that crack and cleaved the industry apart.Or care: we knew our system was creaking. Understaffed. Underfunded. Under pressure from an ageing population. The cracks were there for all to see. They were already widening. COVID-19 just accelerated the process and brought about an early end for many as a result.

The COVID catalyst

This is the catalysing effect that so many experts have talked of this year. It does add a layer of complexity to the Intersections model. As I have written about before, the challenge with futurism is often not seeing what will happen, but when. Accelerants like a global pandemic can bring about years of expected change in a matter of months.But this is why I preach agility. If you can see what’s coming but not when, your only choice is to be ready to move when it arrives.

Trends and pressures 2021

So what can we expect next year? In many ways, more of the same. We have not yet seen the full effects of the acceleration of trends on pressures in business or society. We’re clearly going into a period of financial turmoil. But what else? These are some of the talking points I’ve been using with clients and for media interviews:

Timeshifted lives

I’ve been talking about extended adolescence for a while now. In the last 20 years, many of the key markers of adulthood have been pushed later and later. We now don't learn to drive until about 27 on average. We find partners, get married and have kids well into our 30s. Likewise with buying a home. Thanks to COVID-19, in 2021 we'll likely see all these things pushed back by a year, meaning people start careers later, live at home later, and have an even longer adolescence. This might be visible in the birth rate with maybe 100,000 fewer children born next year (based on some *very* simple maths extrapolating from a US study).

Robots rise (ahead of schedule)

While I’ve long believed that automation presents a material risk to employment across many categories, I’ve also believed its effects would be slower than many feared. But the pandemic has created an increased incentive for robots in a number of contexts. We may see more automation sooner rather than later.Co-op recently increased its use of delivery drones, adding Northampton to the area covered by the Starship rolling drone. Retailers and logistics firms now have an increased incentive to shift to 'dark warehouses', replacing human workers with machines. And in the office, lots of companies are being forced to document and systematise things that used to be invisible when workers were just sat next to each other - a great opportunity to automate a lot of the drudgery of work. Lots of professional services firms (for example) are likely to stick with lower levels of staff as a result.It doesn't create a pretty picture for employment overall. But...

A nation of freelancers

In the last recession we saw a 10% jump in the numbers of self-employed. Over the last 20 years there has been a 50% increase in the total numbers of people working for themselves (it's now around 15%). I think we're going to see another big spike in 2021. A combination of people seeking work after redundancy, and people using the time they've gained from working at home to start up a 'side hustle' that goes on to become their career.Some of these new ventures might be acts of desperation. But I do think there are new markets opening up to be served. Changes to our lifestyles accelerated by the pandemic will shift our needs. Efforts to jumpstart the economy should make both space and capital available. And with so much of our lives spent online, I think there will be a huge market for things that break us out of that digital life and give us a real, physical world experience. Everything from crafts and personalised goods to holidays and adrenalin sports.

Merry Christmas

Whatever you are doing this Christmas, I do hope you get to have a proper rest. I think we all need some time to reflect and recharge. And prepare ourselves to enter 2021 afresh.Merry Christmas. And here's to a happy new year.

The future holiday: long but costly

A few months ago, the PR agency for holiday home maker Willerby approached me for my thoughts on the future holiday. They were working on a campaign with TV GP Dr Hilary Jones and wanted to extend the thinking out: what might the future holiday look like?It's not the first time I have tackled this topic but I decided to take a fresh look this time, considering all the pressure points and trends that might drive change in the future holiday. The results certainly caught people's attention with the report immediately getting covered in the Daily Mirror when it launched.The fundamentals of my foresight process are simple. I look at the big pressures already facing a particular issue. In this case that included climate change, demographic change, the economy, and mental health. Then I look at the trends: changes in technology, ways of working and living, consumer cravings, new forms of transport. I believe that you can get a real sense of the future when you see where these trends connect with the existing pressures.The result in this case? Longer but more expensive holidays, as changing working and living practices intersect with the pressures of climate change. A craving for more physical experiences as we seek escape from our increasingly digital environment. And a few eye-catching things, like 3D printed homes that blend seamlessly into nature, giving us both comfort and the sense of the wild that we desire.You can download and read the full report from the Willerby website here.

The self-preservation society

Does self-preservation and the propagation of our genes drive selfish or collective behaviour?Twice in recent days I have found myself stuck behind vehicles belching thick black smoke. The first vehicle was an ageing van in desperate need of a service. The second was a newer hatchback, tuned to extract the maximum performance from its diesel engine. The effect from both was the same, bathing every pedestrian, cyclist, and trailing vehicle in a dangerous fog.What struck me about this was the irresponsibility. The lack of empathy from the drivers for their fellow citizens.If I was being generous, I'd suggest the van was owned by a self-employed delivery driver. As this review of a role as a self-employed delivery driver on Indeed.com says:"Recommended if you are single and in shared housing as you do not earn enough to help cover family costs."Given this, maintaining the van properly may be challenging. But what about the boy racer? I can understand the desire to have a fast car. I can't understand the moral arithmetic that says my desire for a fast car is more important than the health of the people in my community.

Acting beyond self-interest

Richard Dawkins might have an explanation for this. Maybe the Boy Racer's selfish genes have the best chance of propagation if he has a fast car? Or maybe he thinks it does. It feels like a somewhat dated symbol of virility and success now. Though that isn't stopping me from spending money to polish up my own ageing sports car. Did someone whisper "mid-life crisis"?The idea of the selfish gene though doesn't rule out apparently altruistic behaviour, or contribution to the collective good. If it did, we wouldn't have the roads on which to drive in the first place. As David Sloan Wilson pointed out in a talk for the RSA about his book, "This View of Life: Completing the Darwinian Revolution", there may be no conflict between ideas of evolution focused on the individual and those focused on the survival of the collective. What we know is that over hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of years, our branch of the primate tree has been different because we have co-operated more than we competed.

The shrug

It is this simple evidence of the success of the world we have created through co-operation that makes me such a sceptic about more radical ideas of individualism. Like those of Ayn Rand, whom a friend told me they have been reading a lot recently.Rand's Objectivist philosophy has a few appealing parts for me. It is fundamentally materialist for a start. That doesn't mean she advocated that we all own lots of stuff, but rather that we are all just stuff. Consciousness emerges from physics and biology, not the other way around. In line with this belief, Rand also rejected faith, and her followers have campaigned against the role of organised religion in government. For Rand, reason was the most important human quality. All of that, I could be on board with.Where I start to have trouble with Rand's philosophy is her extension of this idea into the need for absolute freedom. Rand advocated a form of laissez-faire capitalism that restricted any state interference in individual or corporate behaviour. That means no child labour laws, no minimum wage, and no clean air legislation.

Carrot and stick

As my experience on the road shows, voluntary co-operation is not enough to ensure 'good' behaviour by everyone in our expanded society. Unrestricted freedom may have worked when we lived in small tribes. Those who chose to act against the best interests of the tribe could do so, and the tribe might choose to shun them. As an individual there might have been little they could do to affect the well being of the rest of the tribe, and they might not have survived for long without its support. But that was their choice.In a high tech metropolis of millions of people, this thinking doesn't work so well. One person exercising their unrestricted freedom can cause enormous harm to others. A corporation even more so. Sometimes there will be people who, for whatever reason, are willing to operate to their own benefit and at the expense of others. The price of the continuing progress of society is that we work as a collective to reign those people and organisations in. I'm willing to accept some constraints on my freedom as a price worth paying.

Propagating Self-Preservation

Where this falls down is when large parts of society work against their own self-interest, and that of their children. One of the aspects of the Brexit debate that I struggled most with, is the propensity for people to vote to leave the European Union when it is so nakedly against the interests of their children. I know that many people may not agree with or accept this argument, and that's their prerogative. But I know of cases where people, having been told by their adult children just how negatively Brexit will affect them, and been well-informed enough to see the argument, went on to vote for it anyway.Likewise, some of the reactions to the COVID-19 lockdown. Some people's outright refusal to accept the advice to the detriment of themselves and their children is hard to comprehend. It baffles me because it goes against everything I understand about evolved human behaviour. The only explanation I can find is one of disconnection.Many of us seem to feel like we have given up too much freedom and control. This is why the Brexit message to 'take back control' was so powerful. Never mind that the Brexiteers were trying to reclaim power from the wrong people and the wrong institutions.

Hyper-centralisation

The UK is famously hyper-centralised, with vast amounts of power wielded from London. This power has often been expressed through a range of universal standards, be it for education, or healthcare. The effect is to try to make everyone in the UK part of the same tribe. The EU by contrast is inherently a tribe of tribes: the recognition of difference is built into its constitution. That reality has only been evidenced by the individual approaches taken by each country to respond to the coronavirus, including shutting their own borders.I don't think you can build a single tribe of 70m people. I think there are things that will bring us all together. There are shared beliefs, rules and needs that connect us. But I also think there is a lot of difference, and some of that difference is geographical. Try to collect us into a single tribe with its centre in London and we naturally feel disconnected. We are more likely to strain against laws and powers that are distant and faceless, be that by voting for disruptive choices, driving vehicles that poison the air, or ignoring guidelines to protect ourselves, our families, and our communities from infection.If we bring the size of our groups down, connect those powers back to communities, people might feel a little more responsible for conforming to and indeed, reinforcing them. 

Is tomorrow's society diverse or fractured?

Who are you? How is that identity defined? What groups do you associate with? And which ones do you define yourself against?

These are the issues increasingly at the heart of modern politics, according to a recent article in Foreign Affairs magazine by Francis Fukuyama. No longer is the debate defined by who has what, but by who we are. Traditional class lines have been disrupted by signifiers that have taken on greater importance. Low-friction global communications have allowed us to build tribes that are no longer defined by geography, as I have written about before.This last point is, in many ways, a good thing. As one Twitter friend put it yesterday: “Why would I want to associate with my neighbour? I’d much rather join a global group of people I actually like.” The freeing of communication has allowed us to find perhaps a truer sense of our own identities, by meeting like-minded people around the world who share our hobbies, interests, or deeper definitions of who we are. Other people who challenge norms and the status quo and want to explore what it might mean to be human beyond historical limitations.But increasingly digital as our lives may be now, there are still issues to grapple with that are defined by space and place. From the simplest issue of bin collections, to more thorny issues of rights, benefits, and education. How do we address these issues that are shared and contested among increasingly fractured communities sharing the same spaces?

Internet principles

Fukuyama suggests that common creeds form part of the answer. Shared sets of ideals around which countries are built.For me there are parallels here in how shared systems like the internet are created: millions of components of both hardware and software, created by thousands of different companies, operating to a huge variety of different ends. And yet through a set of shared standards, somehow co-operating to achieve a sufficient level of coherence that it all works — most of the time.The problem with Fukuyama’s solution for me is that it operates at a state level, and I am no longer convinced that we can maintain a shared state identity even in a country as small as the United Kingdom. Or rather, there may not be sufficient shared identity across the country to maintain coherence in that national community. Rather, we have to acknowledge that there is an increasingly devolved identity, just as we are — slowly — acknowledging the need for more devolved power.

Shared spaces

I think we can create a sense of shared purpose across diverse communities in a shared space. But that sense of purpose can only be defined in part at a state level. What will be much more important is a sense of local identity that binds us to our neighbours around the things that matter that are inevitably defined by space. These people may not be our friends, they may form part of groups against which we choose to define ourselves. But we will have to accept a measure of compromise over the issues in which we have a shared interest.That compromise is unlikely to be forced upon us. Communities of shared interest are rarely built from the top down. They have to be constructed from the bottom up. Doing this will require renewed efforts to overcome identity-based boundaries.I’ve never liked the term ‘tolerance’ in this context. Surely we should be striving for more than that? Acceptance, understanding, or resolution. But these things take time, and in that time we will have communities with a proportion of shared interests that need to take action. They will need to get past their potential areas of conflict to work for their common good.This sounds a little light weight: “all we need is peace, love and harmony”? Hardly a radical conclusion. But I come back to my position on the future: short term pessimist, long term optimist. The direction of travel for the human race is a positive one when it comes to resolving differences. More and more is handled by communication, less and less by violence. I think we can and will reach a situation where we can celebrate the rich diversity of our race while reliably building ad-hoc coalitions to achieve shared goals, even between groups with wildly different, and sometimes conflicting, ideals.But it’s going to take time. The next few years will continue to be challenging.

A cult of culture

I have a selection of podcasts that I listen to when I really can’t sleep. In Our Time is my go-to choice. There’s something soothing about Melvyn Bragg’s conversations with a handful of academics about one or other big subject. I usually get through about 20 minutes before dozing off. And I always wake up having learned something.Last night I was listening to an episode about the anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss, and one phrase of his really stuck with me: “a cult of culture”. Levi-Strauss coined it to describe the behaviour of secular Jews like himself, saying something along the lines of “when we lose our faith, we create a cult of culture.”The phrase stuck with me as it seems to fit the current situation so well. For the first time in 2017, more than half the UK population reported that they had no faith. What has replaced it in our lives and minds? A cult of culture.

Jesus and Moses

City have JesusChelsea have MosesArsenal have MohamedWest Ham have Judas pic.twitter.com/b7TjlQVMnh

— Footy Jokes (@FootballMemesCo) January 22, 2017

There have been many tweets about various religiously-named footballers in the Premiership this year. One recently reminded me of a conversation with Simon Oliveira, the managing director of Doyen Global and the man who leads David Beckham’s communications strategy. Simon pointed out that the direct reach of players like Neymar and Beckham outstrips that of even the most influential media. Sporting culture is perhaps one of the greatest examples of the amplification effects and disintermediation of digital media. Football teams have always had their cultish followings, but this has now been amplified on a grand scale. Don’t believe in a god? Believe in three points on Saturday — or in the lifestyle of your favourite players.

Cultural diversity

Football and its players aren’t the only cults of course. We live in an age of unprecedented cultural diversity. I don’t mean we are a diverse nation — we always have been. I mean that the choices presented to us in terms of the content we consume are overwhelmingly broad. This has the effect of dividing us into social tribes that are no longer geographically defined: we can find people around the world who share our love for a particular podcast, game, blog, Tumblr etc etc etc. And each tribe has its own totems and shamans: certain actors, writers, and sometimes influencers with no other apparent qualification.That last part sounds dismissive, but it shouldn’t. I followed two ‘influencers’ (I don’t know what else to call them) onto a plane yesterday, and observed a few minutes of their craft. They had a genuine process and talent for producing a narrative through their chosen apps (Snapchat and Instagram). We may not know what to call it or how to describe it, but it was impressive to watch.

The moral component

I’m no advocate of faith or religion. I struggle to reconcile faith with science, since one preaches constant inquiry and the other explicitly rejects it. I spend my whole working life preaching accelerated adaptation to a fast-changing world. Religion is bound tightly to teachings that are thousands of years old. Though I also advise a measure of conservatism, to challenge change before acting on it, that’s a little too conservative for me.Religion has often failed to offer useful moral guidance, being guilty of the opposite on many occasions. But at least moral teaching was a core part of its mission. I wonder in our cult of culture, where does the discourse and teaching around morality happen in a way that has the same reach. In a way that overcomes the limitations that families often face. In a way that takes it beyond the classroom.Is there a room for a moral core in our cult of culture, and do we need it?

Identity duality: trust and preference

There has been an idea bouncing around tech circles for a while now. It’s about online identity and how we should return control of it to individuals.Right now, a lot of our digital identity is controlled by large corporations who profit enormously from that control. For reasons of fairness, privacy, and control, there’s an argument from the EU and others to take control from these large corps and give it back to individuals.

Trust and preference

When we’re talking about identity here we’re really talking about two different things, which are often confused in this debate.One is about trust: are you who you say you are. This is important for accessing everything from email and social networks to bank accounts and government services. A trusted online identity is a vital component for many digital services, with different levels of verification required for different tiers of service.The other is about preference. Based on who you are, what you have viewed and consumed, and the behaviour of those in your network, what might you want to consume in the future. This is the information that is so valuable to brands and retailers, and hence to the social networks.The argument for repatriating control of this preference information to individuals has been criticised for being somewhat ‘Ayn Rand-ian’. It is characterised as being all about the preference information: “Put property rights on that data and allow it to be traded. Free markets solve everything etc.”

Beyond commercialisation

There would be a lot of merit to this criticism but for two things. Firstly, the trade in this preference data has already been commercialised. Right now the rightful owners of this data are excluded from the market, profiting from it not at all and without any meaningful control over its use. Free markets may not solve everything, but a free market is infinitely better than the current one which is rigged against the consumer.Secondly, the financial capital bound up in preference data is inextricably linked to the social capital that creates the trust in our identity. The 'me' that posts and shares is the same 'me' that votes and banks, and the same 'me' that shops and clicks. Separating the three across the myriad ways that we log in and out of payment engines, social networks, shopping sites and more is near impossible. The various threads may not form a totally coherent whole but they nonetheless represent a single, if fuzzy, me.The argument that I should control this social aspect of my online identity has nothing to do with commercial gain. It’s a simple principle of human rights.Personally, I think there’s a valid argument to me made that we should be the ones to profit from choosing to share our own preference data. But the real argument for repatriating identity to individuals is that we should have the right to control who we are and how we present ourselves, whatever the domain.

What happens when technology changes but society doesn’t?

The Expanse is a wonderful piece of hard sci-fi that presents us all with a warning: without societal change, technology will amplify inequalities.The SyFy/Netflix series is based on the novels of Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck, writing together under the name James S.A. Corey. Set 200 years in the future, they tell of a solar system divided. Mars is independent, wealthy and ambitious. A neglected working class toils in the asteroid fields at the edge of the system, mining and shipping minerals under the control of Earth, technologically advanced but socially stagnant under the global control of the UN.The gap between rich and poor in this system-wide society is financially and geographically vast: perhaps this is the expanse the authors refer to. ‘The Belters’ have barely any control of their lives, bound as they are into service, and limited in their opportunities to travel by the effect of zero gravity on their bones and musculature.In my professional work I don’t try to look 200 years out. But I see a microcosm of this expanse building in the next 20.I’ve written a lot about automation and its likely effects. In short, it is hard to see how we create jobs of a volume to replace those that are likely to be destroyed by robots of various forms. But this is only part of the story.

Short engagements

In parallel with this, we are likely to see the remaining jobs for humans change. Firstly, it seems likely that engagements between employer and employee will continue to shorten. Not because people are bouncing between roles to get a pay boost. But because the increasingly cyclical nature of success will define periods in which some skills are needed and others in which they are not. Will you need all of the marketing, finance, legal, HR skills all year round? Or will you acquire them as needed — perhaps adding and dropping the same person to and from the workforce multiple times. Not freelancing exactly but multiple shorter duration stints.

BYOD

Secondly, we are moving towards a situation where a person is only as effective as the technology they bring with them. The ‘Bring Your Own Device’ trend seems innocuous and even fun at first: the reversal of companies and consumers having the best tech. But really it makes a lot of sense for the companies involved: lower capital outlay, and workers equipped with technology on which they are already trained.We are so close to our devices now that they are an extension of ourselves — again as I have written and spoken about extensively. At what point does the technology we bring with us become part of the recruitment process? Would a company (legitimately) want to select a candidate whose purely human characteristics are poorer than another’s, because their technological enhancements take them way beyond? Probably.

The haves and the have-nots

What does this do to the divide between the haves and have nots? It’s not positive. Legislation may try to prevent such discrimination based so closely on wealth. But I’m not sure what success it would have. Those who manage to get onto the bottom rung early will advance, others will not, as the gap widens over time.Technology is often painted as the villain in this piece. But technology has no agency. It simply presents a lens to the issues we have today and amplifies them. Long-range futurism and science-fiction is a wonderful way of demonstrating what might happen if we don’t address these issues today.

Future identity theft: balancing exposure and security

Identity theft made the news again today. Will future identity controls enable us to better protect ourselves? Without limiting expression?

Blame the Victim

Crime prevention is often a matter of telling potential victims to limit their exposure. The message is similar, whether the threat is mugging, rape, or identity theft. This doesn’t sit right with me. Should we force the majority to change their behaviour because a few people may take advantage?This advice seems based on the assumption that the recommended steps are zero cost. They are not, in many cases.To limit the utility of a gadget for fear of using it is one thing, though we should not underestimate the effect of that fear. To propose that women change how they dress and act, and where they go and when is quite another.On these grounds, it is always with some hesitation that I sit in radio studios handing out advice when the latest reports appear about growing online security threats. Like this morning. The latest report from Cifas, showing dramatic rises in identity theft, fuelled in part by the range of information we now share online.Should I tell people to lock down their privacy settings? To view every email as a potential phishing attack? I’m worried about reinforcing the view, held particularly in some demographics, that the Internet is an inherently dangerous place. That by venturing there, they are inviting attack.Where I try to settle is on some form of balance. As I put it this morning, it’s about locking your front door, not putting bars across all your windows. Put your privacy settings to a sensible minimum, but don’t retreat from all the wonder that online interactions can bring.

Future Identity

Part of the problem is that the definition and validation of identity is such a tricky thing. For the most part it is defined by the jigsaw of personal information. Information that we all — still — find ourselves entering into forms on a frequent basis. Name, address, date of birth etc. Because we still define identity this way, assemble enough pieces of the jigsaw and someone can pretend to be you.Could our future identity be better protected and controlled?Certainly some start-ups are doing interesting things with encryption and blockchain. Controlling access to different services with digital keys, sometimes combined with hardware factors or biometrics. But the setup of these identities still seems to come down to a jigsaw of pieces. Validating that you have control of social networks in your name, for example.Perhaps we cannot get away from this. Identity is a complex thing. Perhaps the only way to define it reliably is to assemble a unique jigsaw for each person. The trick is not then how we identify each other but how we protect that identity and prevent it being misused.

Challenges to Success

The challenge here is one of fragmentation. What if every service now tries to hold a super-validated identity for its users. Already there are many different people tackling this problem. Can any one service — or even a small group — build up the levels of trust and oversight by users needed to ensure that fake identities cannot exist in parallel with real, just on different platforms?There’s also an issue of access. Imagine if instead of a credit score, you have a trust score predicated on how many different ways you can validate your identity — access to social networks, banking, credit, bills, location etc. Imagine this trust score becomes an integral part of accessing finance products or — and this doesn’t seem too far fetched in the current political climate — government services.Before we even get into the evolving definitions of gender and the mass diversification of culture, the very mechanisms by which we hold and control our identities are going to go through rapid change in the next few years. Will we get greater protection against theft and impersonation from future identity controls? Will they enable us to balance access and security?Right now it is unclear. Historically criminals have usually found a way. Block one vector and they find another. But perhaps with these new technologies we can improve the balance between defence and expression of our future identity. 

Why The Future of Digital is Physical

I often have the same conversations many times over. Sometimes they’re with other people, on air or answering questions at a talk. Sometimes they are entirely in my head, as part of a blog post or just a thought process. It means I’m never quite sure what I’ve said and to whom. So forgive me if this is an idea I’ve shared before, but I couldn’t find reference to it on my blog.There’s a belief in the minds of many of the more mature that young people have given themselves over to the digital realm. That they are more interested in the screen than the sky and that this is somehow inherently damaging. And that they engage indiscriminately without thought to future consequence.Personally, I think this is nonsense on a number of levels.

Digital augments the physical

Firstly, my own observations of the young people I work with and how they use technology suggests that its primary function is to organise physical engagement — of every type. Why have services like Snapchat and Instagram become so popular? Because they encourage the sharing of your current real-world experience. Facebook is increasingly dominated by videos and photos. Tinder? Well, its success speaks for itself. These tools are being used to organise future real-world experiences and share the ones they have already had.There is an argument about the narcissistic, show-off culture that drives us to use these tools. And one that says we would be better off enjoying the experience than constantly trying to share it from behind a screen. But to say that young people use digital tools as an alternative to the physical? I think that is increasingly wrong.Young people’s TV consumption is falling as they consume more digital media on mobile devices and we have to see this as primarily a good thing: they are moving from a passive activity to a more active one, albeit one that carries risks.

Privacy conscious

Secondly, there is the charge that the young engage indiscriminately online, sharing personal information without a thought for risks. Again I have to say the behaviours I’ve witnessed and the success of private messaging services suggest this is not true.There was absolutely a generation who were young when social media was an absolute novelty and who embraced it without a second thought. That generation has probably shared a lot of stuff they’d now like to retrieve.But the generation that followed them is a lot more savvy. Hence the success of Snapchat and less public messaging services like WhatsApp and their diminished use of Facebook. They are careful about what they share, and where they share it.

Merging worlds

So what does this say about the future?Despite the so-far limited success of augmented reality (Google Glass etc), I believe strongly that we will increasingly see the physical and digital worlds merge as more items are connected and our interfaces to them become more natural and human. Our digital interactions will become more subtle: conversation and gestures, colours and vibrations, head up, not head down. We will become better at receiving, filtering and responding to information via multiple sensory channels. We’re capable: just look at how we deal with all of the information flying at us when driving a car at speed.Young people aren’t lost in some cyber netherworld. They’re mapping out our increasingly physical, digital future.