What Live Aid Can Teach Us About New Ideas

There's a great story told by the late music promoter Bill Graham. If you don't know, Graham was a legendary figure in popular music beginning in the 60's and continuing right on through to his tragic death in 1991. In addition to being the guy who brought bands like the Grateful Dead, Santana, and Big Brother & the Holding Company into the mainstream, Graham was also responsible for essentially creating the "rock concert" and making them the spectacles they've become today.

One of the biggest productions Graham was involved with was Live Aid. This massive event took place in 1985 simultaneously on multiple continents. He oversaw the production and logistics of the whole event - which took place at Wembley Stadium in London and JFK Stadium in Philadelphia (Graham's home base). The event was huge and included acts like Queen, U2, David Bowie, Madonna, Run DMC, Tina Turner, and Bob Dylan.

At the end of the event, Graham said he walked out onto the empty Philadelphia stage. He looked out into the field of JFK Stadium, hands on his hips, and thought about what had just occurred: The coordinating of 67 bands performing on two continents; sound and tech crews; video link hook ups; and getting singer Phil Collins to fly from London to Philly by Concorde so he could perform at both shows. Graham said he let out a breath of relief, and just as he was starting to relax he heard a voice say: "Hey Bill...that's it?" He looked down to see the sole guy left in the stadium standing at the front of the stage.

I thought of this story the other day while reading about what happened with Apple. If you haven't read, Apple announced at the beginning of the year that it was going to miss its projected revenue by billions of dollars. This was due in large part to lagging iPhone sales in China. It's obvious that what happens in China will affect Apple's global performance, but is that the only issue at hand ? Could it be - as the New York Times Kara Swisher asks: "Is this the end of the Age of Apple?" Is the world looking at Apple and asking "That's it?"

When the inaugural iPhone hit stores in 2007 it caused a ground swell of emotion and change - and not just in the tech world, but in society in general. What followed was a wave in new and life altering technologies that have affected all of us. Suddenly we were not only able to make phone calls on the go from a singular device, but listen to all of our music, access the Internet, take photographs, answer Emails and send text messages to friends. As time went on, the same device allowed users to do all of that plus hail a car, make dinner reservations, check in with friends on social media, play video games, watch TV, live stream movies...you know the rest of the story. The iPhone had a monumental affect on seemingly every aspect of life. It's now estimated that 223 million Americans own one and take advantage of its assorted technologies every day.

But now it seems the world is asking the same question of Apple that was asked of Bill Graham: Is that it? What comes next? What's going to be the next new thing - and will Apple be behind it?

I've written here before about the speed at which the world is changing. As an educator I am constantly asking if we're properly educating our kids to survive in a world that seems to change and update itself every three weeks. As an example, there's an article in today's New York Times stating how one third of the articles published by Bloomberg News are written by artificial intelligence programs. AI isn't just infiltrating our workforce, it's alienating more and more people from jobs - and not just in manufacturing. In fact, a recent study done at MIT addresses how technology is affecting a task oriented job market. As more and more jobs become eliminated by technology, are the people affected able to migrate to new jobs? And the second part of that question is: Do those new jobs pay the same?

Companies like Tesla and Intel use AI in the manufacturing of their products, but - like Bloomberg - more and more companies are now using AI to perform writing as well as back office tasks. This means jobs like reading legal documents and crunching numbers are now disappearing too. As the work disappears, have the workers been trained to transition? Are we educating experienced workers to take on new roles? Will they be able to re-invent themselves multiple times? More importantly, are we teaching our kids to thrive in a professional environment like this?

I was hanging out with friends this weekend in a local pub and we were discussing/arguing the increase to the minimum wage. We are all friends with the pub's owner and he was telling us if the wage increase is passed, he's going to have to let some wait staff go and replace them with tablets allowing customers to order directly from those. Essentially, he'd replace those servers with AI. One of my friend's sniffed "Well that's OK because those jobs aren't meant to be careers anyway." My response to that statement is: Now what? What does a full-time waitress do if her job is eliminated by an iPad? What is she supposed to re-invent herself as?

Apple has created some of the most beautiful and important technology of the twenty-first century. Now in this moment of reflection, maybe their next act is supposed to not only be about technology. Maybe their next creation is supposed to be about humans too. Maybe they're supposed to help the people their technology is replacing to re-discover and re-invent themselves. This way the question that will be asked of them won't be phrased as "That's it?", but will - rather - be phrased as an exclamation: "YES! That's it!"