Old habits die hard
Edition 7. Why are people making bread?
China is emerging from the lockdown. It has led to great joy in parts of the country.
Despite factories getting back to normal and that amazing dance notwithstanding, our lives have been altered.
This by itself, is not surprising. Momentous shocks in history have shaped our civilization – consider the Bubonic plague of the 14th century which is credited for the industrial revolution in the 18th century, thus giving rise to modern life as we know it.
While hard to take a 300-year view (we are not Masayoshi Son after all), some trends are emerging which raise very interesting questions about the evolution of our behaviours and perception. I want to dig into that today.
Benedict Evans is among my favourite tech thinkers. He has an uncanny ability to nail the fundamental shifts that tech has enabled in our society.
At the beginning of 2020 (remember January? Me neither.), he created a deck which had this amazing chart.
When I first saw it, I was stunned. It shows that over 40% of heterosexual couples in the US in 2018 met online. A momentous behavioural change propelled by the smartphone (notice the bump after 2010) which did not exist as a mass consumer product till about 10 years ago.
Why is it important?
Every time we get a new kind of tool, we start by making the new thing fit the existing ways that we work, but then, over time, we change the work to fit the new tool. You’re used to making your metrics dashboard in PowerPoint, and then the cloud comes along, and you can make it in Google Docs and everyone always has the latest version. But one day, you realise that the dashboard could be generated automatically and be a live webpage, and no-one needs to make those slides at all. Today, sometimes doing the meeting as a video call is a poor substitute for human intersection, but sometimes it’s like putting the slides in the cloud.
This is interesting to ponder over. Put simply, our lives evolve to adapt to new tools. Take the example of working from home. For years, debates have raged about the productivity loss of being at home. Merissa Meyer, the then Yahoo CEO, had famously instituted a no work-from-home policy.
Fast forward to March 2020. Companies are fighting for survival (requiring them to do more with less, hence forcing them to increase productivity) while in many cases the whole organization works from home, obliterating the productivity argument. Could a company be completely inflexible about working from home once this passes over? Seems unlikely.
Another interesting point which Evans raises is that people at this point are forced to try new tools. Look at this instructive chart from McKinsey.
The light blue reflects people who started trying out new tools. Notice the overall increase. Suddenly, once niche activities - remote workout, telemedicine, do not seem that niche anymore. It becomes a habit.
It goes deeper still. Fundamental shifts have occurred in places on what it means to interact with a bread and butter institution like a school or what it means to record your health.
Connie Chan, a partner at the VC fund, A16z, has an excellent presentation which translates the popular Chinese apps to English. It gives an insight into what evolving digital interactions are looking like. I recommend that you check out the entire presentation.
Here are a few slides that caught my attention.
Few thoughts on these –
Real-time monitoring. Your history of COVID would lead to others in your presence being notified. Admission to the school is dependent on health indicators. As the gig economy explodes, your health is monitored in real-time when you are at work. The normalization of sharing health indicators is a rapid change brought about by the pandemic. Many such initiatives are being encouraged by the government themselves. Will we be expected to sacrifice our privacy for the ‘greater good’ or just to lead a normal life?
Real-world outcomes based on health indicators. The first wave of personal health indicators focused on sharing basic stats like calories burnt from runs. The second wave was the more detailed measurement such as sleep, VO2max. While these served to either enhance bragging rights or give users more information, the pandemic has hastened the sharing of health indicators as a currency for social acceptance.
It can also lead to situations where health indicators contribute to adverse personal or professional outcomes. For example, take food delivery - the vanguard of the ‘gig economy’. The hours are flexible and job security mostly non-existent. In an industry with no benefits, even non-COVID fever has the potential to jeopardize your earnings. How do we build in protections to avoid stigmatization and for livelihoods that will be impacted?
This interview by Li Jin, an investor in Silicon Valley, with her cousin in China sums it up well.
Before the epidemic, online shopping was already very well-developed and widely used. I expect more convenient things to stick around, like video conferencing. Before, not everyone wanted to use video conferencing; they felt like it was difficult to set-up or that the quality wasn’t as good as in-person meetings. But now everyone has become accustomed to it, so I expect us to shift more towards remote meetings, including on weekends.
A new way of life has become normal as people adapt to tools.
The specific measures that I believe were effective were: not going outside and wearing a mask. There was essentially no one outside, and those who didn’t wear masks were reminded to do so. Every residential area’s entrances had thermal sensors. People with fevers were immediately isolated. Everyone reported their temperature to their employer every day in addition to people they came into contact with. Public announcements were also very prominent.
These kinds of measures may be challenging to put in place in democratic countries. But I think we all realized that the government implemented these measures on behalf of the public good. So we were willing to abide by the rules and sacrifice some freedom in the short term to enjoy freedom when things improve.
People submitted their privacy to go about their lives.
As Vladimir Lenin once said
There are decades where nothing happens, and there are weeks where decades happen
What are the other changes that will become normal?
In other news
I came across a couple of fun illustrations from the Visual Capitalist. It measures the change in behaviour during the pandemic by generations.
Notice GenZ’s increased interest in memes or the fact that they are more likely to listen to music than listen to the news even during the most devastating pandemic in the last 100 years. The carefree days of youth.
Meanwhile, Millenials, the oldest of whom are turning 40, have an increased interest in searching for healthy recipes during the lockdown.
One thing that unites GenZ, Millennials, GenX and the Boomers?
Searching for discounts from brands. Late-stage capitalism, ahoy!
What are people buying? What are they not?
Yes, I do not understand the craze for bread machines either.
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