Digital Technology and the Greater Good

Adam Smith wrote about the concept of rational self-interest, which posits we work together for the greater good when it benefits ourselves. Does this concept have relevance in the context of robots, automation and employment? I think it does.

I believe most of us would agree that replacing large numbers of humans with machines that result in wide scale unemployment and suffering is not in our rational self-interest. Having massive numbers of jobs terminated by the Terminator does not result in a safer, healthier civilization or vibrant economy; therefore, it is not in our best interest.

Just because something is possible, does not mean it is good. A powerful king that takes all the food, property and means of production away from his people resulting in their suffering, quickly becomes a target of their wrath, and on a quick path to poverty.

Businesses that replace human workers with machines and software, out of self-interest, will over time find it increasingly difficult to sell their products to their unemployed or underemployed consumers. At what point do businesses seek to expand employment opportunities out of a rational self-interest rather than decrease them through automation? Is it a realistic option for profit maximizing businesses to seek the greater good?

In the short-term, factories hope to benefit from automation faster than their competition in order to gain advantages, while there are still sufficient numbers of consumers employed elsewhere to provide a market for their goods. In the mid-term, entire industries will automate and terminate large numbers of jobs, but hope other, slower-to-automate industries will employ their consumer base. In the long-term, however, when digital transformation has swept through all industries, who is left to employ the consumers and provide them living wages, and who is left with capital to buy goods?

As jobs that require little training or education diminish in numbers, we have two choices, 1) Increase education levels to equip our population for the digital future, or 2) subsidize the unemployed and underemployed with a sufficient income to survive and maintain their dignity. If there are still not enough jobs for those that work hard to increase their level of education, then we are reduced to one choice.

There are plenty of problems left on this planet to be solved. Solving these problems could employ many. Today, however, not all of these problems have economic values assigned to them. Fresh water sources, clean air, forestation, peace, better health, better education, etc., all of these have the potential to generate enormous economic benefits, but they need society to place a value on them and reward innovations and employment in these areas.

A vibrant economy, and a safe and secure society depend on healthy employment numbers, adequate wages, property ownership and rights, hope, peace and purpose. Digital transformation must foster these goals, or risks accelerating a break down in our society and economy – two things that can dampen a New Year’s celebration.

Follow Kevin Benedict on Twitter @krbenedict, or read more of his articles on digital transformation strategies here:

1. Video Report: 40 Months of Hyper-Digital Transformation
2. Report: 40 Months of Hyper-Digital Transformation
3. Virtual Moves to Real in with Sensors and Digital Transformation
4. Technology Must Disappear in 2017
5. Merging Humans with AI and Machine Learning Systems
6. In Defense of the Human Experience in a Digital World
7. Profits that Kill in the Age of Digital Transformation
8. Competing in Future Time and Digital Transformation
9. Digital Hope and Redemption in the Digital Age
10. Digital Transformation and the Role of Faster
11. Digital Transformation and the Law of Thermodynamics
12. Jettison the Heavy Baggage and Digitally Transform
13. Digital Transformation - The Dark Side
14. Business is Not as Usual in Digital Transformation
15. 15 Rules for Winning in Digital Transformation
16. The End Goal of Digital Transformation
17. Digital Transformation and the Ignorance Penalty
18. Surviving the Three Ages of Digital Transformation
19. The Advantages of an Advantage in Digital Transformation
20. From Digital to Hyper-Transformation
21. Believers, Non-Believers and Digital Transformation
22. Forces Driving the Digital Transformation Era
23. Digital Transformation Requires Agility and Energy Measurement
24. A Doctrine for Digital Transformation is Required
25. Digital Transformation and Its Role in Mobility and Competition
26. Digital Transformation - A Revolution in Precision Through IoT, Analytics and Mobility
27. Competing in Digital Transformation and Mobility
28. Ambiguity and Digital Transformation
29. Digital Transformation and Mobility - Macro-Forces and Timing
30. Mobile and IoT Technologies are Inside the Curve of Human Time

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Kevin Benedict

Senior Analyst, Center for the Future of Work, Cognizant

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***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I am a mobility and digital transformation analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Interview: Robots, Digital Transformation and Intelligent Process Automation

Robots bring to our minds images of dangerous humanoids, but business process robots look different and behave in very positive ways.  In this important conversation with three robot and automation experts, they reveal the presence of robots all around us, and their expanding roles in companies today.  Enjoy!

Read the report - The Robot and I: How New Digital Technologies Are Making Smart People and Businesses Smarter. ************************************************************************

Kevin Benedict

Writer, Speaker, Senior Analyst

Digital Transformation, EBA, Center for the Future of Work Cognizant

View my profile on LinkedIn

Learn about mobile strategies at MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Browse the Mobile Solution Directory

Subscribe to Kevin'sYouTube Channel

Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility

Join the Google+ Community Mobile Enterprise Strategies

***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I am a mobility and digital transformation analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Intelligent Mobile Commerce Apps, Digital Transformation, Robots and Speed

Brains behind Mobile Applications

In 2002, I was developing mobile applications for blue collar workers. These apps were not intelligent.  They were basically forms on handheld computers or PDAs.  Yes, they could be made to understand, based on data inputs, which form(s) should be presented next, but that was about as smart as they got.  In those days, mobile apps were mostly used to query a simple database and for field data collection and sync.

Today, mobile apps on smartphones and tablets are the UXs (user interfaces) for very complex and intelligent systems, many of which today depend on software robots for automation and speed.  On a side note, yesterday, while I was attending a M6 Mobility Xchange conference, Intel said us humans are becoming part of the computer!

Mobile users are impatient.  They will wait less than 4 seconds on average for a mobile app to load, before closing it and moving on. You would hate to have developed the world's best designed mobile application, but then have mobile consumers abandon it, because some transaction engine, integrated product catalog or mobile security system made the process too slow.

Let me provide a scenario - a person uses a retailer's mobile application that is associated with a loyalty program.  The millisecond they load the application, software robots on the backend identify the device, look at all the accumulated data about the user's transaction histories, demographics, preferences, styles, etc., analyzes it, and then create a personalized experience which is uploaded to the mobile application.  No human is involved, but the experience is fast, beautiful and personal.  The products and discounts are optimized to appeal to my preferences.  It is an automated process that uses software robots to analyze and act in milliseconds.  This process is far more sophisticated and complex than the processes I used in 2002.

In 2002, to speed up a process we looked at just a few areas: the selected mobile device, wireless networks, device memory and the size of the database queries.  Today, entire business processes are being impacted and companies are being forced to rethink operations.  Legacy IT systems are being asked to perform at speeds beyond their capabilities.  Mobile solutions today, are more about the backend servers, processes, robots and strategies, than the actual mobile app.

The pressure to digitally transform and automate IT environments is growing.  Mobile applications, at first just clever add-ons to line of business applications, are now driving the train of digital transformation and pointing the way to the future for the entire enterprise.  The cost of a mobile application, may ultimately involve rethinking your entire IT environment.

As consumers increasingly shop online and mobile, competition will force businesses to redesign not only their IT environments, but their entire approach to marketing, sales, customer service and R&D as well.

Finally a big favor to ask - Will you take my 3-minute survey on mobile behaviors?  It is part of an in-depth mobile consumer behaviors and the retail experience report I am working on.

Survey - http://survey.constantcontact.com/survey/a07eb005ar4i9lm8rvk/start
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Kevin Benedict

Writer, Speaker, Senior Analyst

Digital Transformation, EBA, Center for the Future of Work Cognizant

View my profile on LinkedIn

Learn about mobile strategies at MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Browse the Mobile Solution Directory

Subscribe to Kevin'sYouTube Channel

Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility

Join the Google+ Community Mobile Enterprise Strategies

***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I am a mobility and digital transformation analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

IoT Sensors, Nerves for Robots and the Industrial Internet

Sensors are Nerves for Robots

Yesterday I interviewed two robotics experts on the growing demand for IPAs (intelligent process automation) robots.  These robots are made of software code.  They are assigned pre-defined actions based on steps in a process, the analysis of data, and the decision trees they are provided.  For example, an IPA can review a car loan application and approve or disprove it instantly – based on the data.  In fact, they can analyze the data from tens of thousands of car loans in seconds based on the parameters and decision trees they have been given.

There are literally hundreds of thousands of different use cases for IPA robots.  IPA robots can also interact with IoT sensors and take actions based on sensor data.  Not just by completing a digital business processes, but even by controlling physical equipment and machines as well.  Sensors serve robots in much the same way as nerves serve us humans.

Earlier this week I was briefed by a company AMS AG,  a developer of IoT sensors.  They just released a new sensor that smells odors in homes and offices.  Yes, indeed!  The sensor is embedded in a home monitoring system from Withings.  In Withings’ Home product, the AS-MLV-P2 (sensor) is combined with a 5Mpixel video camera, dual microphones, temperature and humidity sensors and Wi-Fi® and Bluetooth® Smart radios. This means that users of the Home monitoring system can see, hear, feel and smell the inside of their home or office remotely via a smartphone or tablet app supplied by Withings.

AMS’s sensor detects VOCs (volatile organic compounds), including both human-made and naturally occurring chemical compounds. These include ambient concentrations of a broad range of reducing gases associated with bad air quality such as alcohols, aldehydes, ketones, organic acids, amines, and aliphatic and aromatic hydrocarbons, all which can be harmful to human and animal health at high levels. These are most of the scents humans smell.  In the Home app, the sensor’s measurements of these chemicals are converted to an air-quality rating as well as to a measurement of VOC concentrations.

If you combine IPA robots, AMS’s sensors and Withings Home monitoring system with your HVAC system, the IPA robot can ensure you have healthy air quality in your home or office continuously. In fact, an IPA robot could manage the air quality and security of tens of thousands of homes and offices at the same time.  The results of these findings and actions can be displayed and controlled on smartphones and tablets as well.

Not only do you have robots sensing the physical world, but also automatically reacting to it on your behalf.  In my opinion, how sensors detect and communicate the physical and natural world to humans and robots is one of the most interesting areas of innovation today.

An additional value of using IPA robots is the massive clouds of data they spin-off as a result of their decisions and actions.  This data can be further analyzed to find new areas for optimization and potential business opportunities.  Herein lies an emerging area where big data analysis can give us even deeper insights.

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Kevin Benedict

Writer, Speaker, Senior Analyst

Digital Transformation, EBA, Center for the Future of Work Cognizant

View my profile on LinkedIn

Learn about mobile strategies at MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Browse the Mobile Solution Directory

Subscribe to Kevin'sYouTube Channel

Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility

Join the Google+ Community Mobile Enterprise Strategies

***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I am a mobility and digital transformation analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Robots and I - Intelligent Process Automation, Siri and More

Today I had the privilege of interviewing two robotics and process automation experts.  I learned there are many different kinds of robots including the humanoid types we see in movies, and robots made entirely out of software.  In this interview we discuss Rob Brown's recent white paper titled Robots and I, the different forms of robots, and then dig deep into how software robots are transforming many industries today with expert Matt Smith.  Enjoy!

Video Link: https://youtu.be/qOPFD3vshec


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Kevin Benedict

Writer, Speaker, Senior Analyst

Digital Transformation, EBA, Center for the Future of Work Cognizant

View my profile on LinkedIn

Learn about mobile strategies at MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Browse the Mobile Solution Directory

Subscribe to Kevin'sYouTube Channel

Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility

Join the Google+ Community Mobile Enterprise Strategies

***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I am a mobility and digital transformation analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Must Watch! Robotic Cheetah from DARPA - Think Real Mobility

If you thought being chased by the neighbor's dog was frightening, look at what the bad boys/girls at Boston Dynamics and DARPA have been up to in the lab!




Add some location based services, some machine-to-machine communications, a little augmented reality, weapons and access to big data for predictive hunting, and make it all controlled by a digital leash connected to your iPhone :-)

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Kevin Benedict, Independent Mobile Industry Analyst, Consultant and SAP Mentor Volunteer

Visit MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Join the SAP Enterprise Mobility and Sybase Unwired Platform Groups

Read The Mobility News Weekly

Read The M2M News Monthly

Full Disclosure: I am an independent mobility analyst, consultant and blogger. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

This Walking Robot by Boston Dynamics is Incredible - Must Watch!

For all you mobile and M2M technology enthusiasts this is a must watch.  In particular, the balance and agility of this robot is amazing.  The Terminator has never been closer!!!  I wondered if there was an iPhone implanted in this robot to help it keep balance.

How long until the "Petman" walks a route as a security guard or an inspector?

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Kevin Benedict, Independent Mobile Industry Analyst, Consultant and SAP Mentor Volunteer

Visit MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Join the SAP Enterprise Mobility and Sybase Unwired Platform Groups

Read The Mobility News Weekly

Read The M2M News Monthly

Full Disclosure: I am an independent mobility analyst, consultant and blogger. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.