A Faustian Bargain Involving Privacy, Pandemic and a Functioning Economy

Will the price of controlling current and future pandemics be our privacy?  Will societies, at some point, be willing to strike a Faustian Bargain and give up their privacy in return for a functioning economy?  A Faustian Bargain is described by the encyclopedia Britannica as a "pact whereby a person trades something of supreme moral or spiritual importance for some material benefit, such as knowledge, power, or riches."  Some countries have already made that bargain, and as the COVID-19 pandemic drags on, more societies will be forced to confront this decision.  

In the case of the COVID-19 pandemic, privacy looks to be one of the values required in the Faustian Bargain to keep an economy functioning.  The other option is to offer up life itself - a serious topic for another time.

South Korea, widely praised for their fast and efficient COVID-19 response and control, passed legislation in 2015 after a deadly MERS outbreak that gave government authority to collect mobile phone, credit card and other data from those who test positive to an infectious diseases.  They have now added a central tracking app called Corona 100m.  This mobile app publicly informs citizens of known cases within 100 meters of their current location.  Both of these examples are the result of a 2015 Faustian Bargain South Koreans made between privacy and pandemic control.

In China they are using mobile apps connected to government servers and tracking systems to dictate whether a person should be quarantined, allowed to ride subways, visit and shop at malls, work and be present in other public spaces.  A green badge on a mobile phone means the owner is symptom free, yellow means the person has had contact with an infected person and hasn't finished the quarantine period, and a red badge means the owner is confirmed to be infected, or has a fever or other symptoms and is awaiting a diagnosis.  Privacy advocates are quick to point out these mobile apps can be used by police, government agencies and other intelligence services for other forms of automated social control as well.

Raina MacIntyre, Emerging Infectious Disease scholar at the University of New South Wales lists the three actions societies must quickly employ to control a pandemic: instantly scale testing and diagnostic capacity, isolate those found to be positive, and track all of their contacts (and test/isolate).  This is a nearly impossible job to do during a rapidly expanding pandemic if you are using paper, pencil and other manual processes.

Smartphones with their mobile networks, apps, GPS, WiFi and bluetooth radios and other powerful utilities are amazingly powerful computers that can collect and spinoff all kinds of very useful data for those fighting and managing disease.  Many countries and people, however, are still not willing to make the Faustian Bargain between privacy, pandemic and a functioning economy. Perhaps we will someday find out if the saying, "Everything is for sale if the price is right," is a true maxim.

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Kevin Benedict
Partner | Futurist | Leadership Strategies at TCS
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***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Leadership and Mental Biases in a Pandemic

The global magazine, Foreign Policy, has compiled a list of things that kill more people than sharks - trampolines, roller coasters, vending machines and furniture/TVs:  In fact more than 26 people die every year after being crushed by furniture/TVs, and only an average of six people die each year from shark attacks.  With these numbers there should be an entire week dedicated to furniture/TV attacks on Discovery Channel.

Humans are not very good at analyzing risk.  We are all afraid of sharks, but never give our furniture a second look.  We all come with biases, prejudices, paradigms, different education levels and viewpoints that influence and filter the way we think.  This is all before we consider normalcy bias.  Here is what Wikipedia says about normalcy bias, "It is a tendency for people to believe that things will function in the future the way they normally have functioned in the past, and therefore we underestimate both the likelihood of a disaster and its possible effects."  It's reported that 70% of people display normalcy bias during disasters.  It's what makes people reach for their laptops and suitcases when they exit a plane during a serious emergency.

Paying the Piper In the Midst of a Pandemic

In the German folk tale, The Pied Piper of Hamelin, the leadership of a small village made a verbal contract with a mysterious flute-playing exterminator to rid the village of rats.  Once the rats were successfully removed, the village leaders refused to pay.  They came to regret that. From this old tale came the saying, "pay the piper" which acts as a warning.  It means you better pay the true cost, or something sinister will happen.

In the Pied Piper of Hamelin tale the village lost their youngest generation, in the current COVID-19 scenario, it is our oldest generation most at risk.  The question to ask ourselves today is have we stopped paying the piper?  Have we lost our fear of existential risks.  Have we as a society come to believe we no longer must pay the cost of risk prevention?  Have we come to value short-term profits over safety and the lives of our most vulnerable?

Our lack of fear is a new thing.  Throughout history humans have been very fearful for good reasons.   Life was mostly short, exhausting, violent and full of suffering.  For example in 17th-century England life expectancy was only 35-years old.  In the early Colony of Virginia it was only 25-years old.  Out of the 270 men on five ships in Magellan's fleet, only 19 survived the voyage.  Yet today we seem to believe that we are safe, in control and there is no longer the need to pay the piper.

In March of 2020 the markets crashed.  Why? Investors never anticipated existential risks like COVID-19, although there have been 8 pandemic's in the past 70 years.  Investors never built the risk of a global pandemic into their financial models — and when the risk of COVID-19 had to be priced into their models in February and March of 2020, our global markets collapsed.

The United States' entire defense budget for 2020 is $738 billion. Yet in comparison we now find ourselves pumping a massive $2.2 trillion into the US economy in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.  We are now paying the piper, but on his terms.

I hope we learn from this.  I hope we decide to pay the piper in the future.  I hope in years to come we invest in finding and stopping pandemics early, creating vaccines and the means to produce them, have teams of experts trained to lead fights against pandemics, establish a reserve of life support systems to respond to outbreaks, and accumulate large stockpiles of protective equipment to enable our healthcare workers to provide the care we require.

Let's pay the piper.

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Kevin Benedict
Futurist/Founder
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***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

A Mid-Pandemic Interview with Supply Chain Risk Expert Joe Carson

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the global supply chain has been in the headlines for weeks.  To further explore how the pandemic is impacting global supply chains and risk management strategies today and in the future I reached out to expert Joe Carson, CEO of Spend Strategies LLC, (former Chief Procurement Officer of both Micron Technologies and Lucent) for his insights.

What is the scope of the challenge procurement organizations are facing in high tech as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic?

The challenge of the COVID-19 pandemic is the unprecedented scope and scale of the impact zone. Past disruptions, such as factory fires, tsunami’s, earthquakes or even past pandemics, were relatively localized. A city, country or region of the world served as the epicenter. In those cases, supply chains could stand a chance of reacting by adjusting their supply chains to other suppliers or transportation lanes. In this case however, the problem is much more severe.

Speed, Accidents and Pandemics

The value of distance has been lost to speed.  Throughout history distance meant a level of security and safety.  Invading armies of marching foot soldiers could cover about 20 miles per day on Roman roads.  A thousand miles distance between a town and an invading army equated to at least 50 days of security and time for the townspeople to either prepare a defense or flee. Historically distance was not only a protection against invading armies, but pandemics, epidemics and plagues as well.  Some diseases started on one continent and took years to reach another.  Speed, however, has removed this protection.  It has made us all continuously contagious neighbors.

Today the world is divided into GPS coordinates surveyed by invisible drones and satellites.  These and other technologies support the ability to deliver people, cargo, munition and disease anywhere in the world within minutes or even seconds.  The value of distance has nearly disappeared.

Professor Paul Virilio, a sage futurist, wrote every innovation comes with  a guaranteed accident.  For example, you cannot create a Tesla without a Tesla crashing.  Innovations and accidents are inseparable.  You cannot have one without the other. The technologies that support globalization, global supply chains and air travel guarantee pandemics.  You cannot have one without the other.  The world has faced over 70 epidemics since 1957 and 8 pandemics.  That averages one or more every year.

The data tells us that epidemics and pandemics are now guaranteed and common.  We cannot move blindly forward in a global network of people, economies, supply chains and connected technologies without paying the piper.  We must set-up the processes, plans, and government and economic levers necessary to live and thrive under the continuous exposure of pandemics.  It is no longer acceptable to be surprised and unprepared.

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Kevin Benedict
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***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Kevin Benedict's 26 Strategies for Career Advancement - 2020 Edition

One of the most popular blog articles that I have ever written was on career advancement strategies.  One of the advantages of getting old is the ability to accumulate a lot of experiences and lessons.  Since the 2019 article seemed to be appreciated and useful, I have written a new edition for 2020 with eleven additional lessons learned.

My Strategies for Career Advancement:
  1. Be an Expert - Create opportunities to be recognized by your employer’s leadership team. Become an expert in your field. Experts get recognized for their contributions by their communities, industries and employers. Be the person that has read more books, studied more industry reports, attended more training classes and networked with more experts. Become THE expert.
  2. Know your trends - Know your industry's trends.  Know where your company fits in the industry, and where they rank against competition and why.  Know how the trends will impact your customers and prospects.  Talk about trends and their impact.
  3. Build a Network – As your network of contacts grows, so will your insights into more industries and businesses, trends, sales and career opportunities. Don’t be lazy and make excuses to not be on LinkedIn and other business oriented social media platforms. It’s important to your career. 
  4. Keep in touch - The crazy jock sitting in the cubicle next to you today, will run a company you want to work for in 25 years.  It is amazing how many kids I started my career working with who are now in senior executive roles.  Those friendships open many doors, so don't forget to invest in your friendships.

Culture and Humility as Competitive Advantages

In 2019, I interviewed over one hundred business leaders.  In the course of these interviews and follow up discussions I learned a great deal - some of which I want to share here.  I have seen workforces that are united with their leaders in a desire to change and improve.  I have seen organizations that bring in all new leadership eager for change, but watched them fail because of institutional resistance.  I have seen leaders and workforces passionate about winning, but without the humility to learn from their customers.  I have witnessed how difficult it is to change.

I have learned the human-work of solving problems, facing challenges and overcoming obstacles tends to share a common purpose: creating stable, secure and predictable environments. The tendency for most humans is that once we solve a challenge, we want to be done with it.  That propensity, however, does not fit with today’s reality of perpetual change.

Digital Transformation for the Greater Good

Adam Smith wrote about rational self-interest, which posits we work for the greater good when it benefits ourselves.  But what is the greater good, and how does digital transformation impact it?

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 or the greater good. Having massive numbers of jobs terminated by the Terminator does not result in a safer, healthier, happier civilization or vibrant economy.  So what is the greater good that we, out of rational self-interest, can strive for?

Just because something is possible, and VCs will fund it, does not mean it supports the greater good. Technology that takes all meaningful jobs away from humans resulting in their suffering will soon become a target for their wrath.  I can already imagine brands placing badges on their products that certify "Human-Made" to gain a competitive advantage over machine-made production.

At the macro level, if businesses increasingly replace human workers with machines, they will soon have difficulty finding employed customers that can pay for their products.  At what point do businesses seek to expand employment opportunities out of a rational self-interest rather than decrease them through automation? Is it even realistic to expect profit maximizing businesses to seek the greater good of the societies they operate in?  We must seriously ponder these issues as gathered humans.

I think there is value in playing out future scenarios:
  • In the short-term, manufacturers want to automate faster than their competition in order to gain economic advantages while there are 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 customer base so there is money to spend. 
  • In the long-term, however, when digital transformation has swept through all industries, who is left to employ the consumers and provide them with living wages so goods can be purchased?
As jobs that require little training or education diminish in numbers, we have two choices, 1) Increase education levels to equip humans for employment in the digital future, or 2) subsidize and fund employment opportunities that benefit the greater good, so there are sufficient incomes available to support a healthy economy.

There are plenty of problems left on this planet to be solved, and solving these problems could employ many. Today, however, not all of these problems have economic and greater good values assigned to them. Fresh water sources, clean air, litter removal, forestation, sustainable farming, peace, better health and wellness, improved education, beautification of public spaces, etc.  All of these areas have the potential to generate enormous benefits for the greater good, but they need society to place a value on them and fund employment in these areas which are not always profit generating but support the greater good.

A vibrant economy, and a safe and secure society depends on healthy employment numbers, adequate wages, property ownership, human and property rights, hope, peace and purpose. Digital transformation must add to the greater good, or it risks accelerating a break down in our society and economy.

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Kevin Benedict
Futurist/Founder
View my profile on LinkedIn
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Join the Linkedin Group Digital Intelligence

***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Technologies Without Strategies

Layers of GIS Maps
Fingerspitzengefühl: The literal translation of this German word is finger tip feelings.  It is used to describe one's ability to maintain situational awareness by receiving real-time data. 
The problem with fingerspitzengefühl, in addition to difficult pronunciation - is knowing how much data a person needs in order to maintain situational awareness without it being too much.  Today we have data coming at us from every direction.  In fact, as I am writing this article I was notified that my security camera detected humans at my front door.  I now have situational awareness, but at the cost of distraction.  What is really needed is not just any information, but information that will materially impact one's ability to succeed.

Digital Transformation Requires a Doctrine

Knights using Stirrups for Balance
In my 30+ years in the high tech industry I have often heard the business maxim, “Develop a business strategy first, and then find the technology to support it.” This teaching I have come to believe is wrong.

Let me support my argument by first asking a few questions.  What came first e-commerce or the Internet, mobile commerce or wireless networks, commercial airline travel or the airplane, knights in shiny armour being used as shock troops, or stirrups?  Answer: Stirrups of course!  Innovations and technology have a long history of appearing first, and then doctrines and strategies forming later.

What we are learning is if your outdated business doctrines and strategies are dictating the speed of your technology adoptions - you are in big trouble! The world is moving much too fast and organizations must now align the tempo of their business doctrine and strategy evolution with the pace of technology innovations and customer adoptions.
"Strategy is the art of making use of time and space. I am less concerned about the latter than the former. Space we can recover, lost time never." -- Napoleon Bonaparte

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