Target is a huge supermarket chain all over the USA. It has traditionally attracted its clients through discount vouchers of all type. What this company used to do was print out thousands of notebooks which were posted so the client could choose the most suitable voucher according to their needs: food, chemist, stationery, toys, etc.
The arrival of the Internet and smartphones made the company adjust its offers to the client´s needs. For instance, they stopped posting beauty vouchers to men, or toy vouchers to people without children. To do so, they made use of the millions of data about their clients which were stored and applied a number of mathematical formulae, algorithms, which would guide their commercial policy.
This segmentation model of the Target´s clients, apparently harmless, generated an important debate in the US when the father of a teenage girl sued the company because his daughter constantly received discount vouchers for baby products: nappies, cereals, rattles, etc. This girl´s father claimed the company seem to encourage his daughter to become a mother.
The misunderstanding was cleared up when the girl admitted she was actually pregnant, her father did not anything, Target did.
Data analysis systems concluded there was 81% probabilities this teenager could be pregnant, since she had bought anti stretch marks cream, vitamins specific for gestation and a special bra. Moreover, they estimated she was due to by mid August.
This history, less and less surprising nowadays, exemplifies really well the conflict of interests between the most mechanical part of technology and the most human. On one side, the agile and accurate computer software which makes its job perfectly well, and on the other side, users who make everything a sense.
The American psychologist Steven Pinker recently said: “Progress without humanism is not progress”. This statement accurately comprises the main reason that made me write this book: defend the human side of technology.
The technology we use today has been mainly designed by engineers under the guidelines of investors and other business visionaries. As well as chemists did, loading refreshments with sugar to sell more, apps developers launch sweetened solutions regardless the impact they may have on every person using them.
The American psychologist Steven Pinker recently said: “Progress without humanism is not progress”. This statement accurately comprises the main reason that made me write this book: defend the human side of technology.
Many of the arguments claimed by those enemies of the digital are well founded and are not a result of some old-fashioned analogical belief. Mobile addiction, Instagram frivolity, useless communication, fakes, the loss of privacy, all of which are undesired results of the general use of the arriving technologies, almost imposed, which have not given truce to be accepted in an appropriate order.
Since our planet was formed about 4,500 millions of years ago, the most relevant changes have been occurring in shorter and shorter lapse of time. For example, the first unicellular organisms needed 2,500 millions of years to transform themselves into pluricellular ones. However, they “only” needed 1,000 millions of years to turn into fish and 500 millions to become mammals. 100 millions after that, the human appeared on the Earth´s surface.
The appearance of the first apes about 7 million years ago, has also followed this unwritten rule ¨the sooner the better¨. The last transformation, so far, was the arrival of the Homo sapiens to Europe from Africa, around 50,000 years ago. From then onwards, our direct ancestors deployed their unprecedented intellectual power and some social abilities which have taken us to where we are, the peak of our evolution.
Dominating the planet in such short period of time has provoked consequences, since the natural world has not had the chance to find an evolutionary advantage which might allow it to counteract the charges of this new predator. The frenetic expansion of the human being and their machines have ruined the natural balance existing before their emergence. Everything has been very fast.
The same inability to adaption in the animal kingdom is what we are suffering ourselves with our gadgets. An example of this is this excerpt from the book by Thomas Friedman “Thank you for being late”. This author, columnist at The New York Times, analyses the most expansive moments in the human technology in the last century and has found an outstanding one above all others: the year 2007.
The frenetic expansion of the human being and their machines have ruined the natural balance existing before their emergence.
Friedman considers this is the year everything changed and the technological evolution entered an acceleration stage so far unknown. The following, are some of the events that happened in that year and have shaped our current society, but more deeply our future society:
- First smartphone is launched: Apple Iphone.
- Facebook becomes global and leaves universities and colleges.
- Twitter is launched.
- Google operative system, Android, is launched.
- Airb’n’b appears.
- YouTube starts including publicity and therefore capitalising its project.
- Apps era starts.
- Amazon starts offering cloud store service.
- IBM launches the Watson project, its Artificial Intelligence system.
This tsunami of innovations has one and only addressee, the human being. Our ability to adapt ourselves generation after generation has improved, since we need less and less time to adapt ourselves to a novelty. Inventions like the washing machine or the radio needed decades to become part of our daily lives. Today, we adapt ourselves faster, but the speed the advances are created is higher than our ability to keep up with them.
For the first time in the history of humanity, the technological advances are developed faster than our ability to adopt them. There has been a gap between man and machine which gets bigger and bigger. While we are discussing whether a taxi or Uber, the autonomous car is already being tested around in many places. While some are demanding labour rights for couriers, robots are taking over the factories. Technology has surpassed us and its back is farther and farther.
This tsunami of innovations has one and only addressee, the human being. Our ability to adapt ourselves generation after generation has improved, since we need less and less time to adapt ourselves to a novelty.
Bridging the gap between men and machines requires some especial disposition and abilities which bring coherence between what we need and what we are offered.
Do you remember the appliance any user bought some years ago? And what about that VHS player? All appliances came with an instruction manual more or less long where its functioning was explained. It was time to sit on the sofa after our purchase and start to explore everything that new home comfort could do in our daily life.
Nowadays, not even the state-of-the-art smartphones worth over 1,000 euros, come with instructions. You get a new gadget and then you have to fend for yourself. The digital attitude intuitively allows to get the most of it, showing features of analysis, reasoning, search and practice. Nobody will teach you how to use your new Iphone, it is you who will have to learn how to use it yourself. Maybe, you will need to manage yourself on social networks if you want some help.
The digital attitude is, among other things, being curious, critical with what we read, managing our emotions, being able to plan or make decisions in the face of uncertainty.
I have recently published a book titled “Actitud Digital. Claves psicológicas para sobrevivir a una nueva era” where I tackle how we should evolve at the same pace as technology does. If you are interested in knowing more about to prepare ourselves and our children for the supremacy of machines, find this book on Amazon.
fuente imagen superior: https://www.capgemini.com
Fuente imagen portada: https://www.cuinsight.com