Ben Pring (Futurist and Author)

Speaker A: Hey, Startup Nation. I am so glad you came back to join us for another edition of the Startup Life. You clearly are ready to get the tools you need to get ahead of the competition. Go ahead and give us a five star rating while you're here. Now, if you're looking for an ad free experience, go ahead and sign up for our Patreon page where you will get exclusive content and access to our digital products that we're beginning to launch. The link is there in the show notes and if you want to ask questions directly to some of our guests, follow the Startup Life Podcast club on Clubhouse as some of our conversations will start to happen there. But back to the task at hand. Are you ready to level up? Of course you are. Get ready as the Startup Life Podcast begins. Now it's time to be about that life, the Startup Life. Here's your host, Dominic Lawson. All right, Startup Nation. So I hope you're ready to receive some value today. My name is Dominique Lawson and this is the Startup Life, the show for entrepreneurs and career minded professionals. You know, Startup Nation, how can we take back control of technology so it will shape the society we want for ourselves instead of becoming the monster we can no longer tame? We always know, uh, have always heard that technology is supposed to improve life, but there may be, uh, a bit of an issue, which is why we have a fantastic guest here on the show today. He co founded and leads the center for the Future of Work at Cognizant and he's also the co author of Monster A Tough Love Letter on Taming the Machines that rule our Jobs, lives and, and future. He is Ben Pring. Ben, how are you? Good, sir.

Speaker B: I'm good. Donna, great to be with you. Thanks for having me on the show.

Speaker A: No worries. Thank you so much for coming on the Startup Life and you know, you wrote this fantastic book. Thank you so much for writing. And before we kind of dive into the book, I just want to ask you this. We've been asking everybody that's been coming on the show, uh, lately as we start to kind of hopefully come out of the other side of this pandemic over the past 13, uh, months. Ben, what are some maybe professional or personal lessons that you've learned?

Speaker B: That's a great question. Um, well, it's been a pretty kind of surreal experience, I think, uh, for me, for everybody, hasn't it, Dominic?

Speaker A: Absolutely.

Speaker B: I mean it's. And I think we're still processing it really. You know, the good and the bad and the ugly of it. All right, um, you know to tell you the truth, I've been working remotely. I've kind of been a future of work guy for, gosh, more years than I care to remember. Over 25 years I've been working remotely. So in a way it kind of felt like the world was catching up with me a little bit.

Speaker A: Gotcha. Right.

Speaker B: That people were, uh, kind of experiencing what I'd experienced for a long time. And I prefer this kind of remote work style, uh, working, um, you know, outside of the city, not having that commute, not having to kind of put pants on every day. Right. And I think there's a lot to be said for it now. At the same time I travel, you know, in my job a lot, you know, prior to the pandemic, of course, and um, you know, to be at events, to be with colleagues, to be with clients. And I think that mix of, you know, uh, when you need to be with people, be with people, when you need to be on your own, being, be on your own, that's worked for me. Obviously that's a kind of personal thing a lot of people probably wouldn't work for. But I do think that coming out of the pandemic, what we've all learned, um, collectively is that the notion that you need to be in an office, in a cubicle at, you know, 8 o' clock on a Monday morning and still be there at 6 o' clock on a Friday afternoon to get a job done. Right. It's probably not true. And um, I think the notion of flexibility, when you go to, you go to the Supermarket, there are 50 types of cereal. Uh, you know, we're used to choice in, um, every other aspect of our life. And I think that's going to be, that's going to be the big takeaway, I think coming out of this, the big learning is that offering people choice. Do you want to be in the office, do you want to look at, as long as you're kind of doing the job, getting the work done, um, however you want to get it done. I think that's the flexibility which will be the silver lining in this cloud.

Speaker A: For sure. For sure. Thank you for sharing that. I, uh, want to ask a quick follow up question to that because, you know, as we start to maybe, uh, come out the other side of this pandemic and a lot of people have been working remote, have been working remotely, uh, during this time and a lot of people have been more productive and uh, a lot of managers are saying, you know what, let's just, let's just stick to this let's like have some type of hybrid model and stuff like that. But you're going, let's be honest, you're going to have some of those middle managers and supervisors who are going to give some pushback. I guess I'm curious from this standpoint if I'm, uh, a, uh, traditional worker who was going in at first and have found, uh, remote, uh, work to be more productive and stuff like that, more better for work, life balance, whatever that means and stuff like that, what should I go to that supervisor or boss to try to convince, uh, them that I should continue to work remotely? Does that make sense?

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. No. Absolutely. No. I, again, I think the big learning is what I call heads down work.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: You know, where you're looking at the computer, you're coding, you're writing, you're doing your email, you're working a spreadsheet that heads down work that's sort of held up pretty well, that in fact the productivity of that is probably held up, you know, is probably improved. Right? But the head, the heads up work, you know, where we need to look in the whites of each other's eyes and we need to kind of, uh, collaborate and be creative and we need all that kind of energy of being with other people. That work is obviously, um, not done so well on Zoom or WebEx teams or whatever. So if you, if you buy that logic, it seems to me logical to, to say, well, look, when you're doing that heads down work, you know, do that at home, uh, or do that in Starbucks or do that in, you know where on the beach, wherever you, you can do that work the best, right? Do it there. But when you need to be with the team, with, with your colleagues, with your clients and you need that energy of being together, well, yeah, come into the office, come into the, the collaboration space, Come into the we work office or whatever it is. And I think again, if you, for the reality for most people is that, um, uh, you know, they're in that cubicle doing work a lot of the time that probably isn't done best in that cubicle. Um, and so I, that would be the logic I would take to a boss, you know, if I got you, look, you know, you've seen that my work productivity, the quality of my work's held up. Uh, of course, um, you know, let me, let me continue to do this, Let me, you know, be at home on a Monday or Tuesday and I'll come in, I'll schedule my meetings for a Wednesday and a Thursday morning and um, you Know, I think that's the, in the context of this kind of notion of hybrid, I think that's the way it's going to shake out that the. And again, I think for um, you know, employers who are trying to attract high quality employees, offering that kind of flexibility is going to be important. And I think if you're a, ah, you know, if you've got um, desirable skills as an employee.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: You know, that's, that's the, the leverage you've got to say, look, I'll come in when you need me to come in, but when you don't need, need me to be there and you can see I'm working away pretty hard and doing a great job for you, let me do it where I want to do it.

Speaker A: For sure, for sure. Thank you for sharing that because I just imagine that there's still just going to be a few managers and stuff. Like, there's going to be hard press like no, I need to see you, uh, next to me and stuff like that.

Speaker B: So that's, that's very real, that notion of presenteeism as kind of. Right. People call it the, you know, the, the idea that if you're in the seat, you're working. But again, I think what, you know, a lot of managers, a lot of people understand nowadays, and again, this has sort of been happening for a long time, but it's been kind of um, you know, exposed, if you like, a little bit more, is that just because somebody's in a seat in a cubicle doesn't necessarily mean they're working. They've got, they've got their phone open and they're tweeting away or they're on tick tock or that, you know, so again, this kind of mashup of um, the hybrid life, I mean we've talked for a long time at the center for the Future Work about this transition from what we call fried egg life to scrambled egg life. And you know, fried egg life in the old world kind of model was that your, you know, your job was one thing and your life was another thing. You know, the, the whites and the yolk, uh, things. Right. But now in scrambled egg life, everything's mashed up. So, you know, you'll, you'll be doing email in bed at, you know, 6 o' clock in the morning and then you'll go for a run, you know, take the dog for a walk at 10:30 in the, in, you know, in the work, in the work day. And then you'll go and pick up the kids at 4 o' clock and then you'll go to the gym and then you'll be doing more email or working on Your report at 9 Ah o' clock at night. That kind of scrambled egg license, that's that mashup. You know a lot of people have been living that kind of life for, for a while but I think that's the life that everybody's sort of living right, right now. Certainly people kind of the office style worker, uh, and I think for a lot of people again that's preferable. I mean that's how I've worked for a long time. Uh, a lot of people kind of struggle to figure out how to optimize that and they, one of the things you hear a lot of people talking about at the moment is I'm just sort of burnt out and spending too much time online. I'm spending too much time working. I, I, that's um, a case of people having to figure out how to do this. Uh, and I think ultimately that's up to an individual. You figure out how to manage your day and your other responsibilities in your life in the scram with egg life. And I think in time more and more people optimize that and of course it has all sorts of implications for employers in terms of office space, how much office space they need. And I think this is going to be a kind of pretty profound um, change for a lot of businesses, um, which is going to take a little while to kind of work through the system in the next few years for sure.

Speaker A: For sure. Thank you for sharing all of that insight. Once again, Startup Nation we're talking to Ben Pring, the co author of Monster A Tough Love Letter on Taming the Machines that rule our Jobs, lives and future. And Startup Nation if you want to get a copy of that book, we have a link in the show notes right now. There's a link there in the show notes for easy access if you listen to the replay on a podcast to purchase that book. Uh now, so let's kind of dive into the book. You bring up a lot of um, uh, uh, very interesting concepts in the book and stuff like that. For one, you talk about establishing a federal technology association, uh, and a US Data uh, authority to tackle today's social media uncivil. And that's such a uh, right word, say uncivil war. Uh, that's kind of uh, dividing us a little bit. Kind of talk about that.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, well I mean we're talking you know, the last few minutes about m, the connective power of Technology and how it's, you know, allowed um, us to keep working and um, it's allowed, you know, the world and life to go on. And that's great. And um, you know, so tech is absolutely central to our lives now and it's absolutely central to everything that's good in our lives. But you know, only the, the most of the Pollyanne is your utopian or kind of one eyed person would be blind to the fact that there's a lot of stuff going on in technology which isn't so great. And um, you know, particularly in the era of social media, I mean we can all see what's happening the kind of, you know, with our kids or you know, in politics, um, how, how that social media echo chamber is sort of distorting things, you know, sort of bully bullying and trolling and body dysmorphia for kids kind of all off the charts. And then you see what's happening in D.C. on January 6th and QAnon and these people have gone down a kind of algorithmically created rabbit hole. And then I. Kind of pretty weird place. And um, so, so what we're trying to talk about in the book is well, how do we grapple with that? How do we, you know, hashtag tech for good? How do we continue to keep tech in a good place, you know, allowing us to work, allowing us to collaborate, allowing us to, you know, be connected with our colleagues and our friends, families, but at the same time not allow these kind of negative, dark sides of technology to overwhelm the good sides and ultimately screw everything up. Um, so the idea of the Federal Technology Administration is really kind of an uh, acknowledgment that if you um, study the charters of the FTC and the fcc, which are kind of the main regulatory, federal, um, level bodies that oversee business and communications, if you look at their charters, they don't say anything about data, uh, or algorithms or any of these technologies that really kind of are controlling our lives now. Right. And we think it's time that we put in place kind of the modern infrastructure, legislative, uh, regulatory infrastructure to manage the modern world. And um, uh, you know, if you think about the fda, the Food and Drug Administration that was created, you know, almost 100 years ago to deal with issues in regulating food and chemical, you know, uh, and pharmacies, drugs as they were coming into the world, right? And um, so we think again as a sort of parallel that now that technology is so important, so central to every aspect of life, we need to kind of have that, um, as I Say, modern regulatory infrastructure in place. And within the fta, the Federal Technology Administration, we're calling for this establishment of the uh, as you said, the U.S. data agency, which would have a charter to really, to understand and manage and create the rules of the road, if you like, for how data is used. Because again most people listening to this podcast probably understand, uh, the role that data is playing. Um, but the vast majority of regular citizens, kind of regular civilians don't really understand what data means and how it's used and what's at stake here. Uh, and so again this is, this notion of a USDA US Data Agency is sort of inspired by the way that um, uh, modern Western societies have managed nuclear power. Uh, again, if you think about the emergence of nuclear power in the Second World War and then how we sort of commercialized that and used it in non military context. Uh, in the UK where I come from, there's something called the uh, UK Atomic Energy Authority, right? And it has the oversight responsibility for managing nuclear energy, nuclear power. And it's sort of staffed with scientists and sort of nerdy tech people, but it's also staffed by civilians and lay people and business people and uh, politicians and um, so again, this idea that we've all got a, uh, responsibility here to manage these incredibly powerful technologies that are uh, increasingly kind of ruling our lives. Right? And it's not just something that, that we leave to the techie, nerdy guys any longer.

Speaker A: Of course not.

Speaker B: Uh, because that's going to kind of take us down this route, uh, that we can see we're on at the moment where uh, increasingly tech is being used in, you know, malign ways. And as uh, somebody who personally loves technology, worked all my life in technology, that kind of pains me and troubles me. Right M. The technology I love, you love. You know, a lot of people are making their livings out of seems to be uh, going a little bit off the rails.

Speaker A: For sure. For sure. And that's why I wanted to kind of ask this follow up question because I mean like, I get it, right, you know, people are using, you know, technology for, not necessarily for uh, decent, uh, purposes or whatever. I know one of the things that bothers me and Startup Nation knows I've talked about this quite often, is the prevalent of deep fakes, uh, you know, that deepfake technology. And it seemed like it's getting even better and better. True enough. We're using it to make, you know, Robert De Niro in a movie look a lot younger. But at the same time you can easily see how it can be used for nefarious purposes. Uh, but I am curious about like, you know, for those who do use tech and stuff like that for good, to serve the common good and stuff like that. And you have like more regulation. Regulations, I guess, I guess. Where's that balance? Because you know, you can easily have that argument where it's like, here it comes, more government regulation. That's going to stifle innovation. So I guess I'm just curious, what do you say to critics like that? I'm guessing.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, no, it's a great point. And um, uh, you know, it would be, it would be a disaster and it would be.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: A shame. And it's certainly not our intention if we over course correct it.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: And uh, you know, went into after an era of kind of hands off lassez faire creative destruction, um, of the last 25 years, if we, if we over course corrected into a very kind of bureaucratic top down federal government approach. And that's certainly not what we, what. Not what we're calling for. Right. Um, but again, you can draw kind of a metaphor of kind of, you know, clarity if you like, between. I always think about, you know, Al Gore invented the information super highway. Right. You know, the Internet. And um, you know, think about, think back to the, the emergence of automobiles, you know, the early part of the 20th century. If you, if you look at a picture of a main street in mid America in 1930, or a high street in England, where I originally come from in the same period, you'll see lots of cars on the road there, but you won't see any stop signs or traffic lights or yield signs or road markings or um, uh, uh, crossing signs or anything like that. That infrastructure of safety on the road. Road isn't there yet. And then if you Fast forward into 1960, 1965, 1970, you begin to see those things. If you took a picture, if you looked at a picture of the same main street, you know, 30, 40 years later, all of that infrastructure that we now assume is going to be there to keep us safe on the road is there. And I think that's kind of the, that that's the metaphor to keep in mind that we've spent the last 25 years laying the tarmac Adam of the information superhighway. And what we need to do in the next 25 years, and probably sooner than that, is to put in place that infrastructure of safety so we can continue to drive down that highway, drive down at 100 miles an hour, 200 miles an hour, 500 miles an hour, but not kill ourselves or anybody else or blow the whole thing up in the process. And so again, you think about that technology you mentioned that deep fake technology, uh, you know, coming out of the movie industry and now being kind of um, scaled into and democratized.

Speaker A: Absolutely.

Speaker B: I mean it's extraordinary. You look at the Tom Cruise, um, deep fakes and you know, again, as a science nerdy techie guy, I think that's amazing.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: But, but um, you know, what happens, as you quite rightly say, when um, you know, President Obama or President Biden or somebody says, you know, as Ronald Reagan famously was caught on a hot mic saying in 1980, let the bombing begin in five minutes.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: You know, what happens then? And that seems funny now, but it's not going to be funny when it happens in reality. And so again, that's just a perfect example of we've got this incredibly powerful technology, but we need to tame it, we need to be able to manage that and the federal government is going to play a role in that. There's just absolutely no doubt about that. And again, I would say that the, the regulatory framework that made sense in the early part of the 90s, this kind of hands off approach, this um, you know, section 230 approach sort of made sense then when we had this little fledgling, um, tree growing.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: But now it's, now it's the biggest, biggest oak in the forest.

Speaker A: It is.

Speaker B: And the idea that we have the same approach to managing it now, it's a logical, it's kind of, it's illogical. Right, exactly. It doesn't make any sense at all. And I think only ideologues can argue that we need to continue to completely keep our hands off technology. I mean your tax policy around E Commerce, again, it sort of made sense 30 years ago. It doesn't make sense now.

Speaker A: Right, right. For sure. No, I definitely, uh, understand that for sure. And one of the things that you also talk about going back to the kind of the deep fake technology, uh, you know, is the banning of political advertisers. Excuse me, the banning of political advertising on social media. Because I think that's one of the things where when I think of defect technology, you can easily have like some celebrity, uh, who wouldn't necessarily endorse a certain candidate or something like that. Endorse a candidate and that person, like I never said that. That's not even somebody created that, you know, but, but I can definitely, you know, understand the whole banning of social media. I mean political ads on Social media because, uh, uh, because the thing is, it's like when most people are on social media, they're not there for political ads or something like that, for the most part. Right. And so I think sometimes that thinking when you see a political acting get a bit slanted. So if you would just kind of talk about that a little bit, if you don't mind.

Speaker B: Yeah. Again, I mean, uh, where I come from in the uk, there's no political advertising on TV or social media or anything.

Speaker A: Got you.

Speaker B: Uh, whereas here in America, the whole American political system.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: Um, and all of its idiosyncrasies is predicated on advertising, political advertising. And, and you know, it's bad enough on tv, but it's just gone absolutely off the charts, uh, on social media and it doesn't make any sense again. And uh, I think, you know, in Canada it's very, um, heavily regulated. I think the stroke, it would change the dynamics in, in America in the political, uh, uncivil war that's going on, as you mentioned, uh, overnight. And, and some people say, well, you can't, um, even if you wanted to do that technologically, you couldn't do that. And I just, we just don't buy that argument.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: You know, you think about the fact that there are 2.7 billion streams being um, algorithmically managed and personalized. Facebook, the technology that can do that, can absolutely manage a situation like that. It's just where there's a will, there's a way. At the moment, the will is not really, uh, that strong amongst some people.

Speaker A: Absolutely, absolutely. Once again, startup mentioned, we're talking to Ben Pring, the co author of Monster A Tough Love Letter on taming the machines that rule our jobs, lives and future. Once again, start. If you want to get a copy of that book, we have a link there in the show notes for easy access if you listen to the replay on the podcast. Now one of the things you talked about in this book is probably gonna be extremely controversial with some of my younger listeners of the startup life. And you talk about prohibiting the use of social media for people under the age of 18. Now I can admit that during this pandemic, a lot of those young people kind of got me through it with TikTok videos and being funny and stuff like that. But we've also seen, uh, that generation been, you know, be, uh, active in the political space, you know, under 18 and stuff like that. So I guess I'm curious, you know, what, what's the thinking behind that one and why that uh, prohibition uh, for people under 18.

Speaker B: Yeah. Well, think about it, Dominic. I mean, we don't let 13 year olds drink. We don't or smoke or drive or vote or join the army or, or vote or, um, get married. But we put the most powerful technologies ever known to humankind in the hands of a 13 year old.

Speaker A: Fair enough.

Speaker B: Stand back. And we're amazed that that's fair. Bullying and suicide and body dysmorphia and YOLO and FOMO and all this craziness just has gone off the charts and it, it's sort of, you know, at a personal level, um, you know, upsetting to me again. You know, I've been a tech evangelist all my, all my life. And um, you know, when my kids were young, I sort of overrode my wife's objections, you know, got them phones when they were 12, 13, so I'll be fine. You know, they're learning a new, new way of connecting and communicating and you know, a new lingua franca of the world. And um, and I, and I step back and see what it's done to my own kids. And you know, they're great kids but, but the way it's completely come to dominate their life and how addicted they are to it and I just think it really is a bit weird and strange. And frankly, um, I think when we look back at this period, the last 10, 15 years, in another generation's time, people would just be amazed that this happened, that we allowed kids to do this, uh, in a kind of unsupervised way. There was a sort of um, a tech lunacy I think was unleashed. And it's not just kind of older people like me saying this. Um, in fact there's a, you know, one of the motivating forces for um, for writing about this and making this suggestion was, was a um, college application essay that my own son wrote when he was applying to college where the, the um, the college asked the question, if you could recommend one thing to politicians to make the world better, what would it be? And my son, completely unbidden by me, you know, not influenced by me at all, uh, simply wrote an essay saying ban social media because, you know, he felt like it had ruined his childhood, it ruined his generation. Everybody was so addicted, the behavior was so crazy. The access to pornography was just, you know, unbelievable.

Speaker A: Right?

Speaker B: And so it's not just older people. I think there's a lot of young people who feel this as well, that there are kind of pop stars for young audiences. Mattie Healy from 1975 as one example, people just say this is uh, a double edged sword. There's some good aspects to it, but it's also very, very corrosive. And again, we're not trying to ban social media. We're not suggesting about banning social media. We're just suggesting that in the same way that kids are introduced to and taught how to use a machine like a car, through, through lessons, through class based education, through, through passing a test, through having a license which is revocable if they kind of screw up, I think we should have the same sort of approach to introducing people to this incredibly powerful technology in their hands. So when they are 18, they know how to use it. And uh, we don't sort of bring up a generation who've been completely unmanaged, completely untaught, how to use this stuff, who are now in their 20s, in their 30s, who are continuing that sort of awful behavior of the uh, junior high in the real, in the real world. And we can again just see the real consequences that this is having.

Speaker A: For sure, for sure. And you know what, now that you mentioned it, I actually uh, mentor, uh, entrepreneurship, uh, mentees, uh, here in Memphis, Tennessee. Uh, and quite a few of them are not on social media for that very reason, now that you think of, now that you said so. But I just, you know, because I know one kid was getting, he was getting bullied uh, on social media so he completely got off. And another one just like, you know what, it's just, another one just said it's just too much. It's just too much.

Speaker B: But you know, there's all sorts of famous people, Chrissy Tignan, right, The tennis player, Andy Murray in the uk Last weekend all the, all the Premier League soccer teams went off social media for the whole week, weekend. Uh, and so, you know, there's lots and lots of people who are saying this now. And the point that my son made, which again is sort of heartbreaking a little bit, is that it's very, very hard for an individual kid. And I applaud, you know, the folks that you're mentoring down there in Memphis. Uh, it's very hard for an individual kid to kind of go off on their own.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: Because they feel like, they feel like they're the outcast. They feel like they're the kind of um, you know, that they're outside the, in, in inside group, if you know what I mean. Right. And, and I think again that's why, you know, famous people, well known people who are beginning to go off. I think that's um, you Know that hopefully that's a sign to some of those younger people, but that it is okay to disconnect, you know, either temporarily or, or perhaps permanently. And you don't need to live your life in this way because again, I mean anybody of a, you know, certain age knows that this wasn't how the world was, you know, 10, 12, 15 years ago. There was a world before social media and um, you know, it had its problems and challenges too. But for sure we're seeing what we're seeing at the moment. It's kind of crazy. I think the other really important thing to, to mention Dominic, you know, particularly to your audience is that um, you know, the solution and the answer to these issues and challenges isn't just government, you know, regulation and oversight. It isn't just, it isn't just, you know, individual human actions. There's a whole commercial opportunity, an innovative startup, disruption based opportunity here to bring in solutions to the, to these problems. One thing I, um, you know, some people will have heard about is the light foam, um, which was a Kickstarter funded campaign, one of the best, best Kickstarter campaigns ever of a, literally that a light phone, uh, you know, you make phone calls on it, you can text on it, but it doesn't have any social media apps, it doesn't have any of these addictive things on it that draw us more and more down this rabbit hole. So that's us, that's an innovative new, you know, disruptive startup based solution to a problem. And I think again in the context of, you know, the free market and you know, the best idea wins. I mean that, that to me is very exciting to see people coming into the marketplace with, with new approaches to deal with, you know, a challenge that you know, that we've got at the moment.

Speaker A: For sure, for sure. Thank you, uh, for sharing that. I want to ask this next question, but before I do I want to read a quote from the book, a piece from the book really quickly before I do, uh, says quote, asked to name a scientific formula, most non scientists would struggle to get beyond E MC squared. Everybody kind of knows that one, right? Would any of them know R is greater than G, we wonder. Yet R greater than G is the most powerful formula affecting the lives of billions of people around the world as they go about securing their daily bread and avoiding their quotient of pain. So I wanted to ask you about that. What is R greater than G and why should we know what that is?

Speaker B: Yeah, well, that is a formula that um, an economist called Thomas Piketty Okay. Who's a French professor, uh, in Paris, came up with in a very, very important book that was published about 10 years ago called Capital, which uh, ah, the formula means simply that the rate of growth of capital is higher than the rate of growth of the real economy. And so that's a fancy way of saying that the rich are getting richer.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: And, and technology is playing a role in that. If you look at the explosion of wealth in tech in the last 10, 15 years, the fact that the biggest companies in the world are now tech companies, the richest people in the world are now tech people, really what's happening is that wealth is consolidating and similarly poverty, uh, is consolidating. And, and this is very, very troubling. And I think if you, you know, uh, decompose a lot of the problems and challenges all around the world, um, politically, socio, sociologically, uh, right, they all come, come back to this reality that there are a lot of people who increasingly feel they're being left behind. Um, uh, you know, uh, economically they can, they can in fact ironically and sort of, they can see through their phones on Instagram the lives of the rich and famous and they realize that they're not living that lifestyle.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: And, and so R, ah is greater than G is really just calling out in a sort of academic um, way that we need to deal. Do something about that. And that's really, you know, again, the story of the last political campaign. It's the story of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. It's the story, um, now Joe Biden trying to do something about that with the, with the infrastructure spending and this, this plays out in the uk you uh, know, Brexit, um, that people may have heard about. That's a sort of manifestation of the same reality. Uh, the, the riots going on in France itself, the Gillet Junes, the Yellow jackets, um, people striking because they can feel that they're just falling behind and, and the of rest. And the role of technology in that again is sort of troubling because if, if all technology is, is a way of making the rich richer. Right. Then you know, count me out really, because that's not the world I want to live in. It's not really the world of technology. Right. I want to live in. So um, yeah, that's what it's all about for sure.

Speaker A: But I would ask, you know, and I definitely agree 100% uh, with that notion, but in the same vein, it is also fair to say that same kind of tech, obviously not with the war chest that the Big tech companies have of capital. Uh, but that same kind of tech, even at a grassroots, uh, level is also a way for people, uh, who didn't have that access to make a living for themselves. For instance, I have this podcast or whatever. I didn't have to go through a big tech company to do that. Or somebody in Mumbai who knows how to code.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: You know, so I mean it's also fair to say that, isn't it? Right Ben?

Speaker B: Oh, of course, yeah. Again, this is the double edged sword.

Speaker A: Right, right.

Speaker B: Technology and why, why we're not uh, coming to bury technology.

Speaker A: Of course, of course.

Speaker B: Uh, because technology is completely central to economic security, economic growth and economic prosperity and economic inclusion. So no, we spend a lot of time in Cognizant and I spend a lot of time myself, uh, you know, putting money, uh, to organizations that are trying to get this, the, the skills and the uh, the technology into the hands of more and more people. Because ultimately that is the, that is the real ultimate solution for sure. You know, if you, if you live in a zip code full of code, then you know, life is pretty good. But if you live in an analog zip code, uh, and you're not really participating in tech and this explosion of opportunity, then putting up a wall seems like the best idea that you can come up with. Or separating yourself from the rest of the world seems like a good idea. But no, you're absolutely right, Dominic. Um, uh, again, in a uh, uh, capitalist, um, uh, context, putting the means of production right in more and more people's hands, which, which has happened in the last few years. You're absolutely right. That is ultimately the real answer. So, um, yeah, no, we're not, we're not, not trying to say tech is the big.

Speaker A: Of course, of course not.

Speaker B: We're simply saying that technology is, we can see having this impact of, of compounding winners and losers.

Speaker A: Right, right.

Speaker B: And we can't allow that compounding to go too far. We need to spread the opportunity more broadly. And you know, again, people listening to this, people who are in the tech startup world, um, that's terrific. That is absolutely the number one thing to do. Kind of the route to survival, to thriving in the fourth industrial economy is all through digital literacy. And so no, you guys are doing the right thing.

Speaker A: For sure, for sure. Thank you, uh, for sharing that. Once again, Startup Nation, we're actually wrapping up with Ben Pring, code co founder and leads the center for the Future of Work there at Cognizant. So if you would just really quickly just kind of talk about the work you do at Cognizant, if you don't mind, Ben.

Speaker B: Yeah, well, Cognizant's a big technology services company, right? 300,000 people around the world. Uh, and yeah, we work with banks and airlines and insurance companies and government departments to help run their tech and develop their tech, everything from sort of, you know, the data center, end of the world, throughout the applications and services and business processes. And so, yeah, the group that I run, the center for the Future of Work, is kind of a think tank, um, which, um, yeah, we go out and talk at events and to clients and to the market at large about what we see going on with technology and how our clients and anybody can sort of take advantage of this. And again, this notion of the monster and writing about this is predicated, again, on that idea of hashtag tech for good. You know, we, we see the power of technology for good and how it creates opportunity, uh, how it makes the world better, how we can help engineer a better world and engineer modern businesses. Um, but at the same time, we don't want to run away from some of those challenges and some, some of those sort of issues. We feel it sort of behooves us and we have a responsibility as people who love technology, um, to make sure that the tech is kind of used in the right way.

Speaker A: For sure, for sure. And I appreciate you sharing that. And before I ask the last question, I just want to say, Ben, thank you so much for coming on the startup life. Uh, you gave amazing value. I really appreciate it. And once again, Startup Nation, that book is Monster, A Tough Love letter on taming the machines that rule our jobs, lives and future. And we have a link there in the show notes. If you listen to the Replay on the, uh, podcast. Ben, I want to ask you this and let you go here. Uh, if you had the chance to talk to somebody, uh, you know, in, in the past, you know, who's. No, no longer with this, and you can just pick their brain for like an hour. Who, who would that person be? And what would you ask him?

Speaker B: What a great question. Uh, gosh, there's so many people. Dominic, I'm. Although I'm a futurist.

Speaker A: Right, right.

Speaker B: I, I read a lot of history, so I'm very interested in, uh, a lot of historical figures. Let me think. Who would I most like to meet and talk to? Um, wow, that's a great question.

Speaker A: Uh, while you think about. Go ahead. I'm sorry.

Speaker B: Well, no, I was gonna say, um, again, betraying my British roots. People may. People May know the name Captain Scott.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: Who was. Who was a polar explorer in the, uh. Uh, early part of the 20th century.

Speaker A: Interesting.

Speaker B: He died at the South Pole, uh, in, uh, trying to open up and explore the South Pole, Antarctica. Uh, there was a Norwegian gentleman called Amundsen who. He and Scott were in a race to be the first person to get to the South Pole, and Anderson beat him and Scott died on the return journey back to base. Uh, and, um, if people don't know that story, it's an incredible story of sort of adventure and, um, the human spirit, incredible stress. And, uh, his diaries, which he wrote all along the way and then literally in the tents as he was dying the last few, uh, days of his life. They're incredibly powerful and, um, moving stories. And, uh, I'd like to have met him because he was. He was an incredible sort of character, a leader, uh, a, uh, pioneer, somebody who took an incredible risk and gave their life in, you know, trying to achieve that incredible goal. And I think there's, um, a lot of. To be learned from people like him and Amundsen and also Shackleton, who was another of these, um, crazy explorers who, uh, wanted to kind of go where no man had been before, for sure.

Speaker A: You know, it's funny you mention that before the pandemic here in Memphis at the Pink Palace Museum, they actually had that exhibit about that. That race, uh, between. Yeah, they did. Actually, that's one of the last museum, uh, exhibits I kind of caught before the pandemic and stuff like that, and was reading about, you know, Captain, uh, Scott and Emerson and how the difference in the size of, you know, gear, uh, and teams as opposed to the other and stuff like that. So I'm actually somewhat familiar, uh, with that story. And I definitely know those journals that you're talking about.

Speaker B: Sure. To learn from. It is a lot to learn from, reading about people like that. And again, I think particularly in the context of a kind of entrepreneurial mindset.

Speaker A: Absolutely.

Speaker B: Entrepreneurial spirit. Kind of studying those people who've really taken risk to kind of go, as I say, where other people haven't been before. Whether it's in developing an app or a system or, you know, exploring the world, uh, explore. Exploring virtual reality, the kind of next paradigm. I think, again, applying those lessons, just learning the temperaments of those people, how they dealt with stress, how they dealt with adversity, how they bounced back. Um, no, they're super interesting books to read all about that. And I think you can draw pretty straight lines between that world. That seems a long time ago and 2021 and beyond.

Speaker A: Absolutely, absolutely. Thank you, uh, for sharing that. And that's going to wrap up this session, which I really hate because I really enjoy talking to you, Ben. I can talk to you you longer, but I know you have a meeting to get to, so. But that's going to wrap up this session of the start of life. We want to once again thank Ben Preen, uh, co author of Monster A Tough Love Letter on taming the Machines that Rule our jobs, lives and future. Thank you so much, Ben.

Speaker B: Great song for you, Dominic.

Speaker A: No worries. And as always, Startup Nation if you have an idea, be about that life. The Startup Life. If you want to let us know what you think about the show, have an idea for a show topic, or would like to advertise on a show, send us a message. Message. Our contact information is there in the show notes or feel free to reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram. Go ahead and follow us. While you're at it, follow us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify Podcast one, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcast and be sure to hit us with that five star rating. We would really appreciate that. Be sure to check out the show's website and its startup blog where either I or some of the world's best business minds share content that will give you the edge you need in your journey. Whether you that's the path of entrepreneurship or climbing the corporate ladder. Subscribe to our Patreon to listen to ad free episodes, exclusive content and digital products that we are beginning to offer. And if you want to be part of the conversation, join the Startup Life Podcast on Clubhouse to have the ability to talk directly to some of our guests. And as always, Startup Nation. If you have an idea, be about that life. The Startup Life.