JULIE ALBRIGHT: Thank you.
Thanks for being here.
Appreciate that.
Well, it's an exciting
moment, and I'm
glad to be with you
Googlers to talk about this.
I wanted to get us started with
this image which reminded me
of the American dream.
If I had to ask you to
define the American dream,
I think you might say
something like it's
the little house with
the white picket fence,
getting married, 2.5 kids,
the station wagon, the dog.
It's that sort of idea.
But when we look now
at what's happening--
I have a sociology
degree, as you just heard,
but I also have two
counseling degrees.
So in this study, in
this book, in my work,
I'm looking at the wide
sociological trends that
are happening in
society, and I'm
kind of putting on my
counseling hat and thinking,
what are the impacts
on the ground,
on people, on their
mental health,
on relationships,
on the workplace?
And so that's what I'm doing.
I'm sort of going back and forth
from the large social scale
to then taking it down
to the personal level.
So this idea of the American
Dream we'll revisit shortly.
The American dream is one of
the myths that we live by.
We tell ourselves stories that
make sense of our social world.
That's one of them.
Another one that's really
pertinent to the work
that you do, I
think, is the idea
of progress, the idea that as
we develop more technology,
we're always moving forward.
We have this notion in our
minds, I think, about that.
And we might sort of
question both of these ideas
and whether those
are actually true
or stories that
we tell ourselves.
Now, in this book, I'm looking
at the impacts of technology
on behavior and on
our social lives.
But one of the chapters
talks about the workforce,
and I opened it with a quote
from Kurt Vonnegut's book
"Player Piano."
Now, this was written in 1952,
but the funny thing about it
is it seems prescient
looking at it now.
But as we go forward
and we're looking more
into the future of
technological development,
around things like AI
and machine learning,
and where we're going with
robotics and automation,
it almost seems more
prescient toward that future.
And here's what he said.
"People are finding
that, because of the way
the machines are
changing the world,
more and more of their old
values don't apply anymore.
People have no
choice but to become
second rate machines themselves,
or wards of the machines."
1952.
Now, think about how
that applies today
with what's going on.
So in this project,
I have a couple
of ways of understanding
this behavior and technology
connection, the first of which
is the double helix of DNA.
I'm sure you've seen
images of that before,
but I'm using that as a
metaphorical way to understand
the changes afoot in society,
the idea that the two
strands represent
technology and behavior,
that technology and
behavior are intertwined.
Technology informs behavior.
Let me put that back up.
And behavior informs
or shapes technology.
And in my view, these
two things will never
be sort of torn asunder again.
This is our historical moment,
and this is our socio-technical
DNA from which these
new social arrangements,
new social patterns,
are emerging--
from this double helix.
And that's where we
are now, historically,
and going forward.
The other sort of analytical
framework that I'm using
is I call the triad of
technological immersion.
This is kind of like a symphony.
You know how-- have you
been to the symphony?
The woodwinds come
in, the strings,
and the pianos are
coming in, and then
they're all sort of
playing at the same time.
And that's what's
happening here.
And the first of these
movements, if you will,
is the idea of the
untethered society.
This is the idea that we're sort
of hyper-attached to devices,
and at the same time we're
unhooking from many things that
were traditional for
other generations,
and I'll talk more about
that in detail in a moment.
The second of the triad is
what I call the internet of me.
This is IoT, the internet
of things, smart systems,
where we have things-- the
smart grid, smart homes--
where we have things that
are sort of tailored to you,
tailored to your preferences.
For example, the
Nest thermostats,
if you're familiar with that.
Control them on your phone.
What temperature do
you want it to be?
And things of that nature.
The third and final
piece of this triad
of technological immersion
I call the internet of them.
This is where that intelligence
spins out away from human,
human in the loop, where things
are talking to other things.
You have autonomous
intelligence embedded
in things like
robotics, and the human
is completely out of the loop.
This is automation.
This is the singularity of these
ideas you've probably heard
about, where some of
these capabilities
are going to actually
exceed human intelligence
and human physical capabilities.
You see one of the robots
here from Boston Dynamics,
which I'm sure you've seen.
So today I'm going to focus
on the first of this triad,
the idea of coming untethered.
And that's what the focus
of my new book has been.
It's this idea, again, this
certain 1950s American dream
image, that many people
aspire to, having that home
and family, and getting married,
and buying a home, and all
that.
But what's happening now is
young people, particularly
digital natives--
we might think of
them as millennials--
but those that
grew up in a world
where there always
was an internet,
are unhooking from these
things, in great numbers,
in fact, and at the same
time are hyper-attaching
to digital technologies.
And that's creating a seismic
set of changes in society
that impacts every vector
that you can think of.
And you go outside on any
street right now right,
you're going to see that head
bent down, kids on phones
walking around, and that's
really where the emphasis is.
The idea, also, that
I wanted to make
mention of-- when
we use our devices,
we all have our phones, we all
have our laptops, I'm sure,
and everything, you start
to kind of take for granted
that everyone's doing it,
because everyone you know
is doing it.
But I want to give
a nod to the fact
that not everyone is connecting
wirelessly to the internet
like you may be doing,
which you are doing,
but that it's
generationally uneven.
And this is from Pew
Internet looking at who's
connecting to the internet.
And you can see the older
you get, the less likely
you are to be connecting,
or the less likely
you are to be using these
devices for that reason.
I have a boat
neighbor named Walt,
who I talk about in the book.
He's early 70s.
The one day he
held up his iPhone.
He's all, see these apps?
I said, yeah?
He says, I don't know what they
do and I don't want to know.
I just want to get
rid of them all.
I was like, wow, I could
show you what they do.
And he's like, no,
he doesn't want--
I'm not an app
trier, he tells me.
So I thought that was
the funniest thing,
but I'm not an app
trier, but neither
are a lot of other folks.
So we start to take for
granted that what we're doing,
everyone's doing, but indeed,
that's not exactly the case.
So when we talk about
digital natives,
and this kind of makes
a difference here,
the idea is the average
30-something-year-old's life
so far, you can see the internet
becomes a thing sometime
in middle school, and mobile
phones become a thing in high
school.
But what's happening now
is kids are growing up
with these mobile
devices from infancy,
and that's really
going to change
their take on the world,
and their brains, in fact.
In 1979, there's a band from
the area called The Tubes.
I don't know if
you've heard of them,
but they're kind of a punky
band from San Francisco.
They came up with
this album cover,
which is sort of a wry
social commentary on the idea
that kids are
watching too much TV.
It's going to
impact their brains.
And this is meant to
be sort of a joke.
They're a funny
band, but they make
a lot of social commentary.
But come to 2018 and
this is a real product.
So I don't know how we
went so horribly wrong,
but what started out as
something that was kind
of a joke is now a real thing.
And there are a myriad of these.
This is just one,
but there's others
that are with potty
training, and you've
got that iPad, or in
the bassinet, that
iPad right overhead.
So we're feeding basically
babies, infants, a steady diet
of digital content and whatnot.
And that's going to
change their brains.
They're going to think
differently than you do,
because they grew up in
this different environment.
And in fact, many of these kids
are learning digital skills
now prior to learning language.
If you go on
YouTube, by the way,
last time I did it, and
look up "baby with iPad,"
I got over 60,000
hits last time.
So this idea that these kids--
think about this now.
Remember I told you
about my friend Walt.
I'm not an app trier.
He doesn't know how to
use any of these things.
This kid has better
digital skills
than my 72-year-old neighbor.
I mean, that is wild
when you think about it.
When you think this
child can't speak yet,
that's the part that's
really the shift.
So their brains, we
know from neuroscience
that what you input
into children's brains
reshapes their neural pathways.
Their brains are malleable, and
they call it brain plasticity.
Their brains are plastic.
So this input from
digital is going
to reshape the way they think,
and they'll think differently
than you do in the long run.
And we don't know
what the impacts
are going to be of that yet.
So one of the impacts that's
happening in childhood
is that experiences of
children are becoming
more digital than analog,
more simulated than real
in many ways.
In the 1970s, a lot of kids
would go out play outside,
and before that, ride bikes, do
all these outdoor activities.
But now kids' experiences
are increasingly virtualized
and moving indoors,
to the point, in fact,
I don't know if you know this--
only 6% of kids play
outside anymore at all.
So some people have said that
kids are getting less time
outdoors than the
typical prisoner
during the course of the day.
But of course, that impacts
their health, right?
So these are things
all intertwined.
Kids roaming has diminished
90% over four generations.
I thought this was a really
interesting sort of a map
that we could take a look at,
and it traces four generations.
The great grandfather
at age eight
used to walk six
miles to go fishing.
He's down here.
And then we go to
the grandfather
here, when he was age eight in
1950, he walked about a mile
to the woods.
Then you go up to the mother,
at the top at age eight,
was walking to the swimming
pool, which was about half
a mile away.
But now you get to the
kid who, at age eight,
is able to just walk to the end
of his yard or down the street
and that's it.
So the interesting
thing when you
think about what
that means, think
about wandering off down
to the woods, or even just
adventuring around on your
bike or wherever you're going.
There's a lot of things
you have to overcome
and have to figure out, right?
One of these is navigating.
When you wander off, you got to
wander back and find your way,
right?
Maybe a dog runs out at you.
What are you going to do?
Or a car suddenly, and have
to swerve around or get out
of the way.
There's a lot of
obstacles to be overcome.
So one of the
unintended consequences
of driving children indoors and
not wandering outdoors and all
is a lack of overcoming,
which then results
in a lack of resilience.
So we're seeing that
in the colleges now.
Kids don't know what to
do in certain situations.
For example, there
was a story recently
where some young folks
had a mouse or a rat come
in their dorm room.
And they were so
stunned, they called 911,
because it was an emergency.
So they didn't know how to
handle this kind of situation.
So there can be funny
stories like that,
but there can be more serious
or drastic consequences as well
around this lack of resilience.
So resilience is
based on experiences.
The experiences are
becoming virtualized,
and resilience is
dropping, which
is an important thing for
coping with the things that
come at you in the world.
So because kids experiences
are virtualized,
it is changing their thoughts
about their own futures.
I don't know what you
thought you wanted
to be when you were a kid.
A lot of people used to
say, I'll be a doctor,
I'll be a nurse, I'll be a
ballerina, a fireman, whatever
that kind of thing was.
But now most of the kids want
to be YouTubers, YouTube stars,
because that's what they see.
That's what they see people
doing, getting all these likes
and shares, and making
money, in fact, at it.
There's a five-year-old kid
making in the $25 million range
now online.
So it's just sort of crazy,
but that's what they see,
and that's what they're
aspiring to now.
So I talk about this
as people grow up
in this sort of
atmosphere, where they're
immersed in digital
technologies,
as coming untethered, the
untethered generation.
And behaviors now tend to
orbit around connectivity
or being online, and
images like this one--
the underwater selfie, getting
the more extreme selfies
we were talking about earlier.
That's optimized
for social media
to get the most likes
and shares and interest.
So one of the other things
that's happening now
is that social media
and online connectivity
is ushering in an unprecedented,
you could say, sea of choices.
One of them is online dating,
of course, the idea that there's
just hundreds or
thousands of people
that you could hook up with.
My first work out
of my dissertation
was with eHarmony, helping
hook up people better on there,
and I helped develop
some of their product.
But this idea that easy
come, easy go, there's
just thousands of choices.
But interestingly,
consumer psychology
tells us that the more choices
we have, the less likely
we are to choose.
And there was a
famous study of jam
where they laid out 24
varieties of jam in a store.
Have you ever seen where
they're giving samples out?
Here's some cheese or
ravioli or something,
and you're going to taste
this thing in the market
or in Costco.
Well, that's what
they did with the jam.
So they had 24
varieties, and then they
gave a coupon to buy a bottle
of jam, $3 off or something.
The next day they came and
only had six varieties.
And it's paradoxically
harder to choose
when you have more choices,
and people we're only 1/10 as
likely to choose
any jam on the day
when they had 24 choices as
opposed to when they had six.
So this is playing out
in the dating arena.
It's also playing
out in the workplace.
And what's happening, just like
a bad Tinder date, or maybe
an OK Tinder date, people are
ghosting their employers now.
So with ghosting, you
probably know what that means,
but in case you don't--
the idea that you're
talking, you go on dates,
you're texting, and then
suddenly you disappear.
And people are trying to
text and call and email,
and no response.
And that's what they're
doing with their workplace.
My brother said a friend of
his had three employees ghost
on them last month.
They just stopped showing up.
And they don't call,
they don't text.
And my brother said, now, when
my employee doesn't show up,
I worry.
Did he get in a car
accident or something?
But they just stop
showing up and think
that that's the way to
do it, because there's
this idea on Monster and on
and Indeed and on LinkedIn,
there's so many jobs that, eh,
I'll just get another one, just
like Tinder dating.
So it's the same behaviors
from online dating,
and the sea of choices
are now leaching over
into the workplace and how
people approach their jobs.
This perceived plethora of
choices, of lifestyles--
there's a million
people I could date--
is really reshaping adulthood.
So people aren't getting
married like they used to.
They're not buying a home.
They're not having children.
They're not going to church.
They're not joining political
parties like they used to.
In fact, we've just fallen
below replacement rate
of children in this country.
I don't know if you
know what that means.
But when someone dies
off, it's the idea
that another baby is
born and it kind of
keeps a balance that way.
And think about it.
As people age out of the
workforce, new workers come in.
If you fall below
replacement rate,
meaning you're not having as
many children to replace those
that are dying off,
it actually can
impact the GDP of a
country, their productivity.
And so the idea being that
once you've sort of fallen off
that balancing point, it's
very hard for a country
to re-establish it.
And so it can have very
serious implications.
Now, the remedy to that,
and if you think about it
commonsensically, what would
that be, is immigration.
Well, we know how some of
the thoughts and feelings
are about that these days.
So this is a real issue.
And this isn't just
happening here.
This is happening in Japan.
This is happening in Western
Europe and other places
where these sort of digital
tentacles are growing.
This idea that now we're
reshaping adulthood
and what it means,
one of the aspects
is reshaping our thoughts
of what our career can be,
or what work can look like.
And the workforce
now is becoming
a place where tasking
is the new normal,
or gigging, this sort of thing.
This here is Liz Bryant.
She was a newscaster down in San
Diego and decided, forget it.
I'm going to buy this
Mercedes Sprinter van,
and I'm going to go
live, go to the beach,
or go to the mountain skiing, or
hiking, wherever I want to be,
and I'm going to work out of
my van and live out of my van.
And it's a Mercedes Sprinter.
So she said she was born
wild and sprinting free.
She named the van Wild.
And now she's on YouTube
making an influencer name
for herself, and
also on Instagram
trying to monetize
her adventurous life.
But more and more,
this kind of life
where people are gigging and
whatnot is becoming the norm.
Half of millennials are
gigging now, and only 28%
of baby boomers.
At this rate, this sort of
gig, work, sharing economy
may be the predominant form
of work in the next few years.
There's a whole hashtag,
a whole scene around this.
I put this up, #vanlife if
you want to check it out.
But it's the idea of, hey,
let me show you my van,
and how I fixed it up, and what
I did, and where I'm going.
And so you'll see a whole world
around that hashtag #vanlife
going on.
So again, why does this matter?
Why does untethering matter?
Well, let's think
about this now.
If you were post-World
War II, which sociologists
call the golden
age of the family,
everybody rushed out after
the war and got married,
and bought their home in
the suburbs, and had kids.
That's where the baby
boom came from, right?
But if you don't
have that marriage,
if you don't have that 30-year
mortgage in the suburbs,
you don't have the
kids in a school,
and you're not part of the local
church community, et cetera,
well, guess what?
When you unplug from all
those things or untether,
that suddenly frees you up
to work anywhere, right?
So it changes that relationship
to even the workplace
and what you
perceive you can do,
because now you're
floating free.
You can live anywhere,
be anywhere, be anything.
And so there's a lot
more of that churn now
in terms of job hopping and what
you see as your possibilities.
Being single means there's
less riding on those decisions.
So as we talk about this
untethered workforce that's
sort of welling up, there's
a whole infrastructure now
that's rising up
around this to meet
these young, single,
mobile individuals.
This is 20 Mission, which is
down here in San Francisco.
It's a hacker hotel
with this idea
that you can just sort of
live, or move in, move out.
There's another one
called Common here.
This one's in Brooklyn, but they
have a few different locations.
You just bring your duffel
bag, drop it on the floor,
and you're moved in.
I lived at USC as a
faculty in residence
for seven years with the
students in the dorms.
And I have RAs,
Residential Advisors.
And they helped plan a trip
to the symphony, or a dinner,
or a talk by someone
that would come in.
We'd have dinner together
and do these various events.
Well, guess what?
These also have
something like an RA,
planning a ski
trip, or a dinner,
or a party for the residents.
So in a way, it
becomes like this sort
of extended adolescence
of that college life,
dorm life for young people into
the 20s and 30s and whatnot.
And the interesting thing is
it's this no commitment life.
So with Common, for
example, that you see here,
they say, oh, you
want a different room?
No problem.
Just let us know.
You can move rooms.
You want to move in
a different building?
No problem.
So this sort of no
commitment lifestyle
is something that's
welling up, that you
want to be able to change and
experience different things.
So let's talk about that
for a minute, this idea
that untethering brings
about different values,
different expectations.
One of these is a desire
for a digital interface.
Lots of young folks would
rather text than call.
I heard a stat
recently that said,
when the cell phones first
came out, 90% of the time
was spent on calls.
Now 90% of the time
is spent on apps.
So that's a huge shift.
So this idea that younger
folks might not even
know how to make a call--
I had some students that
tried to call someone up,
and they were working
with a big car
company on a project for SC.
And the next week I
said, how'd the call go?
Well, not very well.
What happened?
There was an awkward silence.
What awkward silence?
And I was trying to think back.
I'd talk to the guys,
very jovial, funny guy.
They didn't know what to say.
They called this guy up
and sat there in silence.
And I was like, wow.
So that's the thing.
Certain skills that you might
take for granted, people that
are always using
devices might not
have the face to face
skills, the phone
call skills, these
kinds of skills
that you might have
just grown up knowing.
Surprisingly, they
might not have.
So I had my brother call
and do a little primer--
how do you break the
ice on a cold call?
How do you warm up a new
client sort of thing, things
that I didn't even realize.
Later I said, well, how do you
like that talk with my brother?
Same gal pops her hand up.
I wish we'd had that
before the phone call.
OK.
So there is also a certain
cynicism toward institutions,
for example.
So on this one, you
can see on the left
are those that considers
themselves politically
independent, and on the right,
those that are religiously
unaffiliated.
And so it goes younger, older,
older, older on each side.
So this idea that we're
untethering from things
that, again, people
did routinely
for generations, younger
people are just unhooking.
Churches are saying, how do we
get young people to show up?
I've had people at yacht
clubs, country clubs,
the rotary saying, we can't
get these young people in here
to join.
What do we do?
And they're at loose ends
trying to figure this out.
Same thing, likewise,
with marriage.
Remember we saw that
untethering by generation?
It's the exact
pattern here, the idea
being that between this
marriageable age of 18 to 32
by each generation, and you can
see from Silent, 65% of people
were married within that
frame, that marriageable age.
And it just gets
smaller and smaller,
where it's under around a
quarter now for millennials.
So this, again--
the reason I bring
this up is not to be old school
or conservative or something
but rather to say that all of
our foundational sociological
studies show that being involved
in these kinds of things,
like church, or a
family, in a marriage,
these are stabilizing social
structures for people.
They keep people physically
and mentally healthy.
And as we're unplugging
from these things, what's
taking the place of these
anchor points in society?
Here's another change.
It's time compression, this
idea of living in the now.
They used to ask students, well,
what's your five year plan?
And my mentor is
a CTO at Chevron,
and he asked his students.
They looked at him
like he was nuts.
What do you mean five years?
So this idea of life
is spinning fast.
And one other aspect to consider
and to think about what this
means.
If, in fact, young
people are untethered,
in which the
numbers are showing,
from this American dream,
from getting married,
from buying a home,
from wanting kids,
from all these sorts of things
that were traditional goals,
we could say, for
other generations,
these things served as
a kind of North Star
guiding people
toward their future.
Well, what happens when you
cut all those things out?
What is that new North Star?
What's bringing people
into the future?
Ofttimes we see a churn rate of
experiences living in the now.
And it's not bad to live in
the now and have experiences,
but you also sort of need
a future to guide toward.
And that keeps people moving
and hopeful on the horizon.
So we need to
really think about,
what's the pull factor now for
people that are untethering
from the traditional goals?
Don't care how.
I want it now.
I'm sure you remember this
gal from Willy Wonka day.
She was just ahead of her time.
The idea that you
want everything
at the push of a
button right now.
I don't know if you guys use--
you probably use Uber or Lyft.
But sometimes you
might have said,
how long's Uber going to take?
Seven minutes.
Let me check Lyft.
Three minutes.
OK, I'm going with that.
Yeah.
So this idea that you want it
now, you want it instantly,
you want it at the
press of a button.
7-Eleven and Domino's are trying
out drone delivery of burritos,
because kids want it right
now with their drone right
to their dorm room.
I call this a no latency life.
A lot of the data
center guys I work
with talk about the
latency of something,
how long it takes
to load a video.
If your video
doesn't load, people
in just a couple of seconds
will abandon ship, right?
So this idea of a
no latency life.
You don't want to
wait for things.
You want it to come do you now.
Here's a barber.
You just touch the button
and they come to your house.
There's dog walking,
hair glamming up.
You've seen all
these things, I'm
sure, but the idea
that you want it now,
and you want it at
the touch of a button.
Another changing value is
the idea of externality.
Photo or it didn't
happen, I'm sure, pic
or it didn't happen idea.
But this idea that
there's this enhanced need
for external validation
and external approvals
via social media, for example.
If you go back to studies
of girls' journals
going back into the 1800s and
what they were thinking about,
and what we're
thinking about now,
they were thinking
about things like,
I'd like to be more hopeful.
I'd like to be more patient.
I'd like to be more charitable.
And now it's like, I want
to be more beautiful.
And in fact, a lot of this
social media competition,
if you will, is driving
a lot of young women
into plastic surgeons'
offices, as they
want to look more like
their filtered image
from Snapchat or Instagram.
Another changing value, is
the idea of lack of ownership,
being a transactor versus
an owner, a borrower
versus an owner.
And we talked a bit about
that, the sharing economy,
the airBnBs.
Why own a vacation
home or some home
at all when you can
just go in these places?
Uber or Lyft where you
can borrow someone's car.
Rent The Runway, you can
borrow bags and clothes.
And whatever it is,
more and more things
are becoming this transactional
world as opposed to ownership,
and that's really
changing a lot of things.
The idea that it's a
customizable world.
I don't know if you
remember Mr. Potato Head.
Maybe you were a kid, you might
have had a Mr. Potato Head.
But I didn't realize, the
original Mr. Potato Head, you
bring your own potato,
like a real potato.
But this was the original
customizable toy in a way.
You put this face on the potato.
And I thought that was
kind of a funny thing.
But what's happening
now is, when
you think about social media
feeds, for example, you see
what you want to see, right?
You follow who you
want to follow.
You get the news you
want to get, right?
And you can really customize
that world to what you want.
And that becomes the expectation
for other parts of the world.
So think about things
like Starbucks, right?
When you order that
half-caf double.
What are these things?
But what's the last thing they
say to you at the last minute?
What's your name, right?
Why do they say that?
What's your name?
And they call your name, right?
That specific order that
you want with your name.
How much more
customizable can you be?
Starbucks has been taking
off, likewise Chipotle
and these kinds of places
that customize for you.
And other places
like a McDonald's
that's a stalwart in food,
that one size fits all
from the industrial era, the
industrialization of food,
McDonald's has been tanking.
And yet, at the same time,
places like Starbucks
are crushing it.
Same thing with the Chipotles
and all in the world.
So this idea of wanting a
customized to you experience,
whatever that may be, is
becoming more important.
So let's think now about a
more traditional workplace.
We're talking about
being out there,
and working, and
gigging, and all that.
But these kinds
of shifting values
are impacting people in
the traditional workplace
as well, as people want to
be mobile and untethered,
and their values are
orbiting around that kind
of connectivity.
And I think this is a
really telling example.
This is a study that Cisco did
with the idea that three out
of five students-- and these
are college and then young
professionals in their 20s--
think not only they have the
ability to work remotely,
but they have the right, which
is a very different thing,
the right to work remotely.
And this is your
incoming workforce.
7 out of 10 say, hey, why do I
need to be in an office at all?
I can work in the
Starbucks, or I
can work at home in my pajamas.
Maybe I want to work
in Bali by the pool.
Why can't I do that?
And so this idea of being
untethered from the workplace
is really vexing for
a lot of managers.
What do you do about that?
How do you handle
that kind of idea?
The idea that we
want connectivity.
Young folks say-- a
third say the internet is
as important as
food, water, or air.
And half say it's close
to that important.
Facebook went down at one point
in LA a couple of years ago.
So many people called 911 that
the Sheriff took to Twitter
and said, hey, stop
calling us about Facebook.
We don't know when
Facebook is coming back up.
This is not a law
enforcement issue.
Could you imagine people
actually called 911?
But they did, and you can
see that guy's tweet on there
from the Sheriff's office.
Stop calling us.
This isn't an emergency.
But they thought it was.
So think about now when
you're in your workplace.
What are some of the
issues that might
arise when you're thinking
about an untethered workforce?
Well, how do you
create team cohesion?
I know my brother said he
had one gal working somewhere
remotely, and then the rest
of his team was in the office,
and it's hard to keep
that team exactly together
in the same way.
Same thing with productivity.
Are people being productive?
They think they are.
Are they?
That's another thing.
Communications-- we know
this from the early studies.
When people aren't face to face,
things can be misinterpreted,
or people-- you know this--
will make more sharp comments--
you see this online all
the time, I'm sure--
than they would
to your face kind of thing.
So sometimes things can escalate
into not a total flame war,
but they can escalate quickly
on places like Slack in a way
that, face to face, it
wouldn't be the same dynamic.
So what do you do about this?
Companies are struggling.
They really don't
know what to do.
IBM said, hey, get back
in here, and you're
going to work shoulder to
shoulder with your colleagues
or be fired.
And what's interesting
about that is IBM
was a leader in remote work.
And yet, they're calling their
people back into the office.
Other companies are taking
the opposite approach.
This is automatic.
They have WordPress, right?
They had this beautiful
office in town here
that they remodeled
and is gorgeous,
and there were like
three guys showing up.
There's like 1,500
square feet per guy.
So they'd say, well,
this is ridiculous.
So they said, we're
going all in on remote.
We're gonna sell
this beautiful office
and give you Starbucks cards,
keep you caffeinated up
for productivity, and that's it.
So they're all in on remote.
So you can see we're in this
sort of liminal period where--
where do we go with this?
Are we all in shoulder to
shoulder, are we all in remote,
or some hybrid in between?
And so it's a really
interesting time.
So we have this other thing
called the platform economy,
which you guys know about,
but this is what's changing--
the relationship of the
worker to the workplace.
As we have more of
these platforms come up,
we have more the freelancer,
where they're working from home
or working in a
co-working space,
or the tasker, who could
be a taskrabbit, building
shelves for you, for example.
But you can think of a
tasker as an Uber driver,
for example, picking you
up, driving you somewhere.
You may never see
them again, right?
That relationship can be minutes
long or something like that.
So we go from decades,
decades-long careers,
to the shortening of work in
the relationship of worker
to the workplace.
And that gives a certain
amount of freedom, right?
You work anywhere.
This is Jon Yongfook.
He is traveling the
world, creating startups.
You can work anywhere,
work in your pajamas,
work in Instagrammable
locations.
So he's out there
Instagramming away
in all these beautiful
places from Bali.
Here he is in Morocco in his
kind of blue moment there.
And it seems
amazing, but there's
some unintended
consequences, or there's
a cost to all this freedom.
One of the costs is loneliness.
We see that on the rise.
This is Caitlin, a gal
that I interviewed.
She's a writer.
And she's been
traveling the world.
She was here in the Bay
Area, sold all her stuff,
and went on the road full time.
And I sat down with her.
I said, well, how is that
being this digital nomad?
And she says, well,
it's great, obviously.
You're seeing wonderful things.
But she said, you know, I
don't ever stay in a place
long enough to really develop
those friendships like I had.
And then when I come
back to the Bay Area,
I haven't been spending
time with people.
So my friendships are
kind of distancing.
So she's sort of
neither here nor there.
So she had this Adrienne
Rich poem, If I'm Lonely,
tattooed on her back,
because loneliness
is such an integral
part of her life now.
So think about what
that might mean.
Some of the coworking spaces are
starting to acknowledge this.
You can see this is one I
caught when I was up in Toronto.
Shecosystem is obviously
targeting women.
But look at that, this idea
of coworking plus wellness.
So the idea that
we need to think
about what this
means as people are
untethering from these things.
We're seeing, for example,
in the university system,
and across the country amongst
young people, the highest
rates of anxiety and
depression in 30 years.
In the university,
we have a quarter
of the students are on some
kind of psychotropic medication
for some kind of
mental disorder.
So the idea that--
what do we do?
How do we re-moor
or re-anchor people
as they're pulling up
anchor from all these things
that stabilize them.
And it's something that you can
think about in the workplace.
So the idea of untethering is
going to amplify in the future.
Obviously, you might have
seen some of these iPads
in the airports.
Have you seen that?
And so you push what
you want, and then
they come and throw a
pizza at you and run off.
Wait.
And they're gone.
But a lot of young
people say they
prefer to order from a
kiosk or from some kind
of a drive-through, because they
don't want to deal with people.
So even at McDonald's
they're bringing
in more of these kiosks.
And sometimes they say there's a
line for the kiosk when there's
no one in line with
a person standing
there to take your order.
So I'm talking about
untethering and taking off
from the workforce.
But right now it's
kind of a choice.
You want a gig.
You want to work in Bali, like
Jon Yongfook sort of thing.
But as AI and robotics
and automation
gets more sophisticated,
in my view,
workers are going to be forcibly
untethered from the workforce.
And I think society is very
ill-prepared to deal with that.
We talk about a universal
basic income and that idea,
but the problem with it--
here's what people say to me.
They say, well, Jule, we've
always had change, right?
We had horse-- this
is the classic--
horses and buggies,
and then we had a car.
Well, here's what they don't
take into consideration--
the pace of change
that's changing.
The horse and buggy to
car issue, that car--
I don't know if
you realize this--
it took 30 years for the
car to reach penetration
where most people had a
car, 30 years, generations
to get used to this change.
Now take a look at this chart.
You can see these cars
are going along here.
But take a look at these.
This is the tablet,
for example, device.
Social media, for example--
these are almost
straight up and down
lines as opposed to the
years that it takes for some
of these other technologies.
So if we extrapolate
the pace of change
from what's going on in
the digital era, which
is on the right side
of this diagram,
and think about what that means
for AI and machine learning
and automation, it's going
to come up on our horizon
faster than we can
even deal with it.
So that's where we need to
be thinking about-- some
of the social and psychological
impacts and implications
of the change to the
workforce as we spin up
those technologies.
The other thing people say--
well, new jobs will be created.
Well, yes, that's very true.
But we're changing.
We're not going
from agrarian times
into the Industrial Revolution,
which was analog to analog,
by the way, right?
Now we're going analog
to digital, which
is qualitatively different.
So the idea is the jobs
that are going to come up--
I just saw a guy present
at Accenture on this,
and all the jobs were robotics
engineer, algorithm engineer,
on and on and on.
These take a higher level
of training and education
than going from the farm to
working on the manufacturing
line, right?
So we need to
think through that.
How do we up-skill workers?
How do we train them?
And here's an
example from Siemens.
Siemens-- this is the CEO.
He said, people
on the plant floor
need to be much more skilled
than they were in the past.
There are no jobs for high
school graduates at Siemens
today.
And Siemens is a
manufacturing plant.
So think about what that means.
We have to really
think through that.
So again, this is going
to be terribly disruptive,
and we really have to think
about what that means.
The current plans for this
universal basic income
don't take into account other
aspects of jobs, like purpose.
It organizes your day.
It gives you a sense
of who you are,
identity, and who other
people think you are.
Money may be a small part
of what a job does overall.
So we have to think about
all those other things.
Right now the talk is
only about the paycheck.
So as, again, we need to
think about the skills
that we're going
to need, we need
to think about training
for soft skills,
face to face skills,
telephone skills, skills that
might be lacking amongst
people that are used to texting
and whatnot.
I work with a group called
Infrastructure Masons.
We're trying to create
scholarships and training
for IT jobs, especially
getting more women
in there, for example,
thinking about training
for jobs of the future.
So obviously, untethering
brings up a lot of challenges
for us personally, but
also in the workplace
that we need to think
through a little bit more.
So I want to thank you
guys for being here,
and I to thank
Google for having me.
This is my new book, "Left
to Their Own Devices,"
and there's some today
which I can sign for you.
But thank you so much.
I appreciate you.
[APPLAUSE]
AUDIENCE: Thank you very much,
Dr. Albright, for coming here,
and this is a phenomenal talk.
As a parent of some
young children,
I, of course-- this is something
I'm daily grappling with
and worried about.
I was a little bit
emboldened to see
that I'm part of the
94% of bad parents
who don't let our kids go
outside long enough in the day.
JULIE ALBRIGHT: It's difficult.
AUDIENCE: It's sort
of like World War III
every time we try and
get them to go outside.
JULIE ALBRIGHT: Yeah.
AUDIENCE: But I guess
the question is--
it definitely resonates to
say that loneliness, lack
of resilience, those are the
things that could be lost.
JULIE ALBRIGHT: Yeah.
AUDIENCE: I also, though,
wonder about the flip side
of the equation.
If we're leading
towards a life that's
going to be untethered
anyway, would we--
by enforcing our way of
living, are we not preparing
our children for a
world that is going
to be more untethered, that
requires more digital skills,
interaction in that regard?
JULIE ALBRIGHT: Right.
And I would think that, too.
And again, I'm not
trying to be Amish.
That's not-- I'm on my device
just as much as you guys.
Maybe not as much
as you guys, but--
[LAUGHTER]
Tech, socially, I
do all that stuff.
It's fun to do that stuff.
There's a lot of fun aspects,
and interesting aspects,
and aspects for connecting
that we never had before.
So I don't want
to throw that out,
the baby with the bathwater.
What I think we need to do
is establish some balance.
And believe me, I wouldn't
be saying any of this
had I not seen some of the
unintended consequences welling
up around the mental health
issues, physical health issues.
And I explore this in more
depth, but disconnecting
from nature, disconnecting
from the relationships
with each other without
a device mediating it.
We are stepping away from
some of the things that
means to be human.
So all I'm saying is of
course we need to prepare.
I'm not anti-device
in any way, but we
need to sort of swing
the pendulum back.
And if you look at,
by the way, what
some of the tech executives
are doing with their children
I think is very telling.
When they're going to these
private schools, guess what?
They don't have
devices in the schools.
They have art.
They have movement.
They have dance.
They have handmade craft.
They have music
making, all these sorts
of things that are analog and
physical and embodied skills.
That's what they're
teaching their kids.
So I think that is very telling.
And so this idea that,
again, not no devices,
but that we balance out.
Kids want parental attention.
It's not just kids.
Parents are on a
device, and the kids
are trying to get
their attention,
and they feel left out.
So it's both sides
of the equation.
So just some sacred spaces.
Let's have a family dinner
without a device, for example.
That kind of thing.
Maybe let's not have the devices
charging in the kid's room
at night.
Kids are sending 30
messages on average
after going to bed because
the phone's in their room.
There's a global sleep
deprivation crisis at hand.
Why is that?
Well, see, we're on our
devices all night long.
Let's put them somewhere
where the kids aren't.
That's all.
It's just simple things
to rebalance ourselves.
But thanks for the
great question.
AUDIENCE: I have a
question just to follow up.
You were talking
about the students
at university who had the
dead space on the call.
How do you see this gapping when
kids are in engineering school,
and then they're trying to go
out and interview for jobs?
Are you seeing a big gap there,
or are the companies such
as ours letting
it go and saying,
you're really good at
this technical thing,
I don't care if you
can speak to people?
JULIE ALBRIGHT: Right.
Right.
Well, overall,
the research shows
that those who are
most successful--
I mean, you're, let's say,
an executive, a manager.
You've made your
way up the ranks
because you have those skills.
And that's what
the research shows.
It's not grades.
It's not GPA.
It's not IQ.
It's the fact that you
can relate to people,
talk to people, communicate.
That's what
differentiates people
from being just on one level
or being very successful.
So those are still going to
be the differentiating skills.
So we're going to
need some of that.
And again, we're trying to
teach some of that at USC.
We did a class on how to
manage your engineering
career with the CTO of Northrop
Grumman, CTO of Chevron,
and myself.
And that's part of what we did.
How do you give that handshake,
look them in the eye,
do an interview?
How do you find a mentor?
All these sort of soft skill
things that make a difference.
If you want to be at
your level, if you
want to be an
executive, for example,
you're going to
need those skills.
And that's the difference.
What do you want to do in life?
That's going to-- cream
rising to the top--
is people that
have those skills.
So my point of it is, just as
people come in, to develop that
management style and skill, we
might need to bring some extra
training in these areas that
maybe a couple of generations
ago we didn't.
That's my main thought on that.
Well, I think we're pretty
much out of time, you guys.
Thank you so much.
If you'd like me to sign that
book, I'd be happy to do it.
And thanks for being here.
I really appreciate you.
[APPLAUSE]
