After Covid - the TECHIE REVOLUTION

In an alternative universe in which there are 40 million jobless in America and a President pushing a massive stimulus that will underpin his dramatic reelection, the recovery will take the shape of a square root symbol rather than a V or a W shape.

The smartie money is terrified that it will miss out on the surge and rushing more than a trillion US$ into the stock market to confirm the speculative psychosis despite conflicts with China, racial tensions and continuing enforced social isolation.

As the global pandemic impacts countries around the globe, the investors of the world are about to take their stock markets back to record levels on the assumption that profits will rapidly recover as millions of displaced workers are convinced that its time to go out and spend like nothing ever happened.

Covid19 provides a challenge to the globalisation and dehumanising technological giants that are leading to the disconnection between stock market speculation and the consequences of under-investment in social infrastructure and reduction in disadvantage,

When analysts at the Grattan Institute set out to calculate the damage the Coronavirus lockdowns could do to the jobs market, they expected something bad. But nothing as bad as what they got. In order to triple-check their work they calculated it three different ways.

Their headline finding is that between a sixth and a quarter of Australia’s workforce is likely to be out of work because of theCoronavirus shutdown over the next three months.

We can expect a radical reconstruction of the nature of work and productivity from the emergence of the TECHIE REVOLUTION with the hunt for higher productivity in local economies and post-industrial business environments.

Millions of households around the world have been integrated into the techtonic powerbase of the unaccountable and almost unstoppable technogical giants that eschew no accountability for the distorted realities that monetise their capacity to generate the TECHIE REVOLUTION.

Technology leads to alienation increasingly controlling what we do, and in particular removing choice or decision-making from individuals and replacing personal relationships with social isolation, zoom meetings and applications of artificial intelligence.

In this new found connected world, the techies - the hidden force that controls more of our information and private communications than all of the intelligence communities, have taken over power over our range of choices, the purported leaders we think that we choose and the goods and services that we purchase.

Many people are feeling increasingly exploited by technology companies collecting personal data and using it for commercial purposes or even to deny services such as insurance; in particular, the benefits to the end-user of technology seem very small compared to the large profits made by the companies that provide the services. Media often report that intense use of the Internet increases the risk of isolation, alienation, and withdrawal from society

Kevin Carty in the New York Post described this brave new world where and average Facebook user has no way of knowing or appreciating the mountain of data the company has collected on them. And the average Amazon shopper is unlikely know that the site steers customers toward its preferred (and often more expensive) products. America’s biggest tech giants have at least as much power as John D. Rockefeller and J.P. Morgan did in the early 20th century; it is just much harder to see.

Carty says "Tech companies can dominate sectors without actually producing anything in those markets. Apple does not produce any music, but it nonetheless controls a huge amount of the industry. Facebook doesn’t produce any news, but news organizations are highly dependent on the social platform. And these corporations continue to expand. Amazon, for instance, has entered the grocery business — via its buyout of Whole Foods — and just last week announced a new healthcare project."

As Sarwant Singh writes in his article in Forbes Magazine "A decade ago the idea of driverless fully electric cars, digital currencies and deep sea mining seemed like science fiction. It is testament to the rapid pace of social, economic and technological change that we are witnessing that these concepts no longer seem impossible. As such, a revolution is under way, where gadgets, large and small, are changing our society."

"These revolutionary changes equate to great opportunities for entrepreneurs and businesses, and they can prosper from it if they are the first to spot and adapt to these major global societal and transformative forces."

America’s biggest tech giants are nothing if not popular. Apple, Google, Facebook and Amazon rank as some of the most well-liked brands in the world. Pollsters find that 86 percent of Americans hold a favorable view of Google and 80 percent share a favorable impression of Amazon. The reason is simple — these companies’ hire thousands of techies to preselect what we are likely to choose, do and even think - and deliver certainty in the kingdom of blind confusion that has been introduced by the pandemic..

The emergence of a global middle class of 5 billion people and a connected community on the internet of more consumers will allow entrepreneurs and businesses to “make one, sell many,” a concept that will further entrench the power of these behemoth corporations hiring thousand of techies to sell us on “value for many.”

The concept implies that businesses can produce and sell the same product or service to the masses in both the developing and developed worlds using either a platform like the internet or through developing an affordable products strategy.

Around the world, people have been taught to transfer power over resources, relationships, information and decision making power to the myriads of techies who run algorithms that are increasingly targeted to reduce the diversity of supply of sources of satisfaction.

Artificial intelligence and automation run by computer savvy youngsters screen and sort a never ending stream of novel ways to part with what little power that we still have. A key micro impact of this will be the focus by businesses on creating a seamless online/off-line customer journey and a unique and personalized customer experience throughout the life cycle of the product/service.

As Martin Moore writes in The Guardian " The approach we take to Google, Facebook and their Silicon Valley peers will affect us all. Who can honestly say that they go through a day without using one of these companies’ services? We wake to their alarms on our phones; we check our emails on their platforms; we do our shopping on their browsers; we navigate by their maps; they host our virtual identities."

"What we do about them is not just an economic or competition question, nor simply about privacy – important though these aspects are. It is a question about what sort of society we want and what sort of politics. It is a question that will help define the type of country we live in, post Brexit. This is because these tech superpowers are playing an increasing number of civic roles in our lives that affect our ability to participate in society and to communicate freely."

In The Technological Society, Jaques Ellul writes that “at stake is our very life, and we shall need all the energy, inventiveness, imagination, goodness, and strength we can muster to triumph in our predicament.”

Techies will increasingly increase our personal mobility (not necessarily cars or trucks) to travel from A to B, journeys will become integrated with intelligent and smart technologies, enabled with online membership providing seamless travel on multi-modal transport systems.

Techies will measure mobility share and not market share, as they move us away from owning cars integrating all travel needs. Ride sharing is already becoming a commonplace model tnd they will become autonomous, as first pilots will be trialled by car and technology companies in a closed environment like at an airport or small community.

Techies will shift focus and develop products and technologies that “Innovate to Zero” in real life, thereby bringing social innovation to the forefront. We will have cars with zero emissions, zero accidents and zero fatalities. Cities and buildings will want to be carbon neutral.

Techies monitor our digital payments and no cash, enabling people to draw down on their life savings so governments and banks can leverage greater control of the economy through monetary policy. This year we have seen the introduction of negative interest rates whereby people pay banks to store their deposits, instead of earning interest on those deposits, encouraging people to invest, lend and spend.

 With technologies such as voice and face-recognition, as well as retina-scanning, being inbuilt to payment technologies, transactions also have the potential to become more secure than ever before, while payments can also be protected by end-to-end encryption and fraud-preventing technology.

Experts are warning that rising bank charges and disappearing branches will force businesses to ditch cash before customers are ready. There will come a point at which the cost of maintaining the infrastructure to support cash transactions is no longer affordable, leading to an acceleration in transition towards digital payment methods.

With technologies such as voice and face-recognition, as well as retina-scanning, being inbuilt to payment technologies, transactions also have the potential to become more secure than ever before, while payments can also be protected by end-to-end encryption and fraud-preventing technology that could form a platform for a universal basic income system.

Dr. Tony Bates Research Associate with Contact North | Contact Nord, Ontario’s Distance Education & Training Network says increasing inequality in wealth of unemployed and low paid workers who feel they are being ‘passed by’ or not included in the wealth-generating economy. The feeling is particularly strong among workers who previously had well paid jobs (or expectations of well paid jobs) in manufacturing but have seen those jobs disappear in their lifetime.

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