Tired tech narratives - disruption at a price

"Architecture of the Future" (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0) by danielfoster437

There are a number of recurring narratives in this business that we all enjoy telling and hearing to the extent that repetition leads to belief; feel-good stories about how technology is changing education and society for the better. Although these stories have elements of truth they tend to accentuate the positive and in some cases become dangerous myths. Here are two such narratives that simply won't go away.

Firstly there is the old chestnut of digital natives and a naive belief that the kids/students will work everything out for themselves. Students are using all sorts of innovative digital tools to learn for themselves and this is pushing institutions to respond. Of course there are elements of truth here. There are numerous anecdotes of teenagers creating impressive tech start-ups and the often retold tales of toddlers trying to swipe a printed book and being amazed it doesn't work like an iPad. I don't doubt these but they are more exceptions rather than the rule. Yes, most children and teenagers are completely comfortable with technology but it doesn't mean that they can work out how to search, filter, collaborate, work, study and create without any assistance. I'm not sure either that students are driving educational change as we often hear at conferences. In my experience, students are good at adapting to the institution's teaching methods and even if some may well find the teaching uninspiring they simply find ways to cope since they need the qualification and have taken on a substantial loan in order to get it. Some are using technology to enhance their studies but many only use the tools offered by the institution. Education is changing as a result of digitalisation but the main drivers in my opinion are innovative teachers and insightful leaders, urged on by the ed tech industry; for better or for worse, but that is another story.

The second popular narrative is that of the future workplace. I've seen plenty inspiring accounts of innovative work spaces at high tech companies like Google or Apple where employees have project meetings on giant beanbags, play basketball or take a yoga break whenever they need inspiration. It looks very attractive and they are undoubtedly inspiring places to work. In the same narrative we hear about the growth of the gig economy where everyone works as a consultant moving seamlessly from project to project with breaks for competence development from time to time. Success is built on being flexible, constantly developing your skills, being able to reinvent yourself and always searching for new challenges. The word disruption occurs frequently in this narrative. Technology is disrupting traditional practices and a new flexible and ever-changing society is emerging offering opportunities and growth for those who are able to adapt.

However this narrative also has a dark side. The creative and innovative workplaces we see in these conference presentations are for a well-educated elite with the financial resources to tide them over between projects. For the vast majority, however, the modern workplace has a very different narrative with long hours, stressful schedules, low pay, few if any benefits and seldom knowing whether or not you'll be needed next week. The stars of the digital economy tend not to employ very many people and many of those who do work there are involved in the less glamorous side of operations; in the warehouses or working from home on low wages. The flip side of this gig economy are the people who scramble for zero hours contract jobs with no security and never knowing whether they will get paid next week at all. The digital revolution is not so attractive for those on the wrong side. See more on this in a BBC article, Why "cool" offices don't always make for a happier workforce.

So how about companies taking some social responsibility for all the job losses and problems their disruptive innovation causes? This issue is raised by András Baneth in a recent TEDx talk (see below). He takes examples like Uber, Airbnb and Facebook as companies that have come under hard criticism for the results of their operations and offers advice on how companies should take responsibility and enhance their reputation. This involves at a basic level at least admitting that your business has created some serious issues in society instead of simply denying any responsibility. Then the company can try to help tackle those issues, for example by finding ways to prevent the spread of hate and fake news or funding retraining initiatives for those whose businesses suffer due to their operations.



Disruption is generally viewed positively today and the narrative of bold innovative young entrepreneurs "taking on the establishment" and overturning the system nearly always goes down well at conferences. However disruption also has consequences. A deregulated market can make some people very rich but can also cast many more into unemployment, poverty or insecurity. Social media let everyone have their say but also make it easy to spread hate and prejudice. It may not be completely the fault of the messenger (such as Facebook) but they have certainly a major role and need to recognise this.

Ivory towers

I noticed a thought-provoking seminar to be held soon at the British Library, Don and dusted: Is the Age of the Scholar over?. The question to be debated is the future of academic scholarship in the face of demands for return on investment and output-driven research. In tough times like these there are highly justified claims that public and private finance be used for practical purposes and that research must lead to concrete results.

What is the difference between the old-fashioned scholar and the 21st century researcher? Universities today are under increasing pressure to deliver tangible results and it is hard to justify research that is purely theoretical and exploratory. Will the increased demands on results lead to the end of traditional academic freedom? Hopefully there will always be room for purely inquisitive research but it still requires financial backing from somewhere. Many of the greatest scientific discoveries have occurred almost by accident when the scientists were actually looking for something quite different.

Many people demand that research should be governed by the needs of society/corporations/customers and in many cases this is fine. However, if customer needs were the only criteria for research and development would we ever have developed personal computers or cellphones? I remember back in the late eighties when a cellphone operator claimed, to great public ridicule, that in the future everyone would have a cellphone. There was very little customer demand for the product but they went ahead anyway and the rest is history.

There has to be money available to finance wild-card research. Much of it may not lead to major breakthroughs but every now and again someone will find a missing link, an exception that will turn previous theories upside down and lead us into completely new avenues. The problem is how to judge which projects are worth investing in and which are pointless. If everyone agrees that the world is flat who on earth would back someone who questions that?

I hope the organisers of this debate will post a report of the discussion.

Good enough

I've just read a good article in Wired Magazine called The Good Enough Revolution; When Cheap and Simple is Just Fine that had me nodding in agreement most of the time. Many of the most popular applications on the net are successful not because of their high quality but because they're easy to use, always available and most importantly cheap or preferably free. The concept of "perpetual beta" for many applications has become the norm and users are quite willing to put up with shortcomings if they get it all for free.

The music industry is a perfect example of good enough. 30 years ago music lovers dreamt of buying a state-of-the-art hi-fi system with massive speakers, hi-tech amplifier and super-sensitive turntable all stacked up to impress in the corner of the living room. Perfect quality was the objective and buying a hi-fi system was a major project. Today I seldom see such sophisticated systems and mp3 is the choice format, much to the dismay of the music industry. The sound quality is not impressive but it's a convenient format and you can have your entire music collection in your pocket.

It's a similar story in many other areas. We use Skype for communication despite occasional lag, use cloud computing applications like Google Docs that lack all the features of Microsoft Office but do the job well and fly with no-frills airlines despite their indifferent customer care.

... what consumers want from the products and services they buy is fundamentally changing. We now favor flexibility over high fidelity, convenience over features, quick and dirty over slow and polished. Having it here and now is more important than having it perfect. These changes run so deep and wide, they're actually altering what we mean when we describe a product as "high-quality."

Is the current interest in free and open education typified by pioneers like Peer 2 Peer University and University of the People a further example of good enough? I hope not and believe that they are necessary to jolt the mainstream universities into more innovative strategies for expanding the reach of higher education. Is there a risk, however, that we see the growth of a cut-price sector in education with freelance faculty working for low wages and without job security? Quality is essential in education and quality costs.

Nanopayments

Most people start off in Second Life with the free basic account. You can see the sights, meet people and change your appearance without paying but after a while you realize that you need a proper account and a wad of Linden dollars to be able to do interesting things like creating objects or getting a more interesting appearance. The price tags on all these virtual clothes, furniture, skins, textures and works of art are very low indeed but people are perfectly willing to pay for them.

Similarly the success of low-cost text messaging has provided mobile operators with considerable income over the years with very little protest from the customers. People have been willing to pay relatively small sums for trivial downloads such as virtual pets, ring tones, icons, sound effects or screensavers. In Japan in particular this trend has been the norm for many years and the key seems to be buying pre-paid credits rather than charging a credit card.

A recent article in Tech Radar, How nanopayments finally came of age, argues that so-called nanopayments could be one answer to the problems caused by file-sharing and suchlike. If we paid very small sums of money (or even virtual money) for services on the net there would be income for the artists/writers/companies but at a level that doesn't make a noticeable impact on users' wallets. In Second Life many people "earn" virtual money in order to pay for their in-world consumption and maybe this would be possible on the net in general (fill in a questionnaire and earn enough to download a few free songs on iTunes).

Somehow the content on the net must be paid for and maybe it's better for millions of people to pay very small fees for a service than a few thousand paying today's commercial rate. The only problem is that such a solution requires universal consent; it won't work if there is still an alternative service that costs nothing.

Why technology?

Ben Grey's article Why Technology? in Tech & Learning sees signs that universities will start cutting technology spending on the grounds that it's a big budget item and there are few concrete signs that student performance has improved due to increased use of technology in class (ie. measureable improvement in terms of exam success). He advises us to sharpen our arguments about how the pedagogical use of technology can enhance the learning process. The comments after the article provide plenty of possible answers.

Maybe it's good to have convincing arguments ready to meet any 'back to basics' initiatives but I find it strange that we still have such scepticism about net-based education. Does anyone seriously question the use of technology in finance or administration? Is it possible to work in a university administration and say that you don't believe in using technology, preferring to use mechanical calculators, typewriters and filing cabinets?

Read a response to the article on John Strange's blog; part 1 and part 2.

Money for nothing

In the new collaborative social web that we love so much we assume that just about everything is free. People devote months of development work to a new application and then give it away to anyone who wants it. Indeed, for many younger devotees the net is a vast freebie warehouse.

However, in the present economic crisis it's relevant to wonder how long this generosity can last. There are many web applications with millions of members but where's the income? Of course most of them try to fund their operations by having plenty of adverts but the advertisers are noticing dwindling returns from web advertising (how often do you click on an ad you see on Facebook or YouTube?). Will we see many popular services charging their users in order to survive and how will the users react to such radical moves? Would you be willing to pay for Twitter, for example?

This is the theme of an interesting article by Chris Anderson in the Wall Street Journal (2 February) entitled The economics of giving it away. The free services are indeed often subsidised by those who pay for a premium version (described as the Freemium model in the article) and the free services aren't going to disappear overnight. However Anderson does see more services trying to earn more from their products in order to survive.
"Free may be the best price, but it can't be the only one".