By Peter Cochrane, 13 May 2005 16:20
COMMENT Everything is speeding up
13.05.05, 15.35 GMT, Fleet Service Station M3, UK
During a meeting this week I was asked to succinctly characterise my life. The vision that sprang to mind was that of a combined harvester with the blades reaping the corn just 3m ahead of me, whilst beyond lies a scene of tranquillity. Only 10 years ago my diary was reasonably packed for six months ahead, and beyond that the pages where relatively blank and spare time was in abundance. But five years ago the distance had shortened to just three months, whilst today it is just three weeks.
The blades turn right under my nose, everything changes, all is moving and only three weeks from now I will face an ocean of tranquillity. It never happens of course. I can see it but I can't reach it! Life has become integrated with no boundary between work, rest and play. The cause? IT and networks! With instant access and ubiquitous communication, business and private life have accelerated. Productivity has gone up but so has activity and travel. In fact IT seems to be doing for travel what the PC did for the paperless office.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining. I rather like the prospect of being able to do and achieve over 10 times more than my father in the same (or hopefully longer) lifespan. And I look with some envy at the prospect for my children and what they will be able to do. But I suspect they may achieve slightly less unless the next generation of IT realises the necessary aids for the people using technology.
Speeding up communication, taking out delays and providing more information inherently creates chaotic environments beyond human ability to cope. We are now the ultimate limiters in the transaction loop, the definers of progress and advancement. It is our inabilities that define the rate of progress here on in. Without intelligent machines helping us manage everything, we will not continue to ride the exponential rise in work output and achievement.
A net result of human limitations can be seen in companies and governments where the inability to quickly subsume the complex and make good decisions is all too evident. The good news is - the support systems are coming! And can you guess where they are being deployed first? In the military - as ever! In the arena of war, where lives are at stake, it really is vital that the right decisions are made, and fast. Information can be tsunami-like or sparse, and it is seldom complete or 100 per cent accurate, but decisions still have to be made. Sound familiar? If you are in business it will!
What will these future systems do for us? In an ideal tech world they will restore stability and allow us to reach the tranquillity we supposedly crave. However, I suspect the reality will be different. I for one can see that engaging with these systems will make us even more productive. It will be hard to resist a new working relationship, a new intelligence and the new modes it will allow. My guess - it will be essential, and will become irresistible!
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1. Antony Norris
At the risk of being far too personal and making sweeping judgements, I'd love to hear what your wife and kids think of your jet setting lifestyle. (Let them do a blog)
I think the 'blurring of work, rest and play' can have a detrimental effect on our lives. While work is important, it shouldn't necessarily be the be all and end all of our lives, family and non business (ie 'real') friends are important for our existence.
What do other people think? Am I on my own in thinking while technology has sped everything up, it has also got in the way.
2. anonymous
I'm with you Antony. IT promised to save time and increase leisure. The reality that Peter enjoys intrudes work into our leisure time. I predict a backlash. There will be "mobile turn off" days or "disconnect" (from the net) days or we'll lose our sanity.
3. Nicholas Wright
I really don't buy into your premise. As far as I can see - and possibly only three weeks in to the future - what we want to do at any moment and the decision of what to do takes infinitely less time than execution IT or no IT.
We all get frustrated by slowness in IT. You used to say similar things too. What has changed your mind?
4. David Quinn
I fear Peter's approach seems as ever to be that of the childishly optimistic. I once heard a talk from one of his chaps in BT - obviously under his influence - who said enthusiastically that the internet would produce a world where if we wanted something we would just put a tender out on the net and then accept the lowest bidder (and of course there are some signs of this happening). He seemed to have no inkling of the economic consequences of such a world, which Economics knows as perfect competition. No company could ever make money, the economic system would collapse and we would sink into a Malthusian bog. Indeed the way it looks at the moment if technology permits something people will do it with no regard to the downside. That just seems to be the way people are. Who for example would bet against human cloning despite governments' attempts to prevent it? I fear our present technology rush will resemble that of the 1830s in England in enriching its owners and impoverishing the rest of us (except those who jet round the world and act as apologists for untrammelled modernity). It will probably do little good anyway but a bit of scepticism (and I mean scepticism not cynicism) would not go amiss
5. Peter Ward
I'm with David Quinn on this one.
It is no coincidence that the current cliche of choice in 'Business' and amongst 'Managers' is "...going forward", but whilst they rush ever onwards, they seem to be oblivious to the precipice.
Most people's lives have been deeply affected by the sort of 'progress' to which you allude, but for most of us we have simply to accept the effects, not participate in shaping them nor in a dialogue about their value.
I doubt you or most other people will acheive 10 times what your or their antecedents did during your lifetime. Acheivement is qualitative as well as quantitative. Like the rest of us you will undoubtedly rush around *doing* a lot ("making haste to get nowhere"), but I remain unconvinced that this is of any great value.
In the good old days (the 1960's) we thought technological progress would be the engine for improving the world (reduced working week, more equitable distribution of resouces, ending of poverty etc.) instead it has driven, and is accelerating the precise opposites. People in the West are working longer hours, the new Far East sweatshops operating like their Victorian inspiration and the poor getting poorer.
In a later blog you bemoan the constant reorganisations. Thin on't
6. Kyle Manjaro
Hmmm. I'm with the rest of the comments so far. The promise of technology in general, and IT in particular, was that we could combine doing more for less with more time for living - what I call the deferred "Life at the center of Life" revolution, and not "Work" - never mind the fearsome specter you describe of blurring everything together.
What's missing is what technology can't, thankfully, yet give us: Informed decisions and intelligent and caring thought-AND-action about the priorities and values that shape the use, range and deployment of technologies, especially IT and communications. And that shape ought to support not suppress our lives.
I'm actively "metaprogramming" my own habits: I refuse to regard a ringing mobile as the de facto senior member of any conversation I'm in; and I'm slowly getting it across to friends and colleagues that SMS's really will still be there at the end of our conversation, and that e-mail doesn't necessarily translate into an instant, fast-as-possible response (job priorities and emergencies aside). I am actively trying to encourage the idea that the "new chic", if you can call it that (nothing like piggy-backing a good old notion on a perceived new trend), is consideration, attention, and exclusion (of distractions), while still getting the job done. We seem to be in a mad,mad rush to squish the complexity (note, not complicatedness) of the "quality" that's one of Life's enduring signatures into linear "how much, how long, how soon, how now" coffins. Enough on only toys for the boys and no whirls with the girls - let's use IT, Comms, and Tech with intelligence and care to support Life at the center of Life.