The Trouble With Technology

Technology is going be one of the greatest challenges facing leaders over the coming years. Not in the histrionic way that expensive consultancies love to talk about it – “If your company doesn’t bring about comprehensive digital transformation this instant and appoint a robot to the board, it’s going to be overtaken by rodents” – but in a far duller, yet far more pervasive way, which humans are only just beginning to wrestle with.

I describe this dull, but pervasive, problem as “systems fatigue.” I would like to think that I was first to coin the term, but I know that’s unlikely. It’s incredibly difficult to be original. If I Googled it – I haven’t because I don’t want to shatter my own illusions – I would no doubt find that countless people are already discussing it all over the web.

What is systems fatigue?

Systems fatigue relates to the idea that technology is evolving at a rate that humans cannot keep up with, but it goes a stage further by implying that it will ultimately wear us out. Take a straightforward example. Passwords. When passwords began, we probably had a single password that we used on every website, which was simple and easy to remember – often the name of our child or pet. Next, companies started getting hacked and forcing us to make our passwords longer and more complicated – throw in a number here, a special digit there. Then, of course, we ended up having to change our passwords for different sites at different times, with the result that we ended up losing all track of which passwords we had created. The upshot is that logging in to anything these days is like breaking the Enigma code.

Now, we are even advised – by our computers, who else? – to use utterly immemorable “strong codes” every time we log in. Only someone who is a mathematical genius would ever be able to remember one of these things. That is why they are very effective, of course, because they sensibly remove emotional, predictable and pet-loving humans from the password-setting processes. But what happens next time we want to log into our account? Before we can access it, we face a long, wearisome journey, involving a password reset link, and possibly identity questions (note that one of the questions will probably be about the name of your first pet rather than the model of your first cell phone). In future, we will undoubtedly have to go through the same process over and over again because we can never remember that despicable password. No wonder we’re feeling fatigued.

Of course, some people (or algorithms, depending on who you ask) will say that the answer to the problem is biometrics. Use your thumbprint and all will good. But what happens when you can’t remember if you used your thumb or your forefinger, from your left or right hand, to set your ID and you try them all in any case, but the computer still doesn’t like them?

Also, it’s one thing to use systems. But what happens when we actually have to start managing them – properly, I mean? Data regulation rules in Europe mean that we’re already held responsible for data in ways that most of us haven’t even got our heads around yet. So, what’s going to happen once we’re actually in charge of our own algorithms and cobots? Today, there’s a lot of hysteria around algorithms and cobots taking our jobs. What we should actually fear is having jobs where we are personally held responsible for what the wretched things get up to. The prospect is terrifying. No one wants to end up in prison because they were in charge of a malfunctioning cobot that messed up the lights at a busy traffic intersection in a smart city, leading to a tragic loss of life.

I predict that we will see:

1. Talented knowledge workers turning their backs on jobs and careers that involve anything but the most limited interaction with technology.

2. An increase in wi-fi-free areas – people will deliberately seek out vacation destinations where there is absolutely no chance of anyone, or anything, using technology to get in touch.

3. A rise in the number of people being signed off work with technology-related stress because they cannot keep up with the new systems that are being imposed on them and do not want responsibility for algorithms that they can neither understand nor control.

4. More rules around when and where we are allowed to communicate with other people using technology. France has already led the way in this with its labor law that gives employees the right to disconnect from email once their working day has ended.