I am writing this article sitting at an airport lounge. And like me, almost everyone around is either peeping into a cell phone, or is connected to some electronic device, and there is almost a pin drop silence around. It’s 5 AM at the Bangalore International Airport. I am assuming that if it were 5 PM, the scene might not have been so different, except that there are far more people talking on phones at this hour. Whether you like it or not, we have arrived at a lifestyle where devices are connected and people are not. While, thanks to rapid rise in communication and computation, distances don’t matter anymore; that may ironically be the bigger concern. Notwithstanding the claims on the future of workforce and life, in general, to be far more digital and virtual, this article advocates going back in time and de-technologizing our lives and, more importantly, connecting back with real people around us.
The World Economic Forum’s report, titled ‘The Future of Jobs’, discussed how the Fourth Industrial Revolution, exemplified by rapid advent in technologies such as genetics, artificial intelligence, robotics, nanotechnology, 3D printing and biotechnology, and smart cities, impacts the labour market1 . The report cautions us that ‘demographic, socio-economic and—increasingly—technological trends and disruptions to the business and operating models of global companies have the potential to rapidly change the dynamics of the global employment landscape.’
The report concludes that, ‘a wide range of occupations will require a higher degree of cognitive abilities—such as creativity, logical reasoning and problem sensitivity—as part of their core skill set…. (and) social skills—such as persuasion, emotional intelligence and teaching others—will be in higher demand across industries than narrow technical skills, such as programming or equipment operation and control.’
Interestingly, physical, technical, and content level skills, which have dominated the work milieu for long, are becoming marginalized. Much of this marginalization is led by the advent in computing and communication. To sum up, technology is nudging us humans to evolve, socially and intellectually.
Now, let’s talk about the world of connected devices. According to International Data Corporation (IDC), there will be 30 billion connected devices in the market by 20202 . To add to this, Facebook alone clocks 1.32 billion users a day, of which over a billion is through mobile devices3 . Connecting to others on mobile devices is similar to the ‘Internet of ‘Things’. After all, it’s things talking and not humans. You hardly know if it’s a human on the other side or a bot!
It’s really a scary though. Devices have truly become the intermediaries between human to human interactions. Where does it leave empathy? If RIP and HBD are the shorthand for some of the most deep-rooted emotions, both at workplace and life in general, machines are surely shaping us up in more fundamental ways than otherwise. I believe that this accelerated use of automation and artificial intelligence (questionable though) is stripping away what’s intimately human.
The call is hence of putting back emotions and connections, along with thinking and feeling where it belongs — humans. Let human take care of relations and, for rest, we have machines.
References
1 http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Future_of_Jobs.pdf
2 http://www.ey.com/Publication/vwLUAssets/ey-m-e-internet-of-things/$FILE/ey-m-e-internet-of-things.pdf
3 https://zephoria.com/top-15-valuable-facebook-statistics/