Perceptions and effects: A few notes on the “tech industry”
Depending on who you talk to, tech is one of two things: It’s our best hope for improving society or it’s a catalyst for the world’s end. I put my money behind the former notion.
Why am I bullish on tech? Because I get a front-row view of it every day — and I like what I see.
Case in point: The 2016 TED Conference recently took place in Vancouver. Part of the TED experience for delegates are a series of unique off-site activities, one of which I had the the privilege of organizing.
For the event, TEDsters, as they’re called, signed up to learn about the ground-breaking work that local tech startups are doing in the medical and life sciences field. While the event wasn’t for my entertainment, I still learned a staggering amount. The world of medical technology is changing at a rapid pace and Vancouver has multiple top-class firms in the space.
One of the startups, Conquer Mobile, creates a simulation training app that enables nurses and surgical staff to practice surgeries safely, outside of the operating room.
The Victoria Hand Project, based out of the University of Victoria, uses 3D printing and 3D scanning technology to create low-cost, highly functional, upper limb prostheses. They produce these devices at a fraction of the cost of conventional prosthetics and are currently supplying countries like Guatemala, Nepal and Cambodia.
Wearable Therapeutics develops an innovative vest that can reduce an individual’s anxiety level by providing pressure to their torso, lowering cortisol and adrenalin. They’re improving the lives of individuals with trauma, autism, ADHD and other challenges.
These companies and their founders don’t seem like the type of people that will, as The Economist put it a few years ago, “join bankers and oilmen in public demonology.” Certainly, the entrepreneurs I meet on a daily basis are not like the power-hungry, techno-elite I keep hearing about on Twitter. The people running the companies I know are just that: hardworking people running companies.
I would like to suggest that the “tech industry” is not monolithic. It is made up of millions of people, motivated by their own interests, desires and dreams. I watched The Big Short recently, and although it would be easy for me to consider that everyone in the financial industry is an unethical opportunist, I know that’s not true. In fact, I imagine the vast majority of analysts, traders and bankers have good intentions. I do, however, recognize that a small group of people have a disproportionate influence on the actions of many people in that industry. Their actions go on to influence other people’s actions and, in turn, the perceptions of everyone not in the industry too.
Tech is like that: A small group of companies that the media obsessively covers ends up disproportionately — and inaccurately — shaping the public’s view of the entire industry and the many distinct people acting within it.
It’s an issue with no easy solution. Except maybe to keep talking about all the good people in tech. So yeah, let’s continue to do that.
Now, changing the way people in tech are perceived is one thing to worry about. We must also ensure that people have a clear understanding of tech and innovation’s practical effects on their lives and jobs.
Is innovation good or bad? Yes.
The practical criticism of technology centres on the fact that automation is reducing the need for people to complete many types of work and putting people out of jobs. The flaw in this view is that it is demonstrably short-sighted according to years of research and analysis.
What actually happens is pretty simple: machines generate efficiencies, which leads to cheaper prices for consumers and additional profits for corporations. Consumers save money on their essentials and spend it on other goods, stoking new demand and generating economic growth; corporations re-invest their money in infrastructure and new markets, creating yet new opportunities for growth and job creation.
Anyone who fears the human worker-displacing effects of technology are worried about what is called the lump of labour fallacy — that the amount of work available to labourers is essentially fixed.
In his book Here Comes Everybody, New York University professor Clay Shirky points to the development of the printing press as a great example of why ‘lump of labour’ is, indeed, a fallacy.
He writes that many people were afraid that the printing press would lead to the demise of scribes. This was correct. However, Shirky details how society benefited as a whole as a result of our new ability to mass produce books.
“Prior to the printing press, much scribal output was given over to simply recopying older material,” he writes. “[Once] the printing press increased the possible supply of books a thousandfold, the price of books fell and the demand rose.
“The resulting spread of literacy and knowledge benefited society as a whole and led to an explosion in employment in teachers, publishers, scientists, and so on,” he writes. So what actually happened was that certain jobs were no longer needed but many more were now required. It’s not hard to see how this is currently happening more broadly and more rapidly today.
Many of today’s tech developments including and especially artificial intelligence are having transformative effects equal in scale to the printing press. But we must also recognize that many of today’s advances in technology are not displacing human workers at all, but are designed to complement us.
We’re not creating AIs and robots to replace us. We’re building them to help us do what we already do, better, and to help us do new things altogether.
