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In 1941, Winston Churchill said, “we shape our tools, and then our tools shape us.” This week’s Brief focuses on how digital devices and tools all around us are evolving faster than our Paleolithic brains can keep up.
We’re on the ground at Mobile World Congress, looking at how gambling is turning into the Twitter live pulse replacement, and debating AI providing 24/7 management at Burger King.
I have mixed feelings about the tools in these three stories:
- The average American picks up their smartphone 144 times a day, encouraged in part by an app-based UI we’ve been forced to use for two decades. So, an AI-first phone that kills all apps could actually save us a lot time, and potentially reduce that number of pickups. It could just as easily give us less reasons to put it down, or move away from it at all.
- Gambling generates 10x the dopamine spike in our brains than natural rewards like food or even sex can provide (according to very smart PhDs from UCLA). Something this addictive… is that really the right space to engage in debate around international conflicts? (Maybe my feelings aren’t so mixed here.)
- It’s challenging to provide relevant management to all employees, so an always on service replicating that isn’t all bad. But how will our communication evolve when we know that every single word, gesture, movement, and eventual thought might be recorded, evaluated, and potentially actioned against us in our personal and professional lives?
We’re obviously not ready for all of this, but I’ll reach for another quote, this time from Charles Darwin. “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most adaptable to change.” I believe that the ability to adapt, lean into, and stay away from specific technologies is how we are going to navigate tools like these in the next few years.
If we stay curious, stay principled, and stay open to change, I believe we’ll be far better off than if we just put our heads in the sand. But hey, if you choose to do the latter and avoid it all, just make sure to pop out once a week to watch the Brief where you’ll get all the information you need before you dive back into blissful ignorance!