The Trouble with Generalizations – and Minding the Curve
Have you ever romanticized about the good old days? We’ve all done it. It’s human nature. Take a look at the video below. What would you tell your team if the barometer of success was a 10x improvement in how you do things today? How would you communicate that when you don’t even know how you would do it – because the technology doesn’t even exist yet. How would you inspire them and motivate your team to greater heights? My post covers different generalizations and how we, as a society react and use these ideas as a springboard or not.
In the video, 67 seconds is agonizingly long by today’s standards. And yet, the follow-on comparison symbolizes how little actions compound over time. It’s also enough to drive you crazy when there are so many standing on the bleachers, in the shadows shouting or whispering promises of a quick fix for whatever is ailing in society.
Removing friction by making it easier for your customers, citizens, constituents to connect or do business with you is the Holy Grail. Clients expect to have their voices heard, or they will focus their attention to vote with their wallets elsewhere. They demand an experience that is continuously improving. Beyond the sniff test of ethics and common decency, people don’t care whether that involves 2 or 20 people to fulfill the product or the immediate experience they desire.
Sometimes it’s shaving seconds off of routine procedures, while other times it may be transforming the way you do business. Sometimes you need to continue to put one foot forward while you do another lap around the track.
There’s no shortage of doomsday predictions on how the latest technological trend will transform and influence virtually every sector of the economy and the job market over the next 5, 10, 15 years and beyond. And, why not? Fear sells and mobilizes movements. What parallels can we draw from the hype around new technologies, the potential conflict of interest with big tech in Silicon Valley and the checks and balances to our system and the rule of law?
Fear. Many political campaigns leverage it – and in light of the growing dissent around the concentration of power within big tech in Silicon Valley, and the broader ecosystem around third-party data collection with data brokers and the ad industry we might want to ask ourselves why it’s taken us so long to react.
There have been a series of polarizing elections in recent years, with outcomes that were unprecedented. As a society, seeing the polarizing effects of micro-targeting in such a grand way is foreign to us – but people have been building data war chests to micro-target population segments in some form or another for decades.
Facebook, over the past few weeks, has announced some steps that will give people more control over their data and privacy, and to be clear, a number of them were already in place. They’re just making it easier for people to access these tools. Facebook will no longer allow third-party data to inform its ad targeting solutions. The dirty secret is that this ad targeting would become more challenging in Europe in advance of the European Union’s General Data Privacy Regulation (GDPR) set to take place at the end of May.
In the United States, online services are sheltered under the protection of Section 230 of the Communications and Decency Act. It’s a piece of legislation that was enacted in 1996 that exempts companies from liability for almost anything their users do. In light of recent allegations, the spirit of the law deserves to be challenged. Mainly because the intent is that online services are merely passive conveyors of information, much like phone companies.
Self-driving cars involve another generalization of underestimating the long-term impact. Recently, the industry suffered a setback on a multitude of levels with the tragic loss of life in Arizona. Self-driving cars are not going to be as readily available nearly as quickly as some of the optimists predict. We see this play out time and time again with new technologies. It’s precisely at the moment when things look most bleak where the savvy reset expectations, going for small wins. Others, going for the home run before they have an all-star team may have gone for too grand of a vision, getting caught up in the hype, and they over promised and failed. Meanwhile, the savvy started smaller, iterated, and continuously self-improved their technologies over time.
Some of the biggest names in technology have advocated for universal basic income with predictions of catastrophic job losses in the future. But here’s the pitfall that most of us suspected: social media and technology can amplify our fixed points of view or biases putting us into an echo chamber that reinforce our beliefs. Left unchallenged, the outcome is not desirable. The 24-hour news cycle does not allow one to step outside of our bubble to see evolution and progress. But the real question is whether or not social media enables our human nature to be more easily displayed.
Look at the macro picture. On a global basis, poverty, disease, and illiteracy have improved over the past 30 years. Violent crimes are down in big cities in developed countries. Last year may have been the safest year on record for commercial aviation, but airline accidents this year look like it will bring it back to the mean.
Do we have problems? Absolutely. Gun violence is still hugely problematic in the US, but there are signs of hope with students mobilizing to have their voices heard. Last week gun manufacturer Remington filed for bankruptcy protection. Although, sadly, signs point to mismanagement more than the lack of market demand. Canada can’t afford to be smug about gun violence either as we are right behind the US in regards to deaths by gun statistics for a G7 country when you exclude the US.
Another generalization is the fact that Canadians pride themselves on their multicultural heritage and equal opportunity for all. The not guilty verdicts in courtrooms this year of men accused of murdering two aboriginals suggest otherwise. What’s more, there may be similarities between the ongoing investigation of a serial killer in Toronto to one of the most notorious serial killers in the country a generation ago: Robert Pickton. Both show troubling signs of the work that still needs to be done, especially in the way they were able to target minority victims that fall outside of the public radar.
There’s still work to be done to have equal opportunities for women and visible minorities on both sides of the border. Equal pay, equal board opportunities, less racial profiling. Checks and balances will continue to iterate, but they need to catch up and evolve in our courts and criminal justice system. These are matters that will continue to improve over time with the help of individuals and advocacy groups.
Going back to pit stops and the above video the US interstate system accounts for 1.1% of all roads but 24% of all road traffic (USDOT Federal Highway Administration). If Eisenhower were alive and he was the President today knowing what we know now would he kick off the US Interstate project? Will we have rest stops in 50 years? Where is my crystal ball?
Breaking the rules, ignoring long-held traditions and beliefs have allowed some companies to achieve remarkable success over the past 20 years. It’s not easy to always be thinking of ways that you can reduce and remove friction from the myriad of legacy systems and processes that have accumulated over time – but that we must strive to discover the next loophole that releases our minds to reach for the stars.
For all the promise of machines and technologies taking over the world, I gain more appreciation for the humanities and social sciences. Perhaps one day machines and algorithms will develop the critical thinking skills needed to put the right checks and balances in place, but I don’t see curiosity, empathy and critical thinking skills being replaced by technology anytime soon.