How technology is changing time, space and relationships

Genevieve Bell is an anthropologist and Vice President at Intel.  In a recent column interview of the NY Times, she commented on how technology is changing society in terms of time, space and social relationships.

"First, there are changing ideas about time. With the advent of electrification in the 19th century, there was no more night. Now with digital we think in new ways about availability, responsiveness, the time it should take to get things done.

The devices want to be connected, in touch, upgraded, all the time. We’re on their clock. But that may get renaturalized. Every major world religion divides out some kind of special time — there is time for prayer, time for fasting, time for celebration. 

I harbor a suspicion that we need to be disconnected at times." 

Space is also changing.  As Bell observes.

"We map physical space differently: At the airport, the location of power outlets becomes critical. We think of spaces that have good Wi-Fi or cellular locations. They are “better.” And we’re seeing the idea that the Internet is going to create one world is not quite true. Turkey turns off Twitter. You get different search results in different places."

Bell's third area of change is in social relationships.

The last thing, after space and time, is changing social relationships. 

"How do we relate to each other? What do we think about social ideas like privacy, security, risk? There are changing ideas about love, fear, passion."

What does all that mean?

"When tech affects ideas about time, space and social relationships, it carries anxiety. We are reinventing a lot of ideas around security, privacy, safety, love, marriage, kids, god, violence, the nation state, power, justice, money. Everything is up for grabs.

It means social movements will emerge around this, arguments about what government should look like. One hundred years ago there were arguments about government, and how we should organize ourselves. There was Fascism versus utopian government. We’ll have arguments about government and governance, about taxation and regulation."  

As Bell suggests, the technological changes associated with connectivity mean 'everything is up for grabs,' which is both exciting and contentious as we re-negotiate time, space and relationships. It is, however, a frontier we have entered and society cannot go back to where we were pre-Net.  

As pioneers, we cannot possibly know what the collective patterns will be, but we can be mindful of our own personal and micro-social (email, for example, is a social not personal medium) beliefs and behavioural patterns, which ultimately shape future society more than technology.

Denali - on 'peak experiences'

Thirty years ago I stood on the summit of Denali (Mt. McKinley) at 20,320 ft, the highest peak in North America.  Surveying the magnificent Alaska Range in the midnight glow of Arctic summer (at -40 degrees F; with windchill at -100 F) was and remains one of the highlights of my life.  From landing on the glacier to flying back to Talkeetna took 16 days.  During that time we were completely out of contact with the world below.

A few years later, during a 20-day trip down the Grand Canyon, we were similarly out of touch, which was a natural part of the adventure.  Indeed, working as a wilderness instructor and guide for 10 years in the 1980s, we routinely said good-bye to friends and loved ones as we worked 20 to 28-day courses in the backcountry of Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Texas.  These were some of the 'peak experiences' in my life.

Yesterday, I participated in a round table discussion with Nik and Ruby Roy Dholakia, both of the University of Rhode Island.  Both are doing groundbreaking work on the future of marketing, in particular 'consumption.'  Among other ideas, Nik and colleagues argue that social media are shifting the nature of our life experiences, like my summit experience on Denali and running the Grand Canyon.

If we think of a continuum of 'mundane,' 'special' and 'peak' experiences, we have all seen how social media are used to make the mundane 'special,' i.e., posting photos of food, checking in at routine coffee breaks, etc.

Conversely, bringing others along virtually on 'peak' experiences risks making those experiences less rarified, less extraordinary than the isolated triumph of standing on top of the world (literally or metaphorically) on your own or with your climbing partner.  Posting or texting from the summit of Denali--as a friend of mine did a few years ago--is still no doubt 'special,' but it is somewhat less extreme than being there knowing that it would be several days before my wife even knew if I had survived the summit push and descent, let alone see my summit selfie.

Modern day adventurers will no doubt counter that documenting expeditions has a long history (including coincidently the Kolb brothers with Powell in the Grand Canyon) and that sharing an experience immediately and widely on social media heightens the experience, rather than contributing to its deterioration or demotion on the Mundane-Special-Peak scale.

Making the mundane special is mostly harmless.  It brings a farcical and humorous dimension to social media (for example, a web site devoted to photos of people taking photos of food).  On the other hand, social media's fascination with the mundane may have more serious existential consequences.

Meanwhile, existentialists should rightfully be concerned if, as my colleagues suggest, intensive life-defining 'peak' experiences are somehow reduced in their impact as we rush to document rather than simply experience our moments of personal triumph.

What is connectivity?

Returning from Rotterdam (sitting in Heathrow), where I had the pleasure of being a co-convenor of a European Group for Organization Studies (EGOS) Symposium sub-theme on 'Connectivity and Mobility' with Marleen Huysman leader of the KIN2 Group at VU University of Amsterdam and Kristine Dery, who recently joined MIT's Center for Information Systems Research, I am reflecting on the 'state of connectivity' (as opposed to my usual preoccupation with 'states of connectivity').

From an academic perspective, have we reached a point where we can consider connectivity a field of research?  Certainly, a substantial proportion of papers we saw at the Symposium focused on mobile technologies, work-life balance or 'new ways of work' and organisational control of such and drew upon constructs of 'connectivity.'  

Connectivity studies address the central organising theme of our time, namely increasingly ubiquitous and pervasive connectivity, with its attending promise, problems and opportunities for all levels and dimensions of individuals, organisations and society at large.

In particular, leading and raising star academics, like Paul Leonardi and Melissa Mazmanian, use the term in recent influential publications, which are already being heavily cited.  Since citations are the primary currency of scholarship, it is reasonable to suggest that connectivity is emerging as a legitimate field of research.

Coming back to the question of what 'connectivity' is, I have previously offered a comprehensive definition, as follows:

‘Connectivity is defined here as the mechanisms, processes, systems and relationships that link individuals and collectives (e.g., groups, organizations, cultures, societies) by facilitating material, informational and/or social exchange.  

It includes geo-physical (e.g., space, time and location), technological (e.g., information technologies and their applications) as well as social interactions and artefacts, including shared histories, travel, trade, migration, culture, politics and other social activities.’ (Source: Kolb, D. G. (2008). Exploring the metaphor of connectivity: Attributes, dimensions and duality. Organization Studies, 29, 1, 127-144; direct quote found on p.128)

I remain pretty happy with this broad and inclusive definition.  In fact, the term is used to describe all manner of connections, from the most technical to most social/humanistic/philosophical.  I have not seen a reference to God as connectivity or connectivity as god, but it is only a matter of time.

Connectivity as Metaphor: Attributes, Dimensions and Duality

In that same 2008 Organization Studies article, I referred to connectivity as a 'metaphor.'  This is because, at that time, it could not be considered a 'theory' or a 'field,' but rather it was a way of seeing something, i.e., the social world, through a lens used in another context, in this case, the technical (e.g., electronics) world--where the term came from (although the term also appears in neuroscience and I am not sure which used it first).

Attributes: Exploring the metaphor, I suggested that one might think of connectivity as ‘... a constantly changing set of connective links, some of which have never been used (latent potential), many of which are reliant on individuals (actor agency), which come and go (temporal intermittency) and some whose reach cannot be fully understood or predicted (unknowable pervasiveness).’ (Kolb, 2008, p.140). 

Dimensions: I went on to show how connectivity occurs on multiple dimensions, including: geo-physical, technical, interpersonal, group, organisational, networks, economic, cultural, political, philosophical. 

Duality: Finally, drawing on adaptive structuration theory, I suggested that connectivity is characterised by ‘connects’ and ‘disconnects,’ which exist as a ‘duality,’ i.e., they are distinct, but interrelated phenomena.

So that is connectivity as metaphor.  What about theory?  There are several theoretical frameworks of connectivity, including our model of 'requisite connectivity' (Kolb, Collins and Lind, 2008), 'connective flow' (ibid; Dery, Kolb and MacCormick, 2014) and Paul Leonardi and colleagues' work on the 'connectivity paradox.'  Based on what we are seeing from emerging researchers, there are bound to be new and exciting theoretical developments coming to the field soon. 

Of course, I am mostly involved with the organisational theory, communication and information systems communities, but others are also employing the term. 

Here is my new bold claim. When you consider the machine-to-machine connections that characterize the Internet of things, the deep concerns about our brains on screens, the isolation of being 'alone together,' and the growing philosophical pursuit of the 'good life' in a social-meets-digital age, I believe it is safe to say, we have truly entered the Age of Connectivity.

To put it another way, at this point in history, connectivity isn't everything, but it's almost everything.

2014 Internet Trends

Mary Meeker, Queen of the Internet, has presented her annual Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers KPCF Report on Internet Trends.

Here are some talking points, as found on SlidesShare.

Mobile is taking over the web.  Mobile data traffic rose 81% year over year, and mobile usage now makes up 25% of total web usage.

Smartphones are still on the rise — now representing 30% of all mobile phones — but tablets are seeing the most growth: With 2013 tablet shipments up 52% from the year before, the devices are growing faster than PCs ever did.

Among Meeker's other observations:

-Tablets on a Tear: Tablet adoption is growing faster than PCs ever did, and there’s still more loads of growth ahead – tablet population penetration is at 6%. Meanwhile, desktop PC population penetration is at 10%, laptops at 11% (see slide 8 of the report - 'Internet Trends' link above).

-Tech Company Valuations Still Below Peak Levels: Is there an excess in tech company valuations? Some, Meeker says, but levels are still well below the peak of 2000. Venture financings are 77% below the peak of 2000 (see slide 22).

-Social Media’s Rapid Force: Half of total social referrals happen in 6.5 hours on Twitter and in 9 hours on Facebook. Facebook accounts for 21% of global referrals on the web. See slide 42 for top social content leaders.

-Photos are Still King: About 1.8 billion photos are now uploaded or shared per day, a trend Meeker expects will only increase as more advanced apps and platforms emerge (see slide 62).

-More Video Screens, but Smartphones are No. 1: The number of screens are proliferating, from TV to laptops and tablets, but smartphones are now the most-watched medium in many countries. More screens means consumers will be able to get more content in less time (see slide 96).

-Pay Attention to Rapid Growth in Sensors: Just four years ago, a Samsung Galaxy S phone came equipped with four sensors. The S5 model, released this year, has 10. The rising growth in sensors will create troves of data that can be used to help researchers find patterns and solve previously unsolvable problems, Meeker says. (See slide 67)

-China’s Mobile Momentum: China is now the most mobile nation in the world — 80% of China’s total Internet users are mobile users (see slide 129).

-Millennials Changing TV: Millennials are abandoning Live TV for online video. Consumption of DVR’d and on-demand is on par with non-millennials, but it’s triple for online — and that is coming straight from Live TV (see slide 122). Meanwhie, apps are quickly replacing TV channels: TV is evolving from a directory of channels to a platform of TV apps, evidenced by the popularity of offerings like HBO Go and BBC’s iPlayer (see slide 106).

-The Biggest “Re-imagining” Will be in Big Data. Some of the most significant changes in the technology industry over the coming years will result from more advanced mining of data (see slide 60).

-The New Online Ad: Who hates ads? What is now called “The Art of the Short Form” is hugely popular online (see slide 112).

-1st and 2nd Generation Americans Lead Tech Companies: 60% of tech’s top 25 companies were founded by first or second-generation Americans. In the top 10, make that 70%. Meanwhile, the number of foreign students sent home for lack of a limited-availability H-1B visa has nearly quadrupled in the past decade (see slide 149).

Smartphone users are getting smarter

People need to be connected and everyone needs information.  The right amount and quality of information at the right time gives us unprecedented power.  Too much information and digital distraction, however, can keep us from getting important things done.  It can keep us from connecting with those around us[i].  What many of us want is Zen-like ‘flow,’ i.e., not too little and not too much connectivity. My colleagues and I called this a state of ‘connective flow’ in our studies[ii] of distributed work teams.

How good are individuals at monitoring and managing connective flow?  Increased adoption of smartphone and other connective technologies has brought a subsequent growing concern and interest in the importance of regulating the quantity of interactions for organizational performance, while not undermining individual wellbeing[iii]. 

In a recently published article in the EuropeanJournal of Information Systems, Kristine Dery of the MIT Sloan School, Judi MacCormick and I compared how smartphones use changed from the height of the ‘CrackBerry’ era, in 2006 (the iPhone arrived in 2007), in the same sample re-interviewed in 2011. Our study was conducted within a large global financial services corporation and interviews took place mainly in Paris and Sydney. Corporations like the one we studied embraced technologies like the BlackBerry, which offered increased connectivity between workers, while the corporate culture often lead to employees suffering from hyper-connectivity and burnout.

Our findings revealed a few major shifts in smartphone usage in the five (5) years between interviews.  First, the iPhone had come onto the scene and while the corporation remained on and only supported the BlackBerry device, almost every participant in our study had also purchased an iPhone, which they used for both personal and work purposes.  Second, in the first round of interviews, participants expressed a love-hate relationship with the BlackBerry, some secretly wishing it would be lost or stolen, so they could ‘get a break.’ 

Five years on, our participants were much more comfortable taking work into their own hands, literally.  In managing their connections with work in the first round, interviewees spoke of ‘switching it off’ and ‘escaping’ its spell on them.  In the second round, they spoke of managing the ‘flow’ of information, turning the flow up or down ‘like a tap,’ as one interviewee described it.  And, finally these knowledge workers moderated the flow of media and connections between work and non-work life more seamlessly, with much less stress than they expressed in the earlier phase of our study.

Although the ‘CrackBerry’ days of email obsession may be gone[iv], myriad new work and social media have exponentially exploded in the hands of smartphone users. Other studies of knowledge workers have proven that addictive and dysfunctional behaviors are still commonly associated with mobile technologies.[v]   In our study, however, we have found that the use of smartphones is evolving relatively rapidly and that we are more or less adjusting to and making different choices when it comes to these tools that characterize our age. 

For those seeking the good life in a digital age, I recommend William Powers’ book, Hamlet’s BlackBerry: …. It sounds dated, but his insights and story telling make an excellent read for anyone who feels there must be more to life than the latest tweet.

A version of this article, titled, 'Finding flow: Smartphone users getting smarter,' appeared in the New Zealand Herald on Tuesday, 13 May 2014.

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[i] Turkle, S. (2011) Alone together: Why we expect more from technology and less from each other. New York: Basic Books; MacCormick, J., Dery, K., & Kolb, D. G. (2012). Engaged or Just Connected?: Smartphones and Employee Engagement. Organizational Dynamics, 41(3), 194-201.

[ii] Kolb, D. G., Collins, P. D. and Lind, E. A. (2008). Requisite connectivity: Finding flow in a not-so-flat world. Organizatonal Dynamics, 37 (2), 181-189.

[iii] Powers, W. (2010). Hamlet's Blackberry: Building a good life in the digital age. New York: Harper Perennial; Kolb, D. G., & Collins, P. D. (2011). Managing Personal Connectivity: Finding Flow for Regenerative Knowledge Creation. In G. Gorman & D. Pauleen (Eds.), Personal Knowledge Management: Individual, Organizational and Social Perspectives. Surrey, England: Gower, 129-142.

[iv] Dery, K., Kolb, D.G. and MacCormick, J. (forthcoming, 2014). Working with flow: The evolving practice of smartphone technologies. European Journal of Information Systems.

[v] Perlow, L. A. (2012). Sleeping with your smartphone: How to break the 24/7 habit and change the way you work. Boston: Harvard Business School Publishing; Mazmanian, M., Orlikowski, W. J., & Yates, J. (2013). The Autonomy Paradox: The Implications of Mobile Email Devices for Knowledge Professionals. Organization Science, 24 (5), 1337-1357; Mazmanian, M. (2013) Avoiding the trap of constant connectivity: When congruent frames allow for heterogeneous practices. Academy of Management Journal, 56 (5), 1225-1250.

Working from home - yeah right.

A New Zealand beer called Tui has a great billboard advertising campaign which has silly claims followed by 'yeah right.'

So, a Tui billboard might say, 'Working from home.  Yeah, right.'  The joke would be that a lot of people distrust remote workers.  They believe they are trying to avoid work by saying they are, 'working from home.'

Having moved to New Zealand 22 years ago, I sometimes say I am a 'victim of lifestyle,' meaning that I have geared my work habits to that of the locals, which is about balancing work and other pursuits.  I am generally not work-obsessed, and indeed enjoy disconnecting when I am on our beautiful rural property.

However, like most academics, I need to connect with students, research colleagues and others from home on a day-to-day basis and wish I could do so.  Unfortunately, even though I live within sight of the Sky Tower in our largest city, my Internet speeds are slower than most third world locations.

Here are the broadband speeds:

Latency 66 ms
Upload speed: .43 mbps
Upload speed: .20 mbps

Recall that dial-up is .56 mbps.

Also, bear in mind that our lines provider, Chorus, claims to deliver 7 mbps to our door, but no one seems to have anywhere near that speed in our homes.  The upgrade on our road is scheduled for 2015, but that's a long time to wait.

To add insult to injury, Telecom and other broadband providers are constantly showing ads for outrageous extravagances like streaming video, video calling and gaming. I would like to be able to surf the web from time to time to prepare for class or explore possible vacation destinations, but I would even settle for being able to send a few emails with ease, instead of the painful lag of basically dial-up Internet.

By the way, these speeds are consistent with my neighbourhood of Te Henga (Bethells Beach) and although we have tried our best, no one seems interested in addressing the issue.

I get that infrastructure takes time, but New Zealand's broadband charges are about 20-40% higher than the OECD average and it seems unfair to be charged all the money for what amounts to less than developing world broadband speeds.

One of the first books I read on what has become my life work was the The Social Life of Information (2000), wherein John Seely Brown (former Chief Scientist at Xerox PARC and Paul Duguid, Adjunct Professor at the UC, Berkeley School of Information describe the 'joys' of working at home, where professionals of all callings are forced to serve as their own IT help desk and infrastructure troubleshooter.  Duguid was right, working at home is not always as joyfully seamless as some imagine.  You spend a lot of time working just to keep private systems on line and up to speed.  Telecom gets their payment no matter what they deliver, while we waste our time on the World Wide Wait.

The Tui billboard I would like to write is this one: 'Working at home.  I wish!'

Silicon Valley - Old Guard, New Guard

Last week was a very good week for me.  It was the epitome of academic life, where old and new are encountered, and both bring insights.  On Wednesday, I had the extreme privilege of meeting Tom Peters over lunch here at the U of A Business School.  An affiliate of great universities and scholar himself, Tom made himself available for an open and free-flowing exchange of ideas about economic policy, management education and New Zealand's comparative advantages in a global marketplace, especially for talent.

At one point in the conversation, I asked Dr. Peters what he thought about the rise and rise of new forms of connectivity, especially in relation to small isolated economies.  Instead of his usual rapid fire response, he stared at me, in thoughtful contemplation and then said, 'I am not 100%, but I am about 85% buying the act,' which is his way of saying that he thinks it's real.  He then made the connection between the notion of 'social business' and its potential impact on conventional business models.  The main thing is that social business is still about 'people' and Tom Peters has been advocating the power of people ever since his most famous book (with Robert H. Waterman), In Search of Excellence, was published in 1982.

That the most prolific and well-recognized management guru of our age, who lived for 35 years in Silicon Valley, believes in the new age of business based on social and technical connectivity should not surprise us.  However, I think that Tom is speaking for a lot of the 'old guard,' who 'get' the new stuff, even if the new stuff is represented and carried forth by a 'new guard' of super-young, super-smart, super-charged talent, all hoping to make their mark in 'their time.' We may not be getting (or want to get) jobs at the coolest places to work, but we are nonetheless on the sidelines, supporting (with our hearts and wallets) the brash and brilliant young technorati.

On Friday, I had the great pleasure of having Emma Dawson, Director of Leadership Development at LinkedIn join my Executive MBA classroom via WebEx to discuss the culture and values of LinkedIn and its drive to develop the best leaders on the planet. I am very proud to have worked with Emma, first as an undergrad and then as supervisor of her first Masters degree. The class was then also joined by local entrepreneur, Duncan Shand, co-founder of Young & Shand, a New Zealand-based communications company building a global business. As Emma points out, hyper-growth companies like LinkedIn and Young and Shand see leadership development, not as a luxury, but as an imperative.  The link here is that leadership development is what Tom Peters has espoused—evangelized--for years. 

Over the weekend, the 'old guard, new guard' divide in Silicon Valley was explored (exposed) in a long, but well-crafted essay in the New York Times Sunday Magazine by Yerin Lu (edited by Deane Robinson), called ‘Tale of Two Valleys.’ The on-line version, which is attracting lots of searing criticism, is entitled, ‘SiliconValley’s Youth Problem.’  But, does Silicon Valley have a youth problem, or is this sub-set of industry simply, finally heeding the call from management gurus and management scholars over the past 3 decades to take organizational culture and values (including fun and play, as well as nerdy obsession with detail) seriously? 

Critics of Lu’s article bemoan the fact that too many talented software engineers are choosing to write yet another derivative social check-in app, rather than say help make healthcare.gov work better.  And, yes, one cringes at the elite East Coast old boy networks that are being replicated in the otherwise meritocratic and relatively democratic ‘melting pot’ of the Valley.  Lu himself talks of West Coast internships where he encounters and hangs out with friends from Harvard.

Lu himself also acknowledges the angst that his generation feels about purpose and meaning, or the lack thereof, in the quest for another Farmville or sexting app, as shown in this excerpt:

“Yet for all the glitz and the glory and the newfound glamour, there is a surprising amount of angst in Silicon Valley. Which is probably inevitable when you put thousands of ambitious, talented young people together and tell them they’re god’s gift to technology. It’s the angst of an early hire at a start-up that only he realizes is failing; the angst of a founder who raises $5 million for his company and then finds out an acquaintance from college raised $10 million; the angst of someone who makes $100,000 at 22 but is still afraid that he may not be able to afford a house like the one he grew up in.

Tech is fun now, deliriously so, but this fun comes with a built-in anxiety that it must lead to more. As an engineer, coding should be your calling, not just a job, so you are expected to also do it in your time off. Interviewers will ask about side projects — a Firefox browser add-on maybe, or an Android version of your favorite iPhone app — which are supposed to indicate your overflowing enthusiasm for building software. Tech colloquialisms have permeated every aspect of life — hack your diet, your fitness, your dates — yet in reality, very little emphasis is placed on these activities. In a place with one of the best gender-ratios in the country for single women, female friends I talk to complain that most of the men are, in fact, not available; they are all busy working on their start-ups, or data-crunching themselves. They have prioritized self-improvement and careers over relationships.”

Lu's clever peers are not immune to the superficial follies of youth with too much money and privilege, but they are also likely to be the next generation who can make a difference in engineering (according to Lu, 39% of Harvard’s CS50 introductory computer science course are now women, something Marissa Mayer would be pleased to hear), organizational and, dare I say, American culture.  

Coming back to Tom Peters, for all its obliviousness in some sectors and regions, Tom suggests it is hard to write off America when you consider how Silicon Valley continues to represent the pinnacle of not just innovation, but also of organizations (large and small) where the human spirit soars.  I think both Tom Peters (‘old guard’) and Emma Dawson (‘new guard’) would agree that the tradition of social as well as technical excellence in Silicon Valley bridges and transcends any ‘old guard, new guard’ divide.