SOFTWARE DEFINE RELATIONSHIPS

I'm from Silicon Valley and I'm here to help. A riff on the popular Ronald Regan's nine terrifying words "I'm from the government and I'm here to help."  At the time, it was a call to action in response to increasing government spending and waste.  

Today its counterpart is proudly splashed on the Apple's website "You want to do what’s best for your family. So do we."

So I'm here with a quote for Silicon Valley from the 80's also.  

Focus on your own damn family. 

In late 2018, Apple and Google announced updates that would allow us to monitor our time on devices and control access to our family via software tools design to make breaking out of your bedroom harder than accessing Pornhub from the great wall of China.

Families and individuals have become so interdependent on their devices, they are allowing trillion dollar companies to deploy full-time surveillance tools on our devices to fight the false flag of "phone addiction" 

Allowing tech companies to dictate your mental health regarding technology is like letting Ronald McDonalds drive you to Yoga. 

Yet back in September 2018, billions updated their mobile phones, both Apple and Google Android, the latest smartphone software for our devices, wearables, cars, and homes. These updates were welcomed and applauded by the mass media as needed and welcomed upgrades to our devolving collective attentions.

iOS and Android are not mobile operating systems. These software updates are actually, lifestyle operating systems and its critically important to look at them through this lens. In 2018, IOS and Android updates control more than just our smart phone experience, they control our watches, earphones, wallets, cars, and homes.  

When you update your smartphone, you’re updating your entire life. 

Apple’s iPhone software controls their app ecosystem which includes their vehicle system car play, their health and behavior ecosystem, apple watch,  their home services ecosystem, Homekit, Apple TV, Homepod and their hooks into your locks, appliances, and devices and of course their banking system called apple pay.

While most Americans are focusing on Russian bots on Twitter, Facebook election manipulations and the latest political scandal, the largest technology companies have deployed the most invasive level of surveillance to date to control and monitor your family in history and we all applauded it.

Big Brother has been disrupted by Big Mother.

This isn’t the first time we have outsourced our intimate relationships to the latest technology; our history is littered with devices monitoring and shaping our relationships. From the first analog telephones in the early 1900’s to the rise of the automobile through the advent of radio, and theater the American family has evolved through the technology of our time.

Yet if we go back just a decade to the rise of social media, you can see that this lapse in critical attention was a mistake. Collectively didn't’ give it much thought when we started allowing software to define our relationships. Who hasn’t felt uncomfortable accepting a friend request, or worse yet ignoring it?  In time Facebook gave us tools to block people, take a break in our relationships and even snooze our friends when they have significant life events they start documenting.

While our software-defined friendships were starting to flourish in 2008 LinkedIn, the “professional network” came along to help us showcase our resumes and exploit our business hour relationships. LinkedIn quickly became the place to be found and to look for work. 

By 2012 software LinkedIn and emerging mobile giants were encouraging us to rate complete strangers Yelp, TripAdvisor and Uber were mainstreamed. No longer did we have to suffer through a bad 5.00 cup of coffee or speeding taxi ride, we could now destroy a complete stranger's lack of living wages in just a few taps! 

Fast forward to 2015, and the website Nextdoor allows you to manage, monitor and connect with your neighbors. Can I borrow a couple of digital sugar? Technology is continually being created and upgraded to help us manage our relationships, friends, colleagues, neighbors and local businesses.

Through this same period, a series of applications have grown in popularity and gone relativity undetected. Quietly in the background, Silicon Valley has been preparing us for the rise of family and self surveillance. 

Apps like “Life 360” welcomes us to our “new family circle.” Life360 features services that monitor your children's driving, creates geo-fenced areas for your children to stay close to, monitors chats with your kids and can even alert you if you’re about to visit a high crime area!

Since 2012 we have enabled our ability to monitor our friends texting habits, when they log on to social networks, what they listen to when they are working, how far they are walking and as of 2018, , photography, voice record and remotely listen to our friends.

We can't honestly say we respect privacy in the same breath we are demanding, using and weaponizing behavior on those closest to us our friends, co-workers and families.

Welcome to Generation Mind your Ps and Qs.

It’s no secret the tech giants are suffering from a little bad press lately though. FAANG (Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and Google) are all ouching from a bad public image.  Articles and research papers have been leaking out of think tanks predicting the complete destruction of our society and laying the blame squarely at the foot of these tech companies, and it all starts with the mobile smartphone.

Things have become so difficult for Silicon Valley that they are reaching deep into their newly developed AI consciousness and releasing tools to help you get back to your family and peace of mind. Where is this new morality coming from and why would companies dependent on your attention create tools to help you avoid their screens?

You can easily trace the current trend in reformed tech bros to Tristan Harris, one time Google Ethicist, who developed a movement called Time Well spent, then with a little support from Ariana Huffington and Thrive Global, started a media onslaught has created a reformed silicon valley super group including founders from Facebook, reformed googlers, Yelp, Nvidia, Apple, DirectTV, Twitter, and others. 

So what’s the problem? It could easily be said that the tech companies are taking responsibility for their monster. If Apple, Google, Netflix, Fitbit, Amazon all focus on our families and values, isn’t that a step in the right direction? No.

Families are not software; they can’t be patched and upgraded.

Yet the digitization of our lives and relationships requires a new breed of professionals and I'd like to introduce you to just one of those people. Dr. Robert Beck, my personal physican.

During my 2018 annual physical with Dr. Robert Beck, in Nashville, TN I had my hardware reviewed. Yup, on my phone. By the end of the visit, Dr. Beck asked me to make sure my “nightshift” option was enabled; nightshift is the Apple iPhone screen dimming technology to help you sleep better. Then Dr. Beck asked me to turn on my DND for texting and driving. DND for driving turns my phone into a brick and automatically responds to my friends while I'm behind the wheel.

Dr. Beck is a physician who treats the whole person, even the digital parts. 

Over the past ten years, I have used hundreds, even thousands of devices, sensors, applications and services to manage my life, my health, my relationships and I can tell you I am living proof of the power of technology and a cautionary warning sign of the ways our culture is evolving. 

In my latest book“Don’t Unplug, how technology saved my life and can save your’s too” I cover everything from my relationship with social media, for instance, I influenced my friends to actually change their clothing by only interacting their posts when they wore particular colors, to how I hacked my depression by binge watching people contemplating suicide on YouTube.

Some of these methods are unorthodox, but they all have one thing in common, I took control of them, I took them away from the big corporations and shaped my life and learned to be the software that I needed.

So I'm encouraging you to harness the vast amount of power you have over yourself, friends and family, to start to learn to use software to manage these relationships in a health way. You are the only person who has the power to do this and Tim Cook doesn't actual care about you or your family.

You are the app you're looking for.