1 00:00:19,960 --> 00:00:22,520 Before when we first started, we were just like walking and start 2 00:00:22,520 --> 00:00:24,200 speaking. Everybody's getting like all set 3 00:00:24,200 --> 00:00:25,920 up. Now we've got all the like the 4 00:00:25,920 --> 00:00:29,160 professional kit, we've got like the timing on point, we've got 5 00:00:29,160 --> 00:00:30,800 the walk down, etcetera, etcetera. 6 00:00:30,800 --> 00:00:33,560 Roy it's becoming a little bit more a thing now. 7 00:00:33,600 --> 00:00:37,640 Do you think they'll be a sort of backlash and return to the 8 00:00:37,640 --> 00:00:41,200 low 5 podcast market where everything's kind of recorded on 9 00:00:41,200 --> 00:00:45,400 handheld phones and because it's gone, the the production values 10 00:00:45,400 --> 00:00:47,680 have gone crazy, haven't they? Oh yeah, and The thing is it's 11 00:00:47,680 --> 00:00:50,640 going even crazier because that Netflix above you just announced 12 00:00:50,960 --> 00:00:53,560 and they're doing a collaboration with Spotify to 13 00:00:53,560 --> 00:00:57,120 able to take some of the best podcasts on Spotify and take 14 00:00:57,120 --> 00:00:59,000 them over to Netflix as a test and learn. 15 00:00:59,360 --> 00:01:01,640 So I think a lot of the podcasts are going to now start thinking 16 00:01:01,640 --> 00:01:04,920 about themselves as shows and starting to update game even 17 00:01:04,920 --> 00:01:07,640 more because there's this whole like concept about the fact that 18 00:01:07,640 --> 00:01:09,440 the way that you like differentiate yourself now to 19 00:01:09,480 --> 00:01:13,080 like set design and like mood and art direction and all that 20 00:01:13,080 --> 00:01:15,040 kind of stuff. But I think it's always really 21 00:01:15,040 --> 00:01:17,520 important to make sure that the conversation stays at the center 22 00:01:17,680 --> 00:01:20,680 of everything. And with that being said, I was 23 00:01:20,680 --> 00:01:22,160 really excited about this conversation. 24 00:01:22,160 --> 00:01:27,440 So I was speaking to Rory about this and the team and Rory raved 25 00:01:27,440 --> 00:01:30,120 on about the fact that we need to get Jessica on right? 26 00:01:30,120 --> 00:01:33,120 And I then got obsessed because that's the that's the way that I 27 00:01:33,120 --> 00:01:34,320 am. Whenever people get excited 28 00:01:34,320 --> 00:01:37,040 about somebody, I get excited. I do my research and I was like, 29 00:01:37,040 --> 00:01:40,200 you know what, as somebody that's a bit of a digital native 30 00:01:40,200 --> 00:01:42,520 or social native, I looked at some of your work and I was 31 00:01:42,520 --> 00:01:45,920 really excited about what I found and also like the, what 32 00:01:45,920 --> 00:01:47,920 you've done so far and also the conversations you were having. 33 00:01:47,920 --> 00:01:50,920 But I'm going to let, I'm not going to, I was going to say, 34 00:01:50,920 --> 00:01:53,720 I'm not going to butcher, but then I mind the pun, right? 35 00:01:54,160 --> 00:01:58,960 But I, we always love to let our guests lead that intro so they 36 00:01:58,960 --> 00:02:00,880 can almost like be in charge of their story. 37 00:02:01,080 --> 00:02:03,000 And then we can just talk about some of the bottlenecks you 38 00:02:03,000 --> 00:02:04,880 discovered across your, your journey. 39 00:02:04,880 --> 00:02:09,240 But Jessica, like great to give you the floor, tell our audience 40 00:02:09,240 --> 00:02:11,600 that may not know who you are about yourself, the work you've 41 00:02:11,600 --> 00:02:14,760 been doing, and we can start to dive right into the bottlenecks 42 00:02:14,760 --> 00:02:16,240 as well. Amazing. 43 00:02:16,320 --> 00:02:18,280 Thank you for having me. This is so impressive. 44 00:02:20,400 --> 00:02:22,480 Yeah. So the story has been a very 45 00:02:22,480 --> 00:02:26,280 squiggly career to date. I'm a tech entrepreneur 46 00:02:26,280 --> 00:02:30,640 basically I have been for the best part of 20/20/25 or so 47 00:02:30,640 --> 00:02:33,240 years. So I've been in the business of 48 00:02:33,240 --> 00:02:37,800 building or helping to build platforms that mine attention, 49 00:02:37,800 --> 00:02:39,560 not to put too fine a point on it. 50 00:02:40,000 --> 00:02:43,440 And so I, I rode the Kate tales of a lot of entrepreneurs in my 51 00:02:43,440 --> 00:02:46,840 20s, cutting my teeth and learning and basically following 52 00:02:47,160 --> 00:02:52,360 inspiring visionaries and learning, you know, how to help 53 00:02:52,360 --> 00:02:56,560 take their visions to market. And my role has always been on 54 00:02:56,560 --> 00:02:59,760 the communication side. So storytelling about why this 55 00:02:59,760 --> 00:03:02,800 is going to change the world, why it's so awesome, why 56 00:03:02,800 --> 00:03:05,480 everybody should be buying it or engaging with it. 57 00:03:06,920 --> 00:03:08,840 And I find it quite hilarious. I'm called a woman in tech 58 00:03:08,840 --> 00:03:11,520 because I've got a history degree and I can't read or write 59 00:03:11,560 --> 00:03:13,040 a line of code. I've never have. 60 00:03:13,680 --> 00:03:18,320 But I love nerds. And I guess I, I describe my 61 00:03:18,320 --> 00:03:20,480 superpower as being nerd translating. 62 00:03:21,640 --> 00:03:25,160 So I would get the techies to say what they were so excited 63 00:03:25,160 --> 00:03:26,960 about. And I'd say, what, Right. 64 00:03:26,960 --> 00:03:30,320 What I can hear is, would this be a fair representation of 65 00:03:30,320 --> 00:03:31,160 that? Yeah. 66 00:03:31,160 --> 00:03:34,560 And then my job was always to attract adherence to that 67 00:03:34,560 --> 00:03:39,760 vision, whether that was investors, media clients or the 68 00:03:39,760 --> 00:03:41,560 end consumer in some way or another. 69 00:03:41,560 --> 00:03:45,920 So I've always done a sort of hybrid Comm sales partnership. 70 00:03:46,080 --> 00:03:48,760 In defence of that, Steve Jobs couldn't code either, could he? 71 00:03:49,000 --> 00:03:50,800 I've heard that I've. Heard that I'm in good. 72 00:03:50,800 --> 00:03:51,960 Company. I mean, The Beatles couldn't 73 00:03:51,960 --> 00:03:54,640 read music. It's not necessary actually for 74 00:03:54,640 --> 00:03:58,440 the primary role of a business, you know, necessarily to be 75 00:03:58,440 --> 00:04:01,080 understood by the people who actually uncover the value. 76 00:04:01,080 --> 00:04:02,080 Yeah. Quite interesting. 77 00:04:02,080 --> 00:04:05,000 I mean, I like to think of myself as an amateur behavioural 78 00:04:05,000 --> 00:04:07,480 psychologist, you know, trying to find the trigger point points 79 00:04:07,880 --> 00:04:11,480 of how somebody is going to engage or get excited about 80 00:04:11,480 --> 00:04:13,440 this. And then tapping into that and 81 00:04:13,800 --> 00:04:16,880 finding, firstly working out who those people are going to be and 82 00:04:16,880 --> 00:04:20,560 then finding the right the right way to take that message to 83 00:04:20,560 --> 00:04:22,800 market with them. And you always need a degree of 84 00:04:22,800 --> 00:04:25,320 translation, don't you? Because the thing about the 85 00:04:25,320 --> 00:04:30,560 people with the greatest technological ability typically 86 00:04:30,960 --> 00:04:34,880 is they're principally motivated either by the intrinsic 87 00:04:35,160 --> 00:04:38,920 difficulty of the problem or by the urge to impress each other. 88 00:04:39,440 --> 00:04:42,440 And of course their peer group isn't really representative of 89 00:04:42,440 --> 00:04:43,880 the wider consumer. Absolutely. 90 00:04:44,200 --> 00:04:47,520 And so they'll quite often pursue metrics which in some 91 00:04:47,520 --> 00:04:51,840 ways are either irrelevant to or a difficult to translate into 92 00:04:52,120 --> 00:04:55,160 actual consumer benefits. Absolutely. 93 00:04:55,160 --> 00:04:57,520 And I also think one thing I've ever, I've also learned 94 00:04:57,520 --> 00:05:00,080 throughout my career is that is the power of the generalist. 95 00:05:00,200 --> 00:05:02,920 You know, the generalist that sits at the junction of lots of 96 00:05:02,920 --> 00:05:05,600 different industries. And my scrappy CV where I move 97 00:05:05,600 --> 00:05:09,520 jobs every two years throughout my 20s, you know, actually 98 00:05:09,520 --> 00:05:12,880 really helped because I had a little bit of insight into a lot 99 00:05:12,880 --> 00:05:14,360 of different sectors and industries. 100 00:05:14,360 --> 00:05:17,560 And it meant that I could look at a technology and apply it in 101 00:05:17,560 --> 00:05:20,000 multiple different directions in ways that hadn't been seen 102 00:05:20,000 --> 00:05:22,640 before. And those are often really 103 00:05:22,640 --> 00:05:25,920 powerful roles to play in the cross pollination of different 104 00:05:25,920 --> 00:05:28,520 technologies and industries. There's a weird debate in AI 105 00:05:28,520 --> 00:05:32,520 about this online at the moment, which is some AI people say the 106 00:05:32,520 --> 00:05:36,000 only way to survive as a paid human being is a super 107 00:05:36,000 --> 00:05:37,000 specialist. Yeah. 108 00:05:37,200 --> 00:05:39,200 In other words, you, you, you know, in other words, you're 109 00:05:39,200 --> 00:05:41,520 actually above the abilities of the AI. 110 00:05:41,840 --> 00:05:45,280 Now, that seems to me quite a risky bet. 111 00:05:45,280 --> 00:05:48,400 Oh yeah. The other argument is completely 112 00:05:48,400 --> 00:05:52,800 the opposite, which is to say that bizarrely, generalists, you 113 00:05:52,800 --> 00:05:56,080 know, almost to the point of dilettantes, people with a very, 114 00:05:56,080 --> 00:05:59,360 very wide mixed humanities and tech background. 115 00:05:59,640 --> 00:06:02,000 In fact, they're the most valuable people because they can 116 00:06:02,240 --> 00:06:05,600 cross domain more easily. Yeah, Talk about the fact that I 117 00:06:06,960 --> 00:06:10,080 think we used the analogy of being more Quincy Jones and less 118 00:06:10,080 --> 00:06:12,840 Michael Jackson, right? If you can conduct an orchestra, 119 00:06:12,840 --> 00:06:16,760 that's actually where your skills can almost like come to 120 00:06:16,760 --> 00:06:18,960 light, really. Because can you look at all 121 00:06:18,960 --> 00:06:22,480 these different tools and use it towards almost, it's like a 122 00:06:22,480 --> 00:06:25,760 united goal, right? And I think that there's always 123 00:06:25,760 --> 00:06:29,200 the conversation around like the purist versus the storyteller, 124 00:06:29,480 --> 00:06:31,320 right? And a lot of the times, purists 125 00:06:31,320 --> 00:06:33,720 are almost like in this cycle where they're just on their own 126 00:06:33,720 --> 00:06:36,320 and they're not able to translate the magic that's 127 00:06:36,320 --> 00:06:38,280 happening within that tribe to the rest of the world. 128 00:06:38,560 --> 00:06:42,280 And people like Steve Jobs are able to understand them, 129 00:06:42,360 --> 00:06:44,320 understand the world and become that bridge. 130 00:06:44,400 --> 00:06:46,080 Would you say that's kind of like the role that you were 131 00:06:46,080 --> 00:06:49,320 playing as the generalist within the tech space in the early 132 00:06:49,320 --> 00:06:50,760 days? Absolutely. 133 00:06:50,840 --> 00:06:52,440 That's what I've done in every single role. 134 00:06:52,440 --> 00:06:54,920 That was the only consistency actually, that sort of bridge 135 00:06:54,920 --> 00:06:58,520 role, because I, I went from the film industry to loyalty schemes 136 00:06:58,520 --> 00:07:00,840 to the travel industry to international trade. 137 00:07:01,160 --> 00:07:03,880 You know, it was messy as hell. It was a CV that said 138 00:07:04,120 --> 00:07:06,960 susceptible to unscrupulous, unscriptious recruitment 139 00:07:06,960 --> 00:07:08,560 consultants. That's what it said. 140 00:07:10,680 --> 00:07:12,400 I've kind of had to make sense of it. 141 00:07:12,400 --> 00:07:15,240 And everybody creates their own narrative, right to that extent. 142 00:07:15,480 --> 00:07:19,320 But that was the underlying in a thing that I would say 143 00:07:19,320 --> 00:07:21,600 something, I would translate it and I would I would cross 144 00:07:21,600 --> 00:07:23,560 pollinate to help take take to market. 145 00:07:24,080 --> 00:07:27,160 But I guess I got to a stage. So I had a really real rocket 146 00:07:27,160 --> 00:07:32,320 ship experience in the 20 tens. So with Blipper, I was part of 147 00:07:32,320 --> 00:07:35,760 the founding team that built one of the very first AR platforms 148 00:07:35,760 --> 00:07:38,840 in the world. And it was such an exciting time 149 00:07:38,840 --> 00:07:41,680 because it was the first time and technology had been seen and 150 00:07:41,680 --> 00:07:45,000 we just took off like a rocket. So, you know, from, from, from 151 00:07:45,000 --> 00:07:48,200 the, from the four of us, you know, we, we had ten officers 152 00:07:48,200 --> 00:07:50,760 around the globe. We were Unicorn for a brief 153 00:07:50,760 --> 00:07:54,840 period of time. And it catapulted me onto all of 154 00:07:54,840 --> 00:07:57,280 these stages and into all of these networks. 155 00:07:57,280 --> 00:08:01,800 And everybody wanted to put me up for awards or speaking 156 00:08:01,800 --> 00:08:05,480 because there was so few women in high tech at that stage. 157 00:08:05,480 --> 00:08:07,520 And that was where some of the impostor syndrome came in with 158 00:08:07,520 --> 00:08:11,480 the, I don't understand tech, but I, I understand the creative 159 00:08:11,480 --> 00:08:13,600 applications of this really cool tech. 160 00:08:13,960 --> 00:08:16,960 So that was what I was doing thinking through at that stage. 161 00:08:16,960 --> 00:08:20,840 So here's what the tech can do. What could that mean for the 162 00:08:21,440 --> 00:08:24,080 FMCG industry? You know, what can that mean for 163 00:08:24,080 --> 00:08:26,360 print publishing? What can that mean for outdoor? 164 00:08:26,360 --> 00:08:29,080 What can that mean for industry and educational tools and 165 00:08:29,080 --> 00:08:31,720 platforms? My breadth was the advantage at 166 00:08:31,720 --> 00:08:36,120 that stage because I could think through really creative ideas 167 00:08:36,120 --> 00:08:39,240 and feed those into the client conversations that we were 168 00:08:39,240 --> 00:08:42,760 having. But just to bring us up to date, 169 00:08:42,760 --> 00:08:48,280 I guess, you know, towards around 2017, two, 1018, I also 170 00:08:48,280 --> 00:08:50,280 had three children in four years. 171 00:08:51,240 --> 00:08:54,520 I decided to take a step out of the front seat of the rocket 172 00:08:54,880 --> 00:08:57,120 simply because I couldn't live on a plane anymore. 173 00:08:58,600 --> 00:09:00,440 And I also wanted to enjoy those years. 174 00:09:00,440 --> 00:09:02,760 You know, some wrestles with a lot of that sort of feminist 175 00:09:02,760 --> 00:09:05,520 narrative about, you know, being the girl boss and thinking, 176 00:09:05,520 --> 00:09:07,920 well, actually, what do I actually want? 177 00:09:07,920 --> 00:09:10,960 And you know what, what do I prioritize now at this stage of 178 00:09:10,960 --> 00:09:14,760 my life? And that was when I basically 179 00:09:14,760 --> 00:09:19,120 moved into a portfolio career for sort of four or five years. 180 00:09:19,120 --> 00:09:23,960 So some Angel investing, a lot of consulting and some board 181 00:09:23,960 --> 00:09:26,040 work. I sat on the board of the 182 00:09:26,040 --> 00:09:29,000 government's Equality and Human Rights Commission for four 183 00:09:29,000 --> 00:09:32,840 years, which was eye opening, eye watering in many ways. 184 00:09:34,920 --> 00:09:38,040 But all of this over the last sort of 4-5 years, I suppose 185 00:09:38,040 --> 00:09:44,160 I've been doing a sort of deep dive, almost PhD in looking at 186 00:09:44,160 --> 00:09:48,680 so many of the very dramatic fast moving trends and shifts 187 00:09:48,680 --> 00:09:52,840 that we're seeing in society. From polarisation, which 188 00:09:52,840 --> 00:09:57,360 obviously is huge in the equalities realm, to the rising 189 00:09:57,360 --> 00:10:01,280 rates of anxiety and mental health challenges, to 190 00:10:02,200 --> 00:10:05,440 distraction and attention deficit disorder and what's 191 00:10:05,440 --> 00:10:08,360 happening there. And it struck me that there was 192 00:10:08,360 --> 00:10:13,920 just an underlying technical reason why so many of these were 193 00:10:13,920 --> 00:10:16,760 happening. And it wasn't that tech was the 194 00:10:16,760 --> 00:10:20,760 cause of them all, but what it was without doubt an accelerant, 195 00:10:20,960 --> 00:10:25,000 you know, pouring fuel on the flames of so many of these very 196 00:10:25,000 --> 00:10:27,920 worrying divisive trends that we're seeing. 197 00:10:28,440 --> 00:10:32,400 And I reading, reading, talking, networking, you know, I was 198 00:10:32,400 --> 00:10:35,560 fortunate to have quite some time with Jonathan Haidt, who 199 00:10:35,560 --> 00:10:37,560 wrote the book around the Anxious Generation. 200 00:10:37,960 --> 00:10:41,520 I've met a lot of activists that are doing incredible work within 201 00:10:41,520 --> 00:10:43,600 this area. And I've now got a great network 202 00:10:43,600 --> 00:10:48,040 of incredible people that know a huge amount about the behaviour 203 00:10:48,040 --> 00:10:51,640 or science of what's happening. You know, the, the, the, the, 204 00:10:51,720 --> 00:10:55,280 the impact on children, you know, the impact in schools and 205 00:10:55,280 --> 00:10:57,520 in a lot of regulators that are talking about this. 206 00:10:57,960 --> 00:11:01,200 But what where do I fit? You know, it's like I want to 207 00:11:01,200 --> 00:11:07,360 work on this problem, but how do I bring my skills and background 208 00:11:07,360 --> 00:11:10,960 and you know, the secret sauce of Jess to this challenge. 209 00:11:11,000 --> 00:11:13,800 And that's when we come back to this, you know, how does a 210 00:11:13,800 --> 00:11:18,720 generalist storyteller and an optimistic entrepreneur, how can 211 00:11:18,720 --> 00:11:22,680 I contribute to it? And that's where the idea for 212 00:11:22,680 --> 00:11:27,480 Scroll Aware has evolved, an alliance of incredibly 213 00:11:27,480 --> 00:11:32,400 influential people and brands, those brands and people that do 214 00:11:32,400 --> 00:11:36,680 influence culture coming together and saying we recognize 215 00:11:36,680 --> 00:11:40,320 there's a challenge, that, you know, it's not the phone that's 216 00:11:40,320 --> 00:11:43,440 the problem and it's not technology that's the problem. 217 00:11:43,720 --> 00:11:45,040 You know, I'm a tech entrepreneur. 218 00:11:45,040 --> 00:11:49,480 They are, they are not to blame. It is very specifically the 219 00:11:49,480 --> 00:11:53,960 major issue is the business models that are predicated on 220 00:11:54,000 --> 00:11:57,400 time and attention because there's only one way, way to go 221 00:11:57,400 --> 00:12:01,320 with business models like that, which is to go down into our 222 00:12:01,320 --> 00:12:06,480 basest human instincts, our desire for our insecurities, our 223 00:12:06,480 --> 00:12:09,680 desire for tribalism and to feel right. 224 00:12:10,120 --> 00:12:13,600 You know, the dopamine of, you know, turning our brains off, 225 00:12:13,680 --> 00:12:17,240 you know, and we are now living, I think in in a very, very 226 00:12:17,240 --> 00:12:21,200 extreme version of that where we are living more to be seen to 227 00:12:21,200 --> 00:12:26,280 live and spending, you know, such a huge percentage of our 228 00:12:26,280 --> 00:12:30,800 lives in these platforms. It's it profoundly worries and 229 00:12:30,800 --> 00:12:32,680 depresses me. I think we're in the process of 230 00:12:32,800 --> 00:12:36,640 lobotomizing, you know, ourselves more importantly and 231 00:12:36,640 --> 00:12:38,360 profoundly. A whole generation of young 232 00:12:38,360 --> 00:12:42,040 people who simply don't have, will not have the ability to 233 00:12:42,040 --> 00:12:45,280 concentrate and focus at a time when the problems of the world 234 00:12:45,280 --> 00:12:49,240 are getting profoundly more and more difficult and challenging. 235 00:12:49,840 --> 00:12:54,120 Our attention is all we have. 01 hundred 100% I have so there was 236 00:12:54,120 --> 00:12:55,800 like so many points that I wanted. 237 00:12:55,800 --> 00:12:59,320 To cut from there. Oh yeah, Like literally, I 238 00:12:59,320 --> 00:13:02,480 started with multi hyphenated, right? 239 00:13:02,480 --> 00:13:05,320 You call it a generalist, right? But I think we're going into the 240 00:13:05,320 --> 00:13:08,080 space where the age-old question of who do you want to be when 241 00:13:08,080 --> 00:13:09,840 you grow up or what do you want to do when you grow up? 242 00:13:10,120 --> 00:13:12,440 There's no longer one answer now, right? 243 00:13:12,720 --> 00:13:15,440 Would you say that that was always the case for you or would 244 00:13:15,440 --> 00:13:18,920 you say that you first had a laugh for tech and because of 245 00:13:18,920 --> 00:13:23,200 the exposure and almost like the aha moment that derived from you 246 00:13:23,200 --> 00:13:26,320 being in that space? Did you, did your world open up 247 00:13:26,400 --> 00:13:29,000 and you wanted to experiment and try this scale on different 248 00:13:29,000 --> 00:13:30,800 things or was that always the plan? 249 00:13:31,120 --> 00:13:33,880 Was that just like that entryway, or was that the way 250 00:13:33,880 --> 00:13:35,560 and then the world opened up for you? 251 00:13:36,240 --> 00:13:40,200 There was no plan. I'd love to say I had a plan. 252 00:13:40,520 --> 00:13:44,440 I've always been, I've always seen shiny things at the colour 253 00:13:44,440 --> 00:13:48,120 of my eye, you know, things that just fascinated me and interest 254 00:13:48,120 --> 00:13:51,360 me. And I'm, I, I open doors and 255 00:13:51,360 --> 00:13:55,160 make memories and out of those, you know, some fabulous career 256 00:13:55,160 --> 00:13:59,560 opportunities have arisen and some mistakes, you know, that's 257 00:13:59,560 --> 00:14:01,160 why I refer to it as squiggly God. 258 00:14:01,160 --> 00:14:03,560 I've made some mistakes in my, in my career as well. 259 00:14:03,560 --> 00:14:09,120 But I, I, I'm very, I've never had a great plan basically, And 260 00:14:09,120 --> 00:14:12,080 I think that's something I've, I've often thought is, is a 261 00:14:12,080 --> 00:14:17,400 weakness, but I am are you very gut based decision maker and it 262 00:14:17,400 --> 00:14:19,520 served me well. So I'm not sure I'm going to 263 00:14:19,520 --> 00:14:21,680 shake it up to. To yes, actually, one problem 264 00:14:21,680 --> 00:14:25,440 with over planning is you can't be healthily opportunistic. 265 00:14:26,040 --> 00:14:29,880 And also it makes it very, very difficult to use intuition. 266 00:14:30,040 --> 00:14:33,760 Yeah, because and, and you make the mistake, I think that you 267 00:14:33,760 --> 00:14:38,440 only count as a success those things that you'd in advance, 268 00:14:39,000 --> 00:14:42,320 which is in a sense, you know, you're a hostage to fortune. 269 00:14:42,760 --> 00:14:45,840 Because instead of actually accepting the fact that there 270 00:14:45,840 --> 00:14:50,040 are possibly, you know, 47 different futures for you, you 271 00:14:50,040 --> 00:14:53,040 become fixated with, with only one of them. 272 00:14:53,680 --> 00:14:56,840 And it's it, it's simply, by the way, not how the world works. 273 00:14:57,280 --> 00:15:00,360 And actually, most of what we consider to be, you know, our 274 00:15:00,360 --> 00:15:04,640 career path is really reverse engineered. 275 00:15:05,120 --> 00:15:07,800 You know, it's a, it's a narrative we construct to make 276 00:15:07,800 --> 00:15:11,000 sense of the past, even though it played very little role in 277 00:15:11,000 --> 00:15:13,640 the present. And I, you know, they're 278 00:15:13,640 --> 00:15:16,040 wonderful phrases about this. I like the military one, which 279 00:15:16,040 --> 00:15:19,720 is plans are useless, but planning is essential. 280 00:15:20,080 --> 00:15:23,040 So all military people except that once you engage with the 281 00:15:23,040 --> 00:15:26,200 enemy, nothing is to go to, you know, is going to go to plan. 282 00:15:26,400 --> 00:15:29,200 There are occasions where you're absolutely right to disobey all 283 00:15:29,240 --> 00:15:33,120 the orders because the situation has changed in some unexpected 284 00:15:33,120 --> 00:15:34,720 way. But at the same time, the 285 00:15:34,720 --> 00:15:38,000 preparation part of planning is still useful. 286 00:15:38,360 --> 00:15:41,040 And I think it it, you know, it sounds like a contradictory 287 00:15:41,040 --> 00:15:44,360 phrase, but actually what it captures is the fact that there 288 00:15:44,360 --> 00:15:45,720 are kind of two kinds of planning. 289 00:15:45,720 --> 00:15:50,360 There's healthy preparation, which is a sense knowing enough 290 00:15:50,360 --> 00:15:54,520 to get lucky perhaps. But then there's the obsession 291 00:15:54,520 --> 00:15:57,840 with there is only one, you know, there is only one possible 292 00:15:57,840 --> 00:16:01,280 route to success, which I think is is actually dangerously 293 00:16:01,280 --> 00:16:03,840 narrowing and by the way, creates a bottleneck because you 294 00:16:03,840 --> 00:16:07,080 tend to end up with the same path as everybody else. 295 00:16:07,080 --> 00:16:09,120 Yeah. If you consider the sort of 296 00:16:09,120 --> 00:16:14,480 Blair era, 50% of people must go to university, that was 297 00:16:14,480 --> 00:16:17,840 effectively creating a single narrative for what it meant to 298 00:16:17,840 --> 00:16:22,320 have a good job, which then meant that 50% of the population 299 00:16:22,320 --> 00:16:24,600 tried to succeed in exactly the same way. 300 00:16:25,400 --> 00:16:29,520 So nobody really thought of the 2nd order effects of creating 301 00:16:29,520 --> 00:16:32,400 this particular story. You ever seen that? 302 00:16:32,400 --> 00:16:33,720 It happened in South Africa as well. 303 00:16:33,720 --> 00:16:37,720 So I think in the Nelson Mandela era, there was this whole drive 304 00:16:37,720 --> 00:16:40,520 to get everybody to go to university as well, but then 305 00:16:40,520 --> 00:16:42,720 they didn't create the jobs for the people that once they 306 00:16:42,720 --> 00:16:45,040 finished university. So then he had a lot of people 307 00:16:45,040 --> 00:16:47,760 with degrees, but then there was no opportunities to be able to 308 00:16:47,760 --> 00:16:49,240 actually like capitalize on that. 309 00:16:49,480 --> 00:16:52,160 Like you have a lot of very smart, educated people, but the 310 00:16:52,160 --> 00:16:55,480 opportunities are not ready. I saw that when I lived in 311 00:16:55,480 --> 00:16:58,280 Dubai, for example. There's a lot of almost like the 312 00:16:58,280 --> 00:17:01,360 population is going up, but then they still traffic jams because 313 00:17:01,360 --> 00:17:04,680 the roads have been caught up, right, Which is why it's it's 314 00:17:04,680 --> 00:17:07,440 super interesting. And I say that you mentioned 315 00:17:07,760 --> 00:17:11,599 about the fact that every one of these social platforms are 316 00:17:11,599 --> 00:17:14,359 driving towards time and attention, right? 317 00:17:14,599 --> 00:17:16,400 And you see this with the AI race, right? 318 00:17:16,400 --> 00:17:22,839 Everyone's trying to be first to the AI, almost like mega status, 319 00:17:22,839 --> 00:17:25,480 if you will, but they don't know the impact that's happening on 320 00:17:25,480 --> 00:17:27,520 day-to-day reality, right? It's almost like everyone's in 321 00:17:27,520 --> 00:17:29,480 this tunnel vision and they don't know what they're 322 00:17:29,480 --> 00:17:31,960 breaking. Ironically, the move fast and 323 00:17:31,960 --> 00:17:34,840 break things is effectively the theory that drives that. 324 00:17:34,840 --> 00:17:39,400 There's a, there's a very useful distinction which can be useful 325 00:17:39,400 --> 00:17:42,960 in, for example, investor behaviour, It can be useful in 326 00:17:43,000 --> 00:17:45,160 understanding all kinds of things, which is a lot of 327 00:17:45,160 --> 00:17:48,640 behaviours, a micro rational but macro stupid. 328 00:17:49,040 --> 00:17:53,400 So it's an intelligent thing to do from your own point of view. 329 00:17:53,400 --> 00:17:58,120 Yeah, except at the point when other people start trying to do 330 00:17:58,120 --> 00:17:59,520 exactly the same thing. Yeah. 331 00:17:59,720 --> 00:18:02,280 You know, I would argue in a lot of online performance 332 00:18:02,280 --> 00:18:06,560 advertising is of that kind. It's micro rational, but macro 333 00:18:06,560 --> 00:18:10,640 stupid in the sense that effectively, instead of working 334 00:18:10,640 --> 00:18:14,240 out a way to avoid giving half your revenue to Meta and 335 00:18:14,240 --> 00:18:19,040 alphabet, people are basically so fixated on this channel that 336 00:18:19,040 --> 00:18:21,920 what they're all doing is trying to give slightly less of their 337 00:18:21,920 --> 00:18:26,320 money or, or to give their money in a slightly more efficient 338 00:18:26,320 --> 00:18:28,280 way. And so it's what you might call 339 00:18:28,280 --> 00:18:32,680 that form of hyper competition where it seems rational to 340 00:18:32,680 --> 00:18:36,080 compete, but if you take a step back, you'll, you can simply, we 341 00:18:36,080 --> 00:18:38,440 say, actually the prize isn't worth the price. 342 00:18:38,440 --> 00:18:40,520 Yeah. And I think that that, you know, 343 00:18:40,520 --> 00:18:42,280 there is undoubtedly a human urge. 344 00:18:42,520 --> 00:18:45,280 Obviously, we're highly comparative in our perception. 345 00:18:45,560 --> 00:18:48,920 And the first benchmark we'll use for our own success is other 346 00:18:48,920 --> 00:18:49,680 people. Yeah. 347 00:18:50,400 --> 00:18:52,600 But what you don't realise while you're doing that is you're 348 00:18:52,600 --> 00:18:55,880 effectively allowing someone else to define what it means to 349 00:18:55,880 --> 00:18:58,640 be successful, happy, or whatever it may be. 350 00:18:58,880 --> 00:19:00,640 Yeah, yeah. And I was going to say and and 351 00:19:00,640 --> 00:19:02,960 Jeske talked about that. Well, obviously talked about the 352 00:19:02,960 --> 00:19:07,360 fact that at the start, you're obviously part of this tech 353 00:19:07,360 --> 00:19:11,440 revolution, building this organization drilled into this 354 00:19:11,440 --> 00:19:13,480 and then there was a change moment when you started to 355 00:19:13,480 --> 00:19:17,120 realize the impact. Can you double down into that? 356 00:19:17,120 --> 00:19:19,960 Like what was the bit the catalyst for that realization 357 00:19:19,960 --> 00:19:24,600 and change? I mean, it's, it's, it's pretty 358 00:19:24,600 --> 00:19:27,320 obvious in some ways and boring, but becoming a parent and 359 00:19:27,320 --> 00:19:29,920 thinking about what the world's going to be like for for my 360 00:19:29,920 --> 00:19:33,640 children and observing all of these trends accelerating to 361 00:19:33,640 --> 00:19:35,760 such a huge extent, you know that it's. 362 00:19:35,760 --> 00:19:38,080 Sort of like J Robert Oppenheimer, which is I am 363 00:19:38,080 --> 00:19:40,480 become deaf. You see the first age bomb. 364 00:19:41,160 --> 00:19:44,200 And I imagine he was pretty proud of that moment, but he 365 00:19:44,200 --> 00:19:46,440 suddenly became aware of the consequences. 366 00:19:46,600 --> 00:19:48,800 Yeah. Yeah, it's just that it's a 367 00:19:48,800 --> 00:19:51,760 really worrying world for children to grow up in, you 368 00:19:52,160 --> 00:19:54,600 know, just the, the examples that they see in the world 369 00:19:54,600 --> 00:19:56,360 around them. I think I mean the, the evidence 370 00:19:56,360 --> 00:19:59,840 and the data is there in terms of harms and the specific nature 371 00:19:59,840 --> 00:20:03,520 of, you know, the, the, the risks of the type of content. 372 00:20:04,040 --> 00:20:06,920 I guess what I what's happened to my thinking is I've kind of 373 00:20:06,920 --> 00:20:10,120 tracked up from that because I think enough people are doing 374 00:20:10,120 --> 00:20:12,240 fantastic work on talking about online harms. 375 00:20:12,920 --> 00:20:16,760 I'm more worried about the sheer time, opportunity cost, the 376 00:20:16,760 --> 00:20:19,280 sheer amount of time that is being lost. 377 00:20:19,600 --> 00:20:22,280 I mean, the statistics at the moment say that the average 18 378 00:20:22,280 --> 00:20:26,240 year old is going to is on course to spend 25 years of the 379 00:20:26,240 --> 00:20:30,280 rest of their life in scroll. That terrifies me from the 380 00:20:30,280 --> 00:20:32,240 perspective of my own children and. 381 00:20:32,680 --> 00:20:34,640 Five years of their waking life, yes. 382 00:20:34,800 --> 00:20:37,480 OK, so. After you've taken sleep and 383 00:20:37,480 --> 00:20:40,080 work, going to the toilet, eating the 25. 384 00:20:40,240 --> 00:20:42,440 Years scrolling. Yes, scrolling. 385 00:20:43,160 --> 00:20:46,160 So you know that that's a sort of fentanyl scale problem, 386 00:20:46,160 --> 00:20:48,640 isn't? It it is utterly terrifying. 387 00:20:49,040 --> 00:20:51,560 That's the one problem, the time opportunity cost, because what 388 00:20:51,600 --> 00:20:54,000 else? One question when I talk when 389 00:20:54,000 --> 00:20:57,960 when we think about harms, there's a very good argument to 390 00:20:57,960 --> 00:21:01,480 oppose the legalization of cannabis, which is not that it's 391 00:21:01,480 --> 00:21:06,200 bad for everybody, probably isn't, but there are certain 392 00:21:06,640 --> 00:21:08,320 behaviours. Gambling would be another one. 393 00:21:08,320 --> 00:21:14,360 Alcohol would be 1/3, which are neutral or marginally beneficial 394 00:21:14,600 --> 00:21:17,640 to a lot of people, but catastrophically bad to a 395 00:21:17,640 --> 00:21:20,200 certain minority. You know, I've always thought 396 00:21:20,200 --> 00:21:23,920 this is a slightly weird defence of nicotine, but smoking was 397 00:21:23,920 --> 00:21:26,360 quite bad for quite a lot of people, right? 398 00:21:27,040 --> 00:21:30,200 Whereas alcohol gambling, alcohol gambling and certain 399 00:21:30,200 --> 00:21:33,560 other behaviours strike me as very different, which is there 400 00:21:33,560 --> 00:21:36,120 is a chunk of the population who can handle them perfectly well. 401 00:21:36,640 --> 00:21:39,200 But I imagine if you're long term unemployed and you have a 402 00:21:39,200 --> 00:21:43,080 really heavy cannabis habit, I imagine your chances of getting 403 00:21:43,080 --> 00:21:45,680 out of that through are pretty slim. 404 00:21:46,560 --> 00:21:49,040 And so, yeah, I'm, I'm interested to know what's the 405 00:21:49,040 --> 00:21:51,840 variance in terms of the people where it's a problem. 406 00:21:52,120 --> 00:21:56,120 My own daughters actually, I would have said they navigated 407 00:21:56,120 --> 00:22:01,840 their teenage years now, they're 25 now, but I'd say they're 24 408 00:22:01,840 --> 00:22:03,440 actually. They navigated their teenage 409 00:22:03,440 --> 00:22:05,920 years fairly well. I I wasn't ever alarmed. 410 00:22:06,480 --> 00:22:09,320 I had a Minecraft obsessive daughter for a time and so 411 00:22:09,320 --> 00:22:13,520 forth, but that struck me as not an appalling use of time. 412 00:22:13,520 --> 00:22:16,520 It was reasonably creative and it was social and engaging. 413 00:22:21,680 --> 00:22:24,480 Would I, you know, would I have wished that they were brought up 414 00:22:24,480 --> 00:22:26,720 in a world without that technology? 415 00:22:26,720 --> 00:22:29,560 Probably not. I mean, you know, I, I can. 416 00:22:29,600 --> 00:22:32,040 There was still a downside and there was still an opportunity 417 00:22:32,040 --> 00:22:34,800 cost, undoubtedly. But I was just interested in the 418 00:22:34,800 --> 00:22:36,800 question of, you know, and there, there is a perfectly good 419 00:22:36,800 --> 00:22:39,160 social reason for banning things, which quite a lot of 420 00:22:39,160 --> 00:22:42,080 people like if they're appallingly bad for some. 421 00:22:42,680 --> 00:22:45,120 I was just interested. Well, I I don't agree in bans, 422 00:22:45,280 --> 00:22:48,120 absolutely not. OK, You know I'm pro tech, I'm 423 00:22:48,120 --> 00:22:51,560 pro phones and I am actually pro social. 424 00:22:51,760 --> 00:22:53,600 Well, those school bands of smartphones. 425 00:22:53,600 --> 00:22:55,160 I think bell to bell, what they've done. 426 00:22:55,200 --> 00:22:57,840 For schools is. Brilliant because and 427 00:22:57,840 --> 00:23:00,920 immediately they implement bell to bell, which means from 9:00 428 00:23:00,920 --> 00:23:04,640 to 3:00 in the working day phone off body, you know, not in on on 429 00:23:04,640 --> 00:23:07,040 the child at all. They see the results go up, they 430 00:23:07,040 --> 00:23:09,960 see the politics go down. They see, you know, so much more 431 00:23:09,960 --> 00:23:13,080 stability and happiness. So why not? 432 00:23:13,080 --> 00:23:15,760 And there's some brilliant work that has happened that where 433 00:23:15,760 --> 00:23:18,480 teachers can make that call for themselves within the classroom. 434 00:23:18,800 --> 00:23:21,120 And obviously the the parent in grassroots community is doing 435 00:23:21,120 --> 00:23:24,960 great work in terms of educating parents about potentially 436 00:23:24,960 --> 00:23:27,720 delaying. So no one child is stigmatized 437 00:23:27,720 --> 00:23:30,120 and thinking about what they do on the device. 438 00:23:30,480 --> 00:23:35,320 I guess where I've landed is, you know, it's about balance. 439 00:23:35,880 --> 00:23:40,280 And, you know, there was a there was a slogan that sort of came 440 00:23:40,280 --> 00:23:43,760 to me that has unlocked a lot of the actual structure of what I'm 441 00:23:43,760 --> 00:23:46,760 building now, which is, you know, scholar wears mantra is 442 00:23:46,760 --> 00:23:50,240 less scroll morsel. Now you know it. 443 00:23:51,000 --> 00:23:53,960 Jimmy Carr when we were together referred to it as a bit twee. 444 00:23:54,520 --> 00:23:59,800 But it really resonates because it juxtaposes these two ideas. 445 00:23:59,800 --> 00:24:03,160 Now scroll is very obvious. What scroll is soul is 446 00:24:03,160 --> 00:24:07,120 deliberately ambiguous because each and every one of us will 447 00:24:07,120 --> 00:24:11,040 define that word differently. You know, for for one person, it 448 00:24:11,040 --> 00:24:14,200 might be something really nerdy, you know, Trainspotting or, you 449 00:24:14,200 --> 00:24:17,400 know, bird watching or, you know, building little, you know, 450 00:24:17,480 --> 00:24:20,240 wall figures or something. For somebody else, it's long 451 00:24:20,240 --> 00:24:23,840 form fiction or going for walks or doing fitness and exercise or 452 00:24:23,840 --> 00:24:26,680 time with your girls. For most middle-aged 453 00:24:26,680 --> 00:24:31,680 professional men right now, it's paddle seemingly, you know, more 454 00:24:31,680 --> 00:24:34,600 soul. I, I would describe soul time as 455 00:24:34,600 --> 00:24:38,080 anything that is sort of people place perspective. 456 00:24:38,800 --> 00:24:42,880 And if you look at these two things in opposition, which they 457 00:24:42,880 --> 00:24:46,680 are, you know, you start to think then about building 458 00:24:46,680 --> 00:24:50,400 something, a campaign, an alliance that is motivated on 459 00:24:50,400 --> 00:24:53,680 simply rebalancing. And that's all I believe in the 460 00:24:53,680 --> 00:24:59,680 rebalancing because tech, including social media, should 461 00:24:59,680 --> 00:25:03,000 be a bridge and an enabler for our real lives. 462 00:25:03,400 --> 00:25:07,000 It shouldn't be a destination where we spend our lives. 463 00:25:07,320 --> 00:25:10,160 And that's the tipping point that I think we've reached now, 464 00:25:10,160 --> 00:25:14,000 which is so worrying because it's stopped us spending time in 465 00:25:14,000 --> 00:25:16,040 our own heads with our own thoughts. 466 00:25:16,240 --> 00:25:20,160 We're on this productivity, you know, absorb, absorb, absorb 467 00:25:20,160 --> 00:25:22,920 more, get, you know, hack our way to this. 468 00:25:22,920 --> 00:25:24,840 You know, you can't get, no one goes for a walk now without a 469 00:25:24,840 --> 00:25:27,600 podcast on, you know, I've got to multitask. 470 00:25:27,600 --> 00:25:32,880 I've got to use this time and that pace of life and this hyper 471 00:25:32,880 --> 00:25:35,400 optimization of everything that we're doing. 472 00:25:36,520 --> 00:25:38,160 It's just leaving us overwhelmed. 473 00:25:38,480 --> 00:25:45,840 Everybody is overwhelmed and the scroll to soul dichotomy is 474 00:25:45,840 --> 00:25:52,720 simply saying slow down and make time for the things that calm 475 00:25:52,720 --> 00:25:55,120 you. Yeah, to the things that improve 476 00:25:55,120 --> 00:25:56,920 you. It's mandatory to ask this 477 00:25:56,920 --> 00:25:59,640 question, but is there an AI solution to this? 478 00:26:01,160 --> 00:26:03,680 Which is quite simple, you know, We all know famously that Simon 479 00:26:03,680 --> 00:26:05,400 Cowell doesn't have a mobile phone. 480 00:26:05,400 --> 00:26:07,520 He has people around him with mobile phones. 481 00:26:07,520 --> 00:26:09,400 Ed Sheeran, who effectively Ed Sheeran the same. 482 00:26:09,560 --> 00:26:11,240 They relay what is important. Now. 483 00:26:11,240 --> 00:26:14,640 Most of us can't afford that at the moment, nice as it would be 484 00:26:14,640 --> 00:26:19,440 to have an entourage. I was one of my own mariachi 485 00:26:19,440 --> 00:26:20,640 band. That was my dream. 486 00:26:20,920 --> 00:26:26,480 But the IT it should be possible that you can reverse the 487 00:26:26,480 --> 00:26:31,320 direction of travel so that you have an AI agent which is simply 488 00:26:31,320 --> 00:26:34,080 very versed in filtration and prioritisation. 489 00:26:35,480 --> 00:26:40,040 I'm also vaguely excited by the potential for new formats for 490 00:26:40,040 --> 00:26:43,400 devices. So much as it pains me to admit 491 00:26:43,400 --> 00:26:47,880 it, I think Zuck is right to bet on these meta glasses. 492 00:26:47,880 --> 00:26:50,240 Yeah, which? No, no, here we go. 493 00:26:50,240 --> 00:26:55,480 No, no, Oddly, oddly, provided you can calibrate them to an 494 00:26:55,480 --> 00:26:57,160 acceptable level of interruption. 495 00:26:57,600 --> 00:27:00,040 My view is that it's actually positive, not negative, because 496 00:27:00,040 --> 00:27:02,680 a lot of our compulsive behaviour is driven by fear of 497 00:27:02,680 --> 00:27:05,800 missing something and therefore if you know that if anything 498 00:27:05,800 --> 00:27:08,760 important had happened, my spectacles would have told me 499 00:27:08,760 --> 00:27:11,640 about it so I can now relax and go on a walk. 500 00:27:12,560 --> 00:27:15,720 My argument is that actually a large part of this is a large 501 00:27:15,720 --> 00:27:19,640 part of this is the advertising model, which I think I as an 502 00:27:19,640 --> 00:27:22,240 advertising person, I can't really hold myself fully 503 00:27:22,240 --> 00:27:24,640 responsible. But that old comment that 504 00:27:24,880 --> 00:27:27,040 effectively, if you're not paying for the product, you are 505 00:27:27,040 --> 00:27:29,200 the product. There's a really interesting 506 00:27:29,200 --> 00:27:32,840 debate in subscription publications where most of the 507 00:27:33,000 --> 00:27:37,320 user base pay for the content. Which is to say, we don't have 508 00:27:37,320 --> 00:27:40,760 to go in for all that click bait or nastiness simply because 509 00:27:40,760 --> 00:27:43,400 they've already paid. Our job now is to entertain 510 00:27:43,400 --> 00:27:47,000 them. Their attention is effectively 511 00:27:47,240 --> 00:27:51,600 irrelevant to our business model and consequently we can focus on 512 00:27:51,600 --> 00:27:54,320 doing the proper job of a journalist or the proper job of 513 00:27:54,320 --> 00:27:57,920 an entertainer rather than having to create scandal or 514 00:27:57,920 --> 00:28:00,560 mischief. So, and the third one, when I 515 00:28:00,560 --> 00:28:05,880 said about other formats, my perfect phone would be a Samsung 516 00:28:05,880 --> 00:28:10,040 flip phone where the outer casing was basically, you know, 517 00:28:10,120 --> 00:28:12,640 a feature phone. It was simply a black and white 518 00:28:12,640 --> 00:28:15,560 screen on the outside, which enabled me to do all the really 519 00:28:15,560 --> 00:28:19,160 urgent, you know, very urgent stuff or simply receive calls. 520 00:28:19,440 --> 00:28:22,200 And that you could limit the number of times you could open 521 00:28:22,200 --> 00:28:25,000 it in a day. And so it would turn into a 522 00:28:25,000 --> 00:28:28,480 tablet. And what a lot of what we're 523 00:28:28,480 --> 00:28:31,480 talking about is, is batch processing versus constant 524 00:28:31,480 --> 00:28:34,440 interruption, isn't it? Which is in the good old days 525 00:28:34,440 --> 00:28:38,520 when my computer was upstairs, which is where the ISDN line 526 00:28:38,520 --> 00:28:39,840 came in. So this is getting really 527 00:28:39,840 --> 00:28:42,760 nostalgic. There was literally an ISDN line 528 00:28:42,760 --> 00:28:45,280 upstairs. I had a large computer upstairs, 529 00:28:45,560 --> 00:28:48,960 and I went upstairs and I used the Internet, and then I came 530 00:28:48,960 --> 00:28:52,160 downstairs again. And the great thing about that 531 00:28:52,160 --> 00:28:54,520 is that the place determined the focus. 532 00:28:54,520 --> 00:28:56,560 Yeah. So in the old days and the 1980s 533 00:28:56,560 --> 00:28:58,400 and the working environment, when you're in a meeting room, 534 00:28:58,400 --> 00:29:00,480 you had a meeting. When you're in the photocopy 535 00:29:00,480 --> 00:29:03,400 room, you photocopied. When you're in the pub, you had 536 00:29:03,400 --> 00:29:05,760 a chat. And the smartphone kind of 537 00:29:05,760 --> 00:29:08,880 fucked it all by effectively being. 538 00:29:09,320 --> 00:29:11,840 A toilet. Then you read. 539 00:29:12,120 --> 00:29:14,760 Then you read the newspaper. Yeah, there you No. 540 00:29:14,760 --> 00:29:17,960 In my childhood you read Giles cartoons on the toilet. 541 00:29:19,640 --> 00:29:23,040 Wow, that's a bit of nostal. Everybody, everybody under sort 542 00:29:23,040 --> 00:29:25,400 of 45 is going what the fuck is he talking about? 543 00:29:26,440 --> 00:29:29,320 Or if you're a bit downmarket, George and Lynn from the Sun. 544 00:29:29,680 --> 00:29:33,960 But but the, no, the, the, the point about that is that the 545 00:29:33,960 --> 00:29:36,560 place determine the, the, the performance. 546 00:29:36,800 --> 00:29:41,000 And so you were forced to focus by dint of the specificity of 547 00:29:41,000 --> 00:29:43,800 the place in which you found yourself and the smartphone came 548 00:29:43,800 --> 00:29:45,600 and effectively smashed through that. 549 00:29:45,600 --> 00:29:49,280 Now, it's not all bad. I mean, you know, I would 550 00:29:49,360 --> 00:29:53,600 broadly speaking, say I'm, I'm a bit of a TikTok fan, but maybe 551 00:29:53,760 --> 00:29:55,520 the algorithm has just been kind to me. 552 00:29:55,520 --> 00:29:58,480 I can't, you know, because TikTok strikes me as being the 553 00:29:58,560 --> 00:30:02,400 very, the age-old, you know, 200,000 years old human practice 554 00:30:02,400 --> 00:30:05,040 of people entertaining other people for the sheer pleasure of 555 00:30:05,040 --> 00:30:07,960 doing it. YouTube Premium, I think is one 556 00:30:07,960 --> 00:30:11,320 of the greatest things to have happened in my entire lifetime. 557 00:30:11,680 --> 00:30:14,280 And there are other, there are other channels like Pinterest, 558 00:30:14,280 --> 00:30:17,960 very interestingly, which I don't think the very interesting 559 00:30:17,960 --> 00:30:21,360 statistic about Pinterest is that they found in Pinterest 560 00:30:21,360 --> 00:30:25,280 that people scroll Pinterest at about the third of the speed 561 00:30:25,440 --> 00:30:26,840 that they scroll everything else. 562 00:30:27,360 --> 00:30:30,880 So it is actually a kind of. How would you describe it? 563 00:30:30,880 --> 00:30:33,720 Qualitative scroll. In other words, it's driven by 564 00:30:33,720 --> 00:30:35,280 pleasure, not desperation. Yeah. 565 00:30:35,280 --> 00:30:37,600 It's an enabling, I love Pinterest as well for similar 566 00:30:37,600 --> 00:30:40,400 reasons and I'm actively courting them at the moment to 567 00:30:40,400 --> 00:30:44,920 try and join the alliance because they enable real world 568 00:30:44,920 --> 00:30:47,600 hobbies and pleasures, whether that's interior design or 569 00:30:47,600 --> 00:30:50,960 fashion or fitness or exercise, you know, and this is where it's 570 00:30:50,960 --> 00:30:52,840 really important to make that distinction. 571 00:30:52,840 --> 00:30:57,080 So much of what I scroll, I love, you know, I get a huge 572 00:30:57,080 --> 00:31:01,120 amount of inspiration from it and I because I've curated who I 573 00:31:01,120 --> 00:31:03,360 follow, whose opinions I respect. 574 00:31:03,640 --> 00:31:06,280 And. But then, but then suddenly 3 575 00:31:06,280 --> 00:31:07,360 hours has gone. Yeah. 576 00:31:07,400 --> 00:31:10,520 And I and it's, and it, it's almost like junk disappears 577 00:31:10,520 --> 00:31:12,400 almost as quickly as it's come into my head. 578 00:31:12,880 --> 00:31:14,560 And I think, well, you know what? 579 00:31:14,560 --> 00:31:18,080 How have I just wasted 2 1/2 hours of my life in doing that? 580 00:31:18,440 --> 00:31:21,680 And it's not just that, it's what it's doing to our attention 581 00:31:21,680 --> 00:31:24,320 and our focus. So the two, my two biggest 582 00:31:24,320 --> 00:31:27,440 concerns the time opportunity cost, which is a business model. 583 00:31:27,440 --> 00:31:30,320 It is a business model thing. The attention economy, yes, it 584 00:31:30,320 --> 00:31:32,160 is. And, and it's, it's entirely 585 00:31:32,160 --> 00:31:35,880 that because it's predicated on mining for attention. 586 00:31:36,400 --> 00:31:38,520 It's the attention, it's the time. 587 00:31:38,520 --> 00:31:41,880 And then it's our ability to focus and concentrate. 588 00:31:42,120 --> 00:31:45,800 This is profoundly worrying. And I say this as a faulty 589 00:31:45,800 --> 00:31:49,280 something woman who's grown up without this technology, whose 590 00:31:49,280 --> 00:31:53,800 brain does this now, you know, I've got about 63 open tabs on 591 00:31:53,800 --> 00:31:57,200 my laptop at the moment because I can't finish APDF report 592 00:31:57,200 --> 00:31:59,440 anymore. You know, I'll open up something 593 00:31:59,440 --> 00:32:02,120 and if it's longer than about four pages, I'll start it and 594 00:32:02,120 --> 00:32:05,200 I'll go, oh, I'll come back to it because something's pinged or 595 00:32:05,200 --> 00:32:07,760 I've got to do this. And I'm, I'm multitasking and 596 00:32:07,760 --> 00:32:10,560 I'm, I'm checking everything. And if that's happening to me, 597 00:32:10,560 --> 00:32:12,560 what does it do? Somebody who has managed to 598 00:32:12,560 --> 00:32:16,120 harness their attention to get degrees and read long form 599 00:32:16,120 --> 00:32:19,400 books. And even in a book now I really 600 00:32:19,400 --> 00:32:22,320 struggle. I'm very actively going back to 601 00:32:23,320 --> 00:32:28,520 old literature, yeah, to try and brain train myself back into 602 00:32:28,520 --> 00:32:31,720 focus. Yeah, longer, more in depth 603 00:32:31,800 --> 00:32:35,320 language in old fashioned. No, my interesting AI theory is 604 00:32:35,320 --> 00:32:39,760 that AI could solve the problem by effectively getting rid of 605 00:32:39,760 --> 00:32:42,240 those switching costs. I think in algorithm design it's 606 00:32:42,240 --> 00:32:45,000 called a switching cost. Yeah, that once you switch from 607 00:32:45,000 --> 00:32:48,720 one process to another, yeah, there's fundamentally a cost in 608 00:32:48,720 --> 00:32:52,600 terms of energy, time or manner of kind of mental things. 609 00:32:52,960 --> 00:32:55,400 And it apparently it's true of computers as it is true of 610 00:32:55,400 --> 00:32:56,120 humans. Yeah. 611 00:32:57,080 --> 00:33:01,080 And it strikes me as, for example, now where AI could 612 00:33:01,080 --> 00:33:05,120 help, it is a fucking abomination that my e-mail app 613 00:33:05,160 --> 00:33:06,920 is a different app from my calendar app. 614 00:33:07,680 --> 00:33:10,480 OK, I want a single app that answers the question. 615 00:33:10,480 --> 00:33:12,520 What should I do right now? OK. 616 00:33:12,960 --> 00:33:15,560 Claude's doing that now. The the fact that I have to look 617 00:33:15,560 --> 00:33:18,760 at an e-mail, then look back at a calendar, then go back to the 618 00:33:18,760 --> 00:33:22,040 e-mail because I've forgotten the fucking date, all right, 619 00:33:22,240 --> 00:33:26,520 then go back to a calendar is just simply ludicrous, right? 620 00:33:26,520 --> 00:33:30,680 I mean, now a very classic example of this is we the human 621 00:33:30,680 --> 00:33:35,880 ability consciously to consciously do two things at 622 00:33:35,880 --> 00:33:40,120 once is basically 0. You know, we that that's the 623 00:33:40,120 --> 00:33:42,880 miracle of intuition and all, all of those unconscious 624 00:33:42,880 --> 00:33:47,000 processes is we can actually resolve simultaneously, you 625 00:33:47,000 --> 00:33:50,760 know, incommensurable things to arrive at a decision. 626 00:33:51,040 --> 00:33:52,920 Whereas consciously you can only look at one thing at a time. 627 00:33:52,920 --> 00:33:54,920 And I always think the perfect example of this, I know I bore 628 00:33:54,920 --> 00:33:58,240 people with this, the London Overground where they simply 629 00:33:58,240 --> 00:34:02,760 added it to the tube map. Right Now, if you think about it 630 00:34:02,760 --> 00:34:07,880 as a nice analogy, making a journey from 2 maps, planning a 631 00:34:07,880 --> 00:34:09,920 journey would be almost impossible, right? 632 00:34:10,159 --> 00:34:12,719 Let's imagine you had a rail map and you had a tube map and you 633 00:34:12,719 --> 00:34:16,679 had to refer between the two to work out what mixture of train 634 00:34:16,679 --> 00:34:20,480 and tube you should use to get from, I don't know, Richmond to 635 00:34:20,480 --> 00:34:24,639 Stratford. OK, be a total mother fuck. 636 00:34:24,760 --> 00:34:27,360 Yeah. That's what's happening right 637 00:34:27,360 --> 00:34:28,960 now. If you put the things on one 638 00:34:28,960 --> 00:34:33,679 map, Yeah, then you can in a very short period of time, you 639 00:34:33,679 --> 00:34:35,679 can very rapidly see what needs to be done. 640 00:34:36,280 --> 00:34:39,360 And I think there's this appalling kind of Swiss Army 641 00:34:39,360 --> 00:34:44,120 knife mess, which is the smartphone, which is, it's 642 00:34:45,159 --> 00:34:48,239 effectively, it has 17 different things. 643 00:34:48,920 --> 00:34:51,560 And maybe it's better in China where they seem to have this one 644 00:34:51,560 --> 00:34:54,280 app that does everything. If you're right, there's this 645 00:34:54,280 --> 00:34:57,240 one bloody app in China where you book a taxi, find your wife, 646 00:34:57,440 --> 00:34:58,800 you know, do your. Banking. 647 00:34:59,080 --> 00:35:04,440 Which, OK, OK, you know, so whatever, you know, all within 648 00:35:04,440 --> 00:35:09,480 the space of an afternoon. And but the, the mess of the 649 00:35:09,480 --> 00:35:13,920 Swiss Army knife, which effectively has, you know, 650 00:35:14,560 --> 00:35:16,920 someone said of Swiss Army knife, it has, you know, 17 651 00:35:16,920 --> 00:35:19,440 different implements, none of which is particularly good at 652 00:35:19,440 --> 00:35:24,680 the task in hand. And I'm, I'm convinced that, you 653 00:35:24,680 --> 00:35:28,640 know, what I want my calendar stroke e-mail to do is to block 654 00:35:28,640 --> 00:35:31,520 out time in my calendar to read the e-mail with the most urgent 655 00:35:31,520 --> 00:35:32,600 ones first. Yeah. 656 00:35:33,240 --> 00:35:34,800 And The funny thing about? And it's the same thing. 657 00:35:34,800 --> 00:35:38,600 It's an answer. There are two devices in in an 658 00:35:38,600 --> 00:35:41,880 answer to one question. The fact now that when you log 659 00:35:41,880 --> 00:35:44,640 in to read your gas bill, you then have to do 2 factor 660 00:35:44,640 --> 00:35:48,240 authentication. So the the ludicrous business 661 00:35:48,240 --> 00:35:51,320 where 3 apps are involved in a single task. 662 00:35:52,440 --> 00:35:55,320 And, and this, the reason I'm saying this is it's, it's partly 663 00:35:55,320 --> 00:35:58,720 A rant, but it's partly an analogy for the fact that this 664 00:35:58,720 --> 00:36:00,720 shit isn't very well designed. Actually. 665 00:36:00,920 --> 00:36:03,800 It's not really designed around a human need or objective. 666 00:36:03,800 --> 00:36:06,680 It's designed around a technological capability and it 667 00:36:06,680 --> 00:36:08,760 falls to us to string it all together. 668 00:36:09,600 --> 00:36:13,080 I totally agree and I do think I think the original point was 669 00:36:13,080 --> 00:36:17,200 that could AI help correct some of this stuff and I think it 670 00:36:17,200 --> 00:36:19,400 will. It will make life more efficient 671 00:36:19,400 --> 00:36:23,200 and it will streamline. But that's a different. 672 00:36:23,240 --> 00:36:24,920 I think it's solving for a different. 673 00:36:24,960 --> 00:36:28,160 Those are all different problems than the problems that the 674 00:36:28,160 --> 00:36:30,000 attention. Economy is your fundamental 675 00:36:30,000 --> 00:36:32,160 problem, by the way, the opportunity cost problem and, 676 00:36:32,160 --> 00:36:34,680 and the secondary one. But the opportunity cost, of 677 00:36:34,680 --> 00:36:37,120 course, is all the more important to focus on because 678 00:36:37,120 --> 00:36:40,760 it's in opportunity costs are invisible because we're never 679 00:36:40,760 --> 00:36:43,160 conscious of what it was we could have done. 680 00:36:44,520 --> 00:36:47,400 And, you know, maybe we're even optimized to minimize our 681 00:36:47,400 --> 00:36:50,360 perception of them because we don't like regret very much. 682 00:36:51,400 --> 00:36:53,240 But it's the old phrase. No one ever lay on their 683 00:36:53,240 --> 00:36:55,800 deathbed and said, I wish I'd spent more time in the office. 684 00:36:55,800 --> 00:36:58,000 You know, there's a friend on Instagram or Instagram. 685 00:36:58,040 --> 00:37:00,680 They say it's the same principle, which is when you 686 00:37:00,680 --> 00:37:02,400 look, there is a kind of reframing there. 687 00:37:02,400 --> 00:37:06,080 When you look back on your life, if there was a meter which 688 00:37:06,080 --> 00:37:08,280 showed the percentage of time you spent. 689 00:37:08,600 --> 00:37:10,840 Oh, wasted. Oh yeah, effectively wasted, 690 00:37:10,960 --> 00:37:13,240 which could have been something else. 691 00:37:13,240 --> 00:37:15,520 Well, there was a lovely Polaroid campaign that lit up 692 00:37:15,520 --> 00:37:18,400 New York over the summer which had those. 693 00:37:18,400 --> 00:37:20,280 No one ever will ever wish they'd spent more time. 694 00:37:20,280 --> 00:37:22,360 It's got Another one was AI. They can never help you feel the 695 00:37:22,360 --> 00:37:26,200 sand between your toes, you know, And I think tech has to 696 00:37:26,200 --> 00:37:28,840 get better and it does. It does already make our lives 697 00:37:28,840 --> 00:37:31,200 much, much more efficient. So This is why I'm a lover of 698 00:37:31,200 --> 00:37:34,320 technology and why controversially, apparently in 699 00:37:34,320 --> 00:37:38,320 my circles, my 12 year old has a smartphone because I know safe 700 00:37:38,320 --> 00:37:42,280 tech for kids. So his phone, he's got calls, 701 00:37:42,280 --> 00:37:45,840 texts, his Go Henry card, Google Maps. 702 00:37:46,160 --> 00:37:49,400 It's like a really cool app for kids where you can budget and he 703 00:37:49,480 --> 00:37:52,520 can pay for things. Life 360 so you can track your. 704 00:37:52,520 --> 00:37:55,080 Money he's got Life 360, I haven't got that. 705 00:37:55,280 --> 00:37:58,360 I will look into that. And he's got Spotify because he 706 00:37:58,360 --> 00:38:01,240 loves music, and I really want to empower that. 707 00:38:01,240 --> 00:38:04,000 He's listening to, he's listening to Bottleneck right 708 00:38:04,000 --> 00:38:04,280 now. He. 709 00:38:04,720 --> 00:38:08,040 Is it like? This would be on the. 710 00:38:08,240 --> 00:38:10,560 This would be on the outside of my flip phone. 711 00:38:10,880 --> 00:38:14,280 See those things which are actually useful things, which 712 00:38:14,280 --> 00:38:17,680 let's face it, we all carried with us before we had some, you 713 00:38:17,680 --> 00:38:20,800 know, you know, you might have had a Walkman or whatever back 714 00:38:20,800 --> 00:38:22,600 in the day. But there was, you know, and I, 715 00:38:22,600 --> 00:38:26,320 I think that I think that awful thing which is you have to leave 716 00:38:26,320 --> 00:38:29,400 the house with nothing or with everything is a bloody I. 717 00:38:29,440 --> 00:38:32,320 Totally agree. So his is an enabling phone. 718 00:38:32,400 --> 00:38:35,360 That's the point. And as and when he gets older 719 00:38:35,360 --> 00:38:37,160 and there are apps that he wants, we can have a 720 00:38:37,160 --> 00:38:39,040 conversation by conversation, you know. 721 00:38:39,040 --> 00:38:41,400 Well, if he loves chess, I'll have a problem with him playing 722 00:38:41,400 --> 00:38:42,800 chess. You know, it's great brain 723 00:38:42,800 --> 00:38:45,480 training and it's, it's, you know, it's, it's a nice way or 724 00:38:45,760 --> 00:38:48,240 the Kindle app. If he's, if he likes reading 725 00:38:48,240 --> 00:38:50,040 digitally, I don't have a problem with that. 726 00:38:50,040 --> 00:38:53,840 But the point is he's not going to have a time and attention and 727 00:38:53,840 --> 00:38:58,520 focus app on his device anytime soon until he's old enough to be 728 00:38:58,520 --> 00:39:01,040 able to understand what he's engaging with. 729 00:39:01,040 --> 00:39:03,520 And until he's, he's, he's a little bit more resilient. 730 00:39:04,120 --> 00:39:07,720 But so yes, technology is 1 solution, I guess the solution 731 00:39:07,720 --> 00:39:10,240 and whether it's a solution that might be a bit optimistic to 732 00:39:10,240 --> 00:39:12,520 call it such. But the other thing that I think 733 00:39:12,520 --> 00:39:16,960 is really important is how the culture needs to shift around 734 00:39:16,960 --> 00:39:20,800 our perception of technology. And that's very much what we're 735 00:39:20,800 --> 00:39:24,280 seeking to do with Scroll Aware. You know, the mission in a 736 00:39:24,280 --> 00:39:28,160 nutshell is how do we make analogue cool again? 737 00:39:29,800 --> 00:39:34,200 Because it is cool. It's really cool and Gen. 738 00:39:34,200 --> 00:39:37,320 Z is a really interesting generation to watch right now 739 00:39:37,960 --> 00:39:41,000 because you know there's. There's all the my daughter 740 00:39:41,040 --> 00:39:42,640 asked for a gramophone. Exactly. 741 00:39:44,040 --> 00:39:47,720 I, I have to say, having spent, you know, I was born in 1965. 742 00:39:47,800 --> 00:39:51,000 And finally we reached this wonderful apotheosis of music 743 00:39:51,000 --> 00:39:53,000 where you could carry a small device and listen to anything 744 00:39:53,000 --> 00:39:56,080 she wanted. And she wanted fucking vinyl. 745 00:39:56,760 --> 00:39:59,120 You know, this to me was an act of pure Luddism. 746 00:39:59,120 --> 00:40:01,920 I was, no, I did buy her the bloody thing, but I it was to 747 00:40:01,920 --> 00:40:04,360 me, it was incomprehensible. By the way, I I might add that. 748 00:40:04,360 --> 00:40:07,200 It's because there's this word. Have you heard of it? 749 00:40:07,200 --> 00:40:11,120 Anamia Ammonia and it means I've probably made. 750 00:40:11,120 --> 00:40:15,240 Anime, is it Derkaimian? Anime is a concept in sociology 751 00:40:15,240 --> 00:40:18,600 which is a sort of lack of almost a kind of lack of feel 752 00:40:18,600 --> 00:40:20,840 that no, no, it's not that one, OK. 753 00:40:21,080 --> 00:40:26,280 Ammonia, Greek word, and I believe it means nostalgia for a 754 00:40:26,280 --> 00:40:30,360 world you've never known. Oh, which is lovely and. 755 00:40:30,480 --> 00:40:31,920 So. Deep, yes. 756 00:40:32,040 --> 00:40:36,120 And it's, it's Gen. Z basically saying, hang on, we 757 00:40:36,120 --> 00:40:39,040 missed out on our childhoods. You know they're watching 758 00:40:39,040 --> 00:40:40,640 Friends. I. 759 00:40:40,720 --> 00:40:42,840 See that all this nostalgia is coming back. 760 00:40:43,000 --> 00:40:46,520 Given the music is like the. World before phones. 761 00:40:46,520 --> 00:40:50,320 There was this big video on TikTok of a graduation ceremony 762 00:40:50,320 --> 00:40:53,720 that somebody had filmed the one of these hand cams in in the 763 00:40:53,720 --> 00:40:56,200 late 90s. And all these kids shared it on 764 00:40:56,200 --> 00:40:58,880 TikTok going, Oh my God, I'm so jealous. 765 00:40:59,280 --> 00:41:02,840 I wish that had been my high school because look at them. 766 00:41:02,840 --> 00:41:06,000 They're all walking around chatting, you know, dancing in 767 00:41:06,000 --> 00:41:09,760 the corner, the music. And there was not a single phone 768 00:41:09,760 --> 00:41:12,920 on display. And that's what's driving this, 769 00:41:12,960 --> 00:41:15,480 this move towards nostalgia. Apparently, although the 770 00:41:15,480 --> 00:41:18,720 marketers blame, blame your industry, apparently it's 771 00:41:18,760 --> 00:41:20,880 nostalgia now. We need a new word. 772 00:41:21,440 --> 00:41:24,160 For it, yeah. There's a new word for it. 773 00:41:24,560 --> 00:41:28,680 And you know, 53% of Gen. Z recently said that they 774 00:41:28,680 --> 00:41:33,920 support a social media ban that under sixteens, you know, and 775 00:41:33,920 --> 00:41:37,280 that's literally the generation just below them because they're 776 00:41:37,280 --> 00:41:41,720 saying we lost our childhood. So there's this growing move of 777 00:41:41,720 --> 00:41:46,320 digital defiance unplugged events and and, you know, 778 00:41:46,600 --> 00:41:50,880 concerts that people will go to and parties where the kids 779 00:41:50,880 --> 00:41:53,760 themselves or young people, I should say, you know, obviously 780 00:41:53,760 --> 00:41:57,120 Jen, Jen said a bit older where they're saying no phones, not 781 00:41:57,120 --> 00:41:58,600 having it. You know, we're, we're 782 00:41:58,600 --> 00:42:01,800 reclaiming our brains. And I think that's a really 783 00:42:01,800 --> 00:42:05,080 positive movement to start thinking about this sort of 784 00:42:05,080 --> 00:42:10,040 scroll to soul ratio and really investing in the moments and 785 00:42:10,040 --> 00:42:13,080 your own moments as opposed to watching other people's moments, 786 00:42:13,080 --> 00:42:16,120 you know, and that's what we've lost with the seesaw having gone 787 00:42:16,120 --> 00:42:19,600 so far into scroll. And you know, all I think that 788 00:42:19,600 --> 00:42:23,720 needs to happen is a, a movement towards intentionality, you 789 00:42:23,720 --> 00:42:28,800 know, really thinking stopping, you know, a few scroll free 790 00:42:28,800 --> 00:42:34,240 zones appearing within coffee shops, you know, it becoming 791 00:42:34,240 --> 00:42:36,920 actually really uncool to have your phone out. 792 00:42:37,400 --> 00:42:38,880 I'm doing good. I'm doing it for notes. 793 00:42:40,240 --> 00:42:42,960 When you're out with your girls or when you're having a, a meal, 794 00:42:42,960 --> 00:42:47,120 you know, these are just little shifts that happen, You know, no 795 00:42:47,120 --> 00:42:49,040 family meal. There's a is there an excuse for 796 00:42:49,040 --> 00:42:50,880 the phone to be at the table at all? 797 00:42:51,200 --> 00:42:54,480 If you're out with your girls, you know, or, or with your 798 00:42:54,480 --> 00:42:57,480 friends, if you're in a work meeting where you're seriously 799 00:42:57,480 --> 00:43:01,520 trying to be creative and go deep and focus, put them away. 800 00:43:01,520 --> 00:43:07,280 You know, we need to train our brains into knowing the phone as 801 00:43:07,280 --> 00:43:10,680 the bridge in the enabler versus allowing it to become this 802 00:43:10,680 --> 00:43:12,960 constant distraction at all times. 803 00:43:13,400 --> 00:43:16,160 And I think that's that's a very simple shift. 804 00:43:16,160 --> 00:43:18,960 And you can have a lot of fun with that shift as well, because 805 00:43:19,480 --> 00:43:24,160 there are so many antidotes in the real world that we can sell 806 00:43:24,160 --> 00:43:26,080 and promote. I mean there are good little 807 00:43:26,080 --> 00:43:29,360 tech hacks like make sure your e-mail only pulls the server 808 00:43:29,360 --> 00:43:32,720 every hour. Turn off all notifications apart 809 00:43:32,720 --> 00:43:35,640 from super urgent ones. I mean they should be turned off 810 00:43:35,640 --> 00:43:38,960 by default actually. You know and you know there are 811 00:43:38,960 --> 00:43:41,720 one or two things where it might be useful to have notifications. 812 00:43:41,720 --> 00:43:44,560 Everything else is a complete shit show as far as I'm 813 00:43:44,560 --> 00:43:46,560 concerned. Well, going back to what you 814 00:43:46,560 --> 00:43:49,800 were saying about Gen. Z terminology, the the word NPC 815 00:43:49,800 --> 00:43:52,560 gets used a lot, right? And non playing characters for 816 00:43:52,560 --> 00:43:54,880 those that don't know. And whenever you go on to like 817 00:43:54,880 --> 00:43:58,200 the Tube in London, for example, as soon as I get into the tube, 818 00:43:58,200 --> 00:44:01,320 it gets really quiet and everybody's on their phones and 819 00:44:01,520 --> 00:44:04,920 no one's having a conversation. I I see that there's I did this 820 00:44:04,920 --> 00:44:07,280 experiment to myself. Right, the non playing character 821 00:44:07,280 --> 00:44:09,600 is like the kind of wizard that isn't a person. 822 00:44:09,760 --> 00:44:12,960 Yeah, but it's just generated by the game to sort of stand around 823 00:44:12,960 --> 00:44:16,640 and do with weird wizardy. Thing or in an action film when 824 00:44:16,720 --> 00:44:19,360 the guy's being shot at doesn't die and then everybody else is 825 00:44:19,360 --> 00:44:21,640 dying and it's almost like they're insignificant but 826 00:44:21,800 --> 00:44:24,960 whatever. So so I guess like what you see 827 00:44:24,960 --> 00:44:28,400 there is I do this experiment of myself when I go into an Uber, 828 00:44:28,640 --> 00:44:30,280 right? My experience is completely 829 00:44:30,280 --> 00:44:33,040 different when I go into the Uber and go straight into my 830 00:44:33,040 --> 00:44:35,560 phone or whether I go into the Uber, put my phone away and have 831 00:44:35,560 --> 00:44:37,240 a conversation with the person, right? 832 00:44:37,640 --> 00:44:41,760 That could change the trajectory of the day and the opportunity 833 00:44:41,760 --> 00:44:44,640 and their day, right? And often than not, you actually 834 00:44:44,640 --> 00:44:46,160 build a connection with somebody, right? 835 00:44:46,280 --> 00:44:48,240 And they always talk about the fact that in a world where we 836 00:44:48,240 --> 00:44:51,680 have all the tools to connect us, we've never been more alone 837 00:44:51,800 --> 00:44:53,160 than ever. I think they're calling it the 838 00:44:53,440 --> 00:44:56,520 the lonely epidemic, right? But then going back to what you 839 00:44:56,520 --> 00:44:59,600 said, and I was noting this down about time, attention and focus. 840 00:45:00,160 --> 00:45:02,160 The other thing that people don't actually realize is the 841 00:45:02,160 --> 00:45:04,560 subconscious messaging that's actually going on in your brain. 842 00:45:04,920 --> 00:45:08,560 The amount of times I've seen somebody scroll through TikTok, 843 00:45:08,600 --> 00:45:11,640 I'm listening to the words that are being said and then they'll 844 00:45:11,640 --> 00:45:13,680 be like, oh, we need to go get some food in this place. 845 00:45:13,680 --> 00:45:15,800 And they don't know where the thought came from, right? 846 00:45:16,080 --> 00:45:18,360 And they don't realize that they're priming their brains 847 00:45:18,360 --> 00:45:21,360 with micro messaging that they don't even control. 848 00:45:21,720 --> 00:45:25,280 And that's when things get really, really interesting from 849 00:45:25,440 --> 00:45:29,200 the anxiety that's that's forming to the fact that people 850 00:45:29,200 --> 00:45:31,280 all want and want and want these things. 851 00:45:31,280 --> 00:45:32,720 They don't even know why they want it. 852 00:45:33,040 --> 00:45:35,960 So it's like, so there's like a quadruple factor there, right, 853 00:45:35,960 --> 00:45:38,080 that people are not even paying attention to. 854 00:45:38,440 --> 00:45:41,280 And the, I guess the flywheel or the butterfly effect of this is 855 00:45:41,280 --> 00:45:43,560 going to be catastrophic if you don't. 856 00:45:43,800 --> 00:45:48,720 This is I love the non playing character reference, which I 857 00:45:48,720 --> 00:45:50,680 only heard last week and I thought brilliant. 858 00:45:50,720 --> 00:45:56,200 That's absolutely brilliant and profoundly depressing because 859 00:45:56,760 --> 00:46:01,640 the next great divide within society is going to be between 860 00:46:02,080 --> 00:46:06,120 that that percentage of the population that has learned to 861 00:46:06,120 --> 00:46:10,600 control their time, their focus and their attention and those 862 00:46:10,600 --> 00:46:13,880 that haven't. And it will fall along socio 863 00:46:13,880 --> 00:46:17,480 economic lines as well. You know, it will entrench, I 864 00:46:17,480 --> 00:46:21,240 think a lot of of the inequalities that we're seeing 865 00:46:21,240 --> 00:46:23,120 at the moment. I mean, you only need to look at 866 00:46:23,120 --> 00:46:26,080 something like the smartphone free childhood movement to see, 867 00:46:26,520 --> 00:46:31,680 you know, how professional parents, you know, centric it is 868 00:46:32,040 --> 00:46:34,960 because, you know, those parents are tuning into those sorts of 869 00:46:34,960 --> 00:46:36,760 content. They're reading long form books 870 00:46:36,760 --> 00:46:41,040 by, you know, psychologists and educating themselves about this 871 00:46:41,040 --> 00:46:44,680 stuff in the way that, you know, a single mother that lives in 872 00:46:44,680 --> 00:46:48,280 inner city London doesn't have time to worry about everything 873 00:46:48,280 --> 00:46:51,000 that may or may not be on their child's device or to understand 874 00:46:51,000 --> 00:46:54,160 the neurolinguistic programming that's going on, you know, in, 875 00:46:54,160 --> 00:46:55,480 in terms of what they're reading. 876 00:46:55,960 --> 00:46:59,480 And obviously the the greatest barometer of that is the fact 877 00:46:59,480 --> 00:47:01,720 that the tech entrepreneurs themselves don't allow their own 878 00:47:01,720 --> 00:47:04,720 children to have these platforms, right. 879 00:47:05,040 --> 00:47:09,920 So, you know, our children or those that are effectively being 880 00:47:09,920 --> 00:47:14,240 lobotomized by these technology camp technology platforms are 881 00:47:14,240 --> 00:47:16,040 going to be ruled by the children of the tech 882 00:47:16,040 --> 00:47:19,320 entrepreneurs to foster their attention. 883 00:47:20,760 --> 00:47:22,880 Anyway. It's that far too binary and 884 00:47:22,880 --> 00:47:26,280 extreme of you because of course there's lots of graduation 885 00:47:26,280 --> 00:47:29,240 within it. But unless we recognize, you 886 00:47:29,240 --> 00:47:31,800 know, the risk we're doing, and I actually think talking to 887 00:47:31,800 --> 00:47:37,320 parents and adults about their own weaknesses is a much more 888 00:47:37,360 --> 00:47:41,000 compelling way to have the conversation about children's 889 00:47:41,000 --> 00:47:44,840 habits and behaviours than it is to simply go ban the phone, stop 890 00:47:44,840 --> 00:47:46,760 them having it, take them away, take them away. 891 00:47:47,200 --> 00:47:51,720 It's not the phone, you know, it's, it's the content and the 892 00:47:51,720 --> 00:47:54,960 dopamine and the addictive nature of what's on the phone 893 00:47:54,960 --> 00:47:57,000 that's the problem. And I do believe kids are 894 00:47:57,000 --> 00:48:02,240 growing up in this world, hence them as my son is getting to 895 00:48:02,240 --> 00:48:05,640 grips with each aspect of the Swiss Army knife as and when you 896 00:48:05,640 --> 00:48:08,880 know he needs it to enable his independence. 897 00:48:08,880 --> 00:48:12,560 That's what I use it for. I want him, I believe in free 898 00:48:12,560 --> 00:48:16,040 range parenting. You know, I dropped my 10 and 12 899 00:48:16,040 --> 00:48:18,200 year old off in a town 4 miles away yesterday. 900 00:48:18,200 --> 00:48:22,640 I went good luck, didn't get home and they did, you know, 901 00:48:22,720 --> 00:48:28,680 they, they found a bus climb table they had, no, they didn't 902 00:48:28,680 --> 00:48:30,520 have a debit card. So you know, they couldn't do 903 00:48:30,520 --> 00:48:31,960 it. They had 10 lbs each and they 904 00:48:31,960 --> 00:48:34,280 managed to find their way home and they came home a foot 905 00:48:34,280 --> 00:48:38,080 taller, you know, because our generation doesn't parent like 906 00:48:38,080 --> 00:48:40,880 that anymore. We properly overprotect and 907 00:48:40,880 --> 00:48:43,240 coddle and think there's danger around every corner. 908 00:48:43,720 --> 00:48:47,080 And that was the part of Jonathan's book that Jonathan 909 00:48:47,080 --> 00:48:50,640 Haidt, you know, that never gets talked about. 910 00:48:50,640 --> 00:48:52,640 It's all the phone end that gets talked about. 911 00:48:52,840 --> 00:48:55,240 But the but. Not the other sort of slightly 912 00:48:55,240 --> 00:48:59,240 riskier behaviour. Well, just the fact that we, we 913 00:48:59,240 --> 00:49:04,240 can't just take the phone away without also opening up their, 914 00:49:04,360 --> 00:49:07,400 their physical worlds more, you know, allowing them more 915 00:49:07,400 --> 00:49:10,080 freedom, allowing them to get out and do things. 916 00:49:10,080 --> 00:49:12,840 And they're being spaces for children to do that. 917 00:49:13,280 --> 00:49:16,120 And that's the other problem. And something I would love to 918 00:49:16,120 --> 00:49:18,840 address with Scroll Aware is there's no alternatives to the 919 00:49:18,840 --> 00:49:20,960 phone. The only place for young people 920 00:49:20,960 --> 00:49:24,880 to go to now is, you know, Burger King and McDonald's and 921 00:49:24,880 --> 00:49:27,920 KFC and Wingstop. That's doing really well these 922 00:49:27,920 --> 00:49:32,760 days, you know. And these are all funny ones are 923 00:49:32,760 --> 00:49:35,080 the best. I like wingstops. 924 00:49:35,080 --> 00:49:36,760 Yeah, Yeah. But we. 925 00:49:36,800 --> 00:49:39,200 Need third spaces. You know, we need more 926 00:49:39,200 --> 00:49:41,720 investments in the communities because the communities have 927 00:49:41,720 --> 00:49:44,880 declined the high streets declined searches, you know, on 928 00:49:44,880 --> 00:49:48,360 near nightclubs, they used to be nightclubs are closing like 10% 929 00:49:48,360 --> 00:49:50,880 or something last year closed, clubs are closing. 930 00:49:51,320 --> 00:49:55,720 It's it's tragic. And I would love to see this in 931 00:49:55,720 --> 00:50:00,640 a real, the real lives of people, both your, your staff 932 00:50:00,720 --> 00:50:05,960 and your customers becoming the next CSR agenda for business, 933 00:50:06,800 --> 00:50:11,040 because it will ultimately solve a lot of the problems that CSR 934 00:50:11,040 --> 00:50:13,200 does already. You know, it's looking at 935 00:50:13,520 --> 00:50:17,360 inequality within society. You know, it's looking at mental 936 00:50:17,360 --> 00:50:19,120 health, you know, people's mental health. 937 00:50:19,400 --> 00:50:23,360 It's all related. And if if we can turn 938 00:50:24,080 --> 00:50:30,480 intentional tech use into the next big CSR agenda and start to 939 00:50:30,480 --> 00:50:33,240 see companies investing in the infrastructure of the 940 00:50:33,240 --> 00:50:36,840 communities in which their people and customers live so 941 00:50:36,840 --> 00:50:39,360 that every grassroots football team doesn't have to Scrabble 942 00:50:39,360 --> 00:50:41,920 around for a local pub to sponsor their kits. 943 00:50:42,360 --> 00:50:47,080 Instead, Night comes in or you know, Gym Shark comes in and you 944 00:50:47,080 --> 00:50:51,200 know, L'Oreal comes in and sponsors drama clubs for kids 945 00:50:51,200 --> 00:50:55,440 and you know, sort of anything grass roots in a community. 946 00:50:55,840 --> 00:50:58,880 Let's see business and communities working together to 947 00:50:59,120 --> 00:51:02,240 plug that gap in funding that exists in local. 948 00:51:02,240 --> 00:51:04,400 Communities, it's worth noting you mentioned an opportunity 949 00:51:04,400 --> 00:51:10,640 cost and we don't know what physical real world technologies 950 00:51:10,640 --> 00:51:16,520 would now exist if there wasn't an extraordinary overinvestment 951 00:51:16,680 --> 00:51:19,960 of speculative capital in information technology. 952 00:51:20,040 --> 00:51:22,720 Yeah, actually. Grotesquely, you know, we'd be 953 00:51:22,720 --> 00:51:25,240 flying around in single person drones by now. 954 00:51:25,600 --> 00:51:29,040 But the the extraordinary thing was in a way that there were two 955 00:51:29,040 --> 00:51:30,560 things. There was the opportunity to 956 00:51:30,560 --> 00:51:34,960 capture network effects online combined with the fact that it 957 00:51:34,960 --> 00:51:37,520 was comparatively unregulated. So you could do things very 958 00:51:37,520 --> 00:51:39,880 fast, whereas we try and do something in the real world. 959 00:51:40,400 --> 00:51:43,520 The regulatory and other hurdles are immense. 960 00:51:44,080 --> 00:51:47,040 And so there is a fairpoint which is will we look back in 961 00:51:47,040 --> 00:51:50,800 50-60, seventy years time and go, you know, rather like, you 962 00:51:50,800 --> 00:51:52,760 know, I suppose the Victorians had a period where they were 963 00:51:52,760 --> 00:51:55,000 disproportionately obsessed with railways. 964 00:51:55,040 --> 00:51:56,800 Yeah. You know, will we look at this 965 00:51:56,800 --> 00:52:00,880 and go, actually this was in a sense a completely imbalanced 966 00:52:00,880 --> 00:52:03,080 way to invest our speculative capital? 967 00:52:03,080 --> 00:52:05,200 Oh yeah. And I was. 968 00:52:05,680 --> 00:52:10,800 I was going to say that I have this weird take on AI when we 969 00:52:10,800 --> 00:52:14,280 talked about can AI solve this? I don't think it's going to do 970 00:52:14,280 --> 00:52:18,240 it in a front facing way. I think that every time I see 971 00:52:19,920 --> 00:52:24,800 headlines about jobs being cut because of AI or efficiencies, a 972 00:52:24,800 --> 00:52:27,760 lot of the times it's work that's happening in the digital 973 00:52:27,760 --> 00:52:30,120 space. So I'm thinking that AI is going 974 00:52:30,120 --> 00:52:33,160 to like kick the humans out of the digital space in the digital 975 00:52:33,160 --> 00:52:35,960 jobs and it's going to force us to look back in the real world 976 00:52:35,960 --> 00:52:38,080 and start to innovate where we live. 977 00:52:38,080 --> 00:52:40,680 Because right now the digital space is advancing and getting 978 00:52:40,680 --> 00:52:42,560 better. But the real life world is 979 00:52:42,560 --> 00:52:45,360 almost like getting no love. But eventually you're going to 980 00:52:45,360 --> 00:52:47,280 have this whole generation and you're seeing this with a lot of 981 00:52:47,280 --> 00:52:49,840 young people. The you almost like call them 982 00:52:49,840 --> 00:52:52,960 the, the COVID graduates, right? All of them are finding it very 983 00:52:52,960 --> 00:52:55,720 difficult to get into work. So what are they going to do? 984 00:52:55,720 --> 00:52:57,320 They're going to create in the real world, right? 985 00:52:57,520 --> 00:53:01,360 That's why there's this push for not being in technology. 986 00:53:01,360 --> 00:53:03,920 There's not, you're not, you're not in the matrix, if you will, 987 00:53:04,000 --> 00:53:06,280 right? So you have all these humans 988 00:53:06,280 --> 00:53:08,960 that are living on Earth, but they're all in the matrix 989 00:53:08,960 --> 00:53:12,520 building the matrix, whereas you can't even get from one side of 990 00:53:12,520 --> 00:53:14,840 the US to the other on a train, right? 991 00:53:15,200 --> 00:53:17,200 There's not advancements happening in the real world. 992 00:53:17,200 --> 00:53:19,880 It's almost like we stopped and we're going backwards. 993 00:53:20,200 --> 00:53:24,520 So hopefully what AI will do, because people are getting 994 00:53:24,520 --> 00:53:27,720 pushed out of the Matrix and now into the real world, is going to 995 00:53:27,720 --> 00:53:30,160 force innovation. Or what it's going to do is 996 00:53:30,160 --> 00:53:33,520 you're going to have people that have a vast appreciation for the 997 00:53:33,520 --> 00:53:37,600 arts, for humanity, for how we used to do things. 998 00:53:37,880 --> 00:53:40,240 And then you'll have some people that are like vastly on one end, 999 00:53:40,240 --> 00:53:41,520 the others that are vastly on the other end. 1000 00:53:41,520 --> 00:53:47,720 And I think that'll be, I think some, the CEO of NVIDIA said 1001 00:53:47,720 --> 00:53:49,560 that the next billionaires are going to be plumbers and 1002 00:53:49,560 --> 00:53:53,680 electricians, right? So because those skills are 1003 00:53:53,680 --> 00:53:56,760 needed, right? Like you try to get me to change 1004 00:53:57,000 --> 00:54:01,480 a pipe, I can't do it, right. But you tell me to build a brand 1005 00:54:01,480 --> 00:54:04,400 or do this etcetera, etcetera. I can do that, right? 1006 00:54:05,000 --> 00:54:08,280 And the other thing is you talked about the role of brands. 1007 00:54:08,280 --> 00:54:11,320 This is why my company and what we do is called community 1008 00:54:11,320 --> 00:54:13,320 marketing. Actually the best way for brands 1009 00:54:13,320 --> 00:54:16,840 to grow is to the work that the government used to do, right is 1010 00:54:16,840 --> 00:54:19,560 create grassroots Centers for people to connect. 1011 00:54:19,880 --> 00:54:24,120 And if you think about the Gym Shark store in Regent Street, 1012 00:54:24,520 --> 00:54:28,320 the the reason it was built was not to sell more gym clothes. 1013 00:54:28,600 --> 00:54:31,680 It was to be the next Starbucks, the next modern 2 Swords, to be 1014 00:54:31,680 --> 00:54:36,320 an area where people go to connect and bond over their love 1015 00:54:36,320 --> 00:54:39,280 for fitness, right? That used to be that role, used 1016 00:54:39,280 --> 00:54:42,280 to be played by someone else. Now brands have to play that 1017 00:54:42,280 --> 00:54:44,240 role. Right now, influencers play that 1018 00:54:44,240 --> 00:54:45,680 role. People like Mr. Beast play that 1019 00:54:45,680 --> 00:54:48,040 role. Because it sounds like that's 1020 00:54:48,040 --> 00:54:51,680 now becoming like the spot for anybody that's looking to grow 1021 00:54:51,800 --> 00:54:53,440 that business. It's almost a tragedy, though, 1022 00:54:53,440 --> 00:54:54,720 that they have to step into that. 1023 00:54:54,720 --> 00:54:56,280 Yeah. Because it's just we've lost the 1024 00:54:56,280 --> 00:54:59,760 appetite for communal consumption. 1025 00:54:59,760 --> 00:55:02,920 Yeah. In other words, that bizarrely, 1026 00:55:02,920 --> 00:55:04,840 consumption has become increasingly individual 1027 00:55:04,920 --> 00:55:06,120 realistic. I mean, nearly all 1028 00:55:06,120 --> 00:55:09,280 infrastructure spending in the United States significantly 1029 00:55:09,280 --> 00:55:12,840 stopped in the middle mid 70s. Yeah, Rd. building all the major 1030 00:55:12,840 --> 00:55:17,280 projects, you know, nothing much happened after that period. 1031 00:55:18,080 --> 00:55:22,360 And, you know, those things are always more, it's always more 1032 00:55:22,360 --> 00:55:25,400 time consuming to innovate in the real world because it 1033 00:55:25,400 --> 00:55:28,360 requires the agreement of a lot of different disparate 1034 00:55:28,360 --> 00:55:30,280 individuals before you can proceed. 1035 00:55:31,360 --> 00:55:33,760 And I always remember the the really interesting instance, 1036 00:55:33,760 --> 00:55:36,640 which was in terms of, you know, the future is unevenly 1037 00:55:36,640 --> 00:55:39,600 distributed. There was a sort of Sunday Times 1038 00:55:39,600 --> 00:55:41,520 photograph or something of someone in a court of lower 1039 00:55:41,520 --> 00:55:44,200 middle class Chinese household. And they had a sort of 65 inch 1040 00:55:44,400 --> 00:55:48,480 flat screen TV and a satellite rigged up in the roof, but they 1041 00:55:48,480 --> 00:55:51,840 shat in a hole in the garden. You know, You know, from my 1042 00:55:51,840 --> 00:55:54,480 British perspective, I thought slightly on priorities that, you 1043 00:55:54,480 --> 00:55:57,480 know, you, you, you prioritise your satellite TV over 1044 00:55:57,480 --> 00:55:59,120 sanitation. Then it occurred to me when of 1045 00:55:59,120 --> 00:56:02,720 course sanitation came first in the UK there were, you know, 1046 00:56:02,920 --> 00:56:05,360 public drain projects long before they were satellite 1047 00:56:05,360 --> 00:56:07,400 television. But secondly, you can install a 1048 00:56:07,400 --> 00:56:10,160 satellite TV without asking anybody else. 1049 00:56:10,440 --> 00:56:13,240 If you want to install public drainage, it requires an 1050 00:56:13,240 --> 00:56:15,360 extraordinary amount of cooperation. 1051 00:56:16,000 --> 00:56:18,600 You know that's the bottleneck. And so, yeah, the bottleneck 1052 00:56:18,600 --> 00:56:22,960 there is that we we undoubtedly progress much faster in things 1053 00:56:22,960 --> 00:56:26,200 which can be done individually than in things that require 1054 00:56:26,200 --> 00:56:28,360 collective action. And the miracle of 19th century 1055 00:56:28,360 --> 00:56:30,880 Britain in a sense, was that, you know, the extraordinary 1056 00:56:30,880 --> 00:56:34,160 ability to do things, you know, whether it was a Postal Service, 1057 00:56:34,480 --> 00:56:37,840 you know, the, the penny post or the railways, which were 1058 00:56:37,840 --> 00:56:41,880 effectively collective achievements for collective 1059 00:56:41,880 --> 00:56:45,480 benefit. And there's something there that 1060 00:56:45,480 --> 00:56:48,480 I think is, you know, you know, it is, it does worry me in a way 1061 00:56:48,480 --> 00:56:51,440 that brands have to play this space because it seemed to 1062 00:56:51,440 --> 00:56:53,120 happen from the bottom up. Yeah. 1063 00:56:53,520 --> 00:56:56,960 Fifty, 60-70 years ago, you know there was spontaneous 1064 00:56:57,240 --> 00:57:00,840 coordinated action with, you know, the free, you know the, 1065 00:57:01,080 --> 00:57:03,440 you know, the voluntary cooperation and coordination of 1066 00:57:03,440 --> 00:57:06,520 free people being the highest form of efficiency. 1067 00:57:07,000 --> 00:57:11,360 And that that talent seems to have deserted us. 1068 00:57:11,760 --> 00:57:15,160 Do you think that me and my Cofan have been having this 1069 00:57:15,160 --> 00:57:19,360 conversation and actually my dad is the one that first taught me 1070 00:57:19,360 --> 00:57:24,000 that the best way to actually develop a country is via a 1071 00:57:24,080 --> 00:57:29,640 benevolent dictatorship, right? Because then you have one person 1072 00:57:29,640 --> 00:57:33,080 saying we're going to get this done and not look at HS2, right? 1073 00:57:33,280 --> 00:57:35,360 Yes, that's something that everybody agreed is the right 1074 00:57:35,360 --> 00:57:37,880 thing to do. But because you have to get so 1075 00:57:37,880 --> 00:57:40,400 many people bought into it, it almost like stopped. 1076 00:57:40,760 --> 00:57:44,000 Literally billions spent before any track is laid. 1077 00:57:44,000 --> 00:57:45,880 Yeah. You know, now, if you can trust 1078 00:57:45,880 --> 00:57:48,680 that with the speed at which the railways were built or whatever, 1079 00:57:48,680 --> 00:57:51,080 yeah. You know, in the 19th century, 1080 00:57:51,080 --> 00:57:53,480 it's kind of painful. Terrifying. 1081 00:57:53,480 --> 00:57:54,720 And the tube. I was just thinking about the 1082 00:57:54,720 --> 00:57:56,200 tube. There's a new tube line coming 1083 00:57:56,200 --> 00:57:57,840 out. Quickly they built it and how 1084 00:57:57,840 --> 00:58:02,360 long it's taken to do HS2O. There's so much to unwrap in all 1085 00:58:02,360 --> 00:58:07,200 of those comments you know have we lost community spirit is your 1086 00:58:07,200 --> 00:58:10,920 question why do brands have to come into the into the fold I 1087 00:58:10,920 --> 00:58:15,520 mean yes, both can be true right you know I think it's the right 1088 00:58:15,520 --> 00:58:19,720 thing for brands to do to bring people together in person I went 1089 00:58:19,720 --> 00:58:23,400 to a fabulous event at the outer net brilliant. 1090 00:58:23,760 --> 00:58:28,400 It was all about events and Dino Fabian Riggle who was the 1091 00:58:28,440 --> 00:58:29,880 founder of Secret Cinema I've heard. 1092 00:58:30,760 --> 00:58:33,400 Of secret cinema. He's just setting up a new venue 1093 00:58:33,400 --> 00:58:36,960 in in London called Lost, which is designed to be this 1094 00:58:36,960 --> 00:58:39,480 labyrinthine place where you kind of get disappear. 1095 00:58:39,480 --> 00:58:42,640 You disappear and there's pianos and corridors and you never know 1096 00:58:42,640 --> 00:58:45,400 what you're going to get phones away as soon as you come in. 1097 00:58:45,400 --> 00:58:48,400 And you're supposed to get lost in this place because it's an 1098 00:58:48,400 --> 00:58:50,840 experience. But we live in this age where 1099 00:58:50,840 --> 00:58:54,240 brands are thinking or have been, I think today in very 1100 00:58:54,240 --> 00:58:58,320 simplistic terms, how do we turn our events into Instagram 1101 00:58:58,320 --> 00:59:01,000 content? There's a whole industry of all 1102 00:59:01,000 --> 00:59:05,920 of businesses that just build Instagrammable walls now that 1103 00:59:05,920 --> 00:59:08,880 you have to stand in front of before you get and holidays. 1104 00:59:08,880 --> 00:59:12,200 Every beach now has got one of those swings so that you can 1105 00:59:12,200 --> 00:59:14,880 take a picture and put it on your Instagram. 1106 00:59:15,000 --> 00:59:17,160 Look, tick, I've been there, done that. 1107 00:59:17,160 --> 00:59:18,920 Look at the one awesome life I have. 1108 00:59:20,040 --> 00:59:22,320 And I mean, people have said this for ages, but there's a 1109 00:59:22,320 --> 00:59:24,920 sheer number of people watching concerts through their phones 1110 00:59:24,920 --> 00:59:29,000 when they're in the concerts is it's so depressing, you know, 1111 00:59:29,000 --> 00:59:30,840 because they're never going to look back at it. 1112 00:59:31,840 --> 00:59:35,120 And the most visionary people. And this is where I, I, I do 1113 00:59:35,120 --> 00:59:39,120 feel optimism because I think the tide is turning, you know, 1114 00:59:39,120 --> 00:59:42,800 the, the more and more people are saying, no, you know, these 1115 00:59:42,800 --> 00:59:45,960 are my memories. I'm capturing them here and we 1116 00:59:45,960 --> 00:59:48,680 can take a photo outside if we want to remember the fact that 1117 00:59:48,680 --> 00:59:51,760 we're all here together. But you know, phones away. 1118 00:59:51,760 --> 00:59:54,800 We're we're present and you see Chris Martin, you know, asking 1119 00:59:54,800 --> 00:59:59,440 people, can everyone please, please this one song, put your 1120 00:59:59,440 --> 01:00:02,920 phone away and just be here in the moment, you know, live your 1121 01:00:02,920 --> 01:00:06,240 memories. Don't just capture them for to 1122 01:00:06,280 --> 01:00:08,360 to. Complain about this, by the way, 1123 01:00:08,360 --> 01:00:11,440 because they said the whole business of crowd reaction, 1124 01:00:11,440 --> 01:00:14,360 which used to be fundamental to your motivation in performing on 1125 01:00:14,360 --> 01:00:16,920 stage. In other words, in, you know, 1126 01:00:17,160 --> 01:00:19,320 you're no longer playing to an audience, you're playing to 1127 01:00:19,320 --> 01:00:21,160 cameras. And it's a completely different 1128 01:00:21,160 --> 01:00:23,600 feeling, Yeah. Comedians especially, they 1129 01:00:23,600 --> 01:00:25,840 couldn't test new material. Do you see what you mean? 1130 01:00:25,960 --> 01:00:27,840 Yeah. And and that was the whole 1131 01:00:27,840 --> 01:00:31,600 point, because it could be crap. And they're on camera actually 1132 01:00:31,600 --> 01:00:33,160 being crap. And they're like, hang on. 1133 01:00:33,200 --> 01:00:35,880 They ban it when you go to a comedian show, like they they 1134 01:00:35,920 --> 01:00:39,160 literally put it away. And I also heard that a lot of 1135 01:00:39,160 --> 01:00:43,400 the stage design now at concerts is actually built to almost like 1136 01:00:43,400 --> 01:00:46,880 look good on the phone because that's the best form of 1137 01:00:46,880 --> 01:00:49,400 marketing for the concert itself, right. 1138 01:00:49,640 --> 01:00:54,720 So getting people to go there to actually be like promo for the 1139 01:00:54,720 --> 01:00:58,400 for the band and then everybody else comes in to be more promo. 1140 01:00:58,920 --> 01:01:01,840 No one actually goes there to experience it and be present and 1141 01:01:01,840 --> 01:01:03,720 actually enjoy. It was one of these milkshake 1142 01:01:03,720 --> 01:01:06,640 chains where the milkshakes were not designed by the chef. 1143 01:01:06,640 --> 01:01:08,880 They were basically designed by the marketing director to be 1144 01:01:08,880 --> 01:01:12,840 Instagrammable rather than enjoyable because what, how they 1145 01:01:12,840 --> 01:01:15,160 looked were more important than how they tasted. 1146 01:01:15,920 --> 01:01:19,360 And it is a kind of grotesque distortion. 1147 01:01:19,360 --> 01:01:22,120 And it's really, it's a horrible distortion, I think caused by 1148 01:01:22,120 --> 01:01:25,640 the fact I, I, you know, I do kind of blame the phone because 1149 01:01:25,640 --> 01:01:29,440 I think it is by being portable and by demanding you carry 1150 01:01:29,440 --> 01:01:32,840 Everything Everywhere, which ironically is why EE is called 1151 01:01:32,840 --> 01:01:35,520 EE. Everything Everywhere is 1152 01:01:35,520 --> 01:01:38,040 actually a bit of a pain in the arse that there's a huge 1153 01:01:38,040 --> 01:01:42,040 downsize downside to this because our lives were healthily 1154 01:01:42,040 --> 01:01:46,640 compartmentalised by reality until that came along, including 1155 01:01:46,640 --> 01:01:50,120 the Internet, which was a thing you did at a particular place 1156 01:01:50,120 --> 01:01:53,080 and time. And you know, when I was, you 1157 01:01:53,080 --> 01:01:55,720 know, when I started work and I suddenly realized my young staff 1158 01:01:55,720 --> 01:01:59,360 don't even have any memory of this, which is when you're in 1159 01:01:59,360 --> 01:02:01,080 the photocopier room, you photocopied. 1160 01:02:01,080 --> 01:02:03,520 And when you're in a meeting room, you had a meeting and when 1161 01:02:03,520 --> 01:02:05,920 you're at your desk, you did desk like things. 1162 01:02:06,080 --> 01:02:08,600 And then when you went to the pub afterwards, you had pub 1163 01:02:08,600 --> 01:02:12,320 conversation and they were all neatly compartmentalized by 1164 01:02:12,320 --> 01:02:16,320 reality and kept water tight. And this thing has basically 1165 01:02:16,320 --> 01:02:19,160 messed that up. Means it's, you know, that we 1166 01:02:19,160 --> 01:02:23,440 forget the fact that we to some extent used place to achieve 1167 01:02:23,440 --> 01:02:26,320 focus. Because when I am here, there is 1168 01:02:26,320 --> 01:02:30,280 one thing I can do and it, it, it is genuinely upsetting. 1169 01:02:30,320 --> 01:02:33,560 I mean, there are other problems as well, which is probably we 1170 01:02:33,560 --> 01:02:38,600 talk about the scandalous content that, you know, is 1171 01:02:38,600 --> 01:02:41,360 generated in order to get attention. 1172 01:02:41,480 --> 01:02:44,080 So it's, you know, wildly attention seeking behaviour. 1173 01:02:44,440 --> 01:02:47,800 But there's a there's an opposite problem which is mild. 1174 01:02:47,800 --> 01:02:50,800 The mildly controversial has been completely frozen out. 1175 01:02:51,600 --> 01:02:54,720 In other words, there are two opinions which make sense to 1176 01:02:54,720 --> 01:02:58,320 hold in this world, which is a totally banal, you know, 1177 01:02:58,520 --> 01:03:01,760 politically correct, offensive to no one opinion. 1178 01:03:02,240 --> 01:03:05,800 And then something which which which effectively earns you no 1179 01:03:05,800 --> 01:03:08,920 opprobrium or sense who whatsoever or you can hold an 1180 01:03:08,920 --> 01:03:13,240 absolutely outrageous opinion. So if you are mildly left wing 1181 01:03:13,240 --> 01:03:16,960 or right wing. Get muted. 1182 01:03:16,960 --> 01:03:19,720 The same thing happens in advertising now, which is 1183 01:03:19,880 --> 01:03:25,160 there's a census wide report called the Voice of the CMO and 1184 01:03:25,560 --> 01:03:29,400 a huge number of CM OS say every time we produce a communication, 1185 01:03:29,400 --> 01:03:33,280 we're basically worried about backlash because people will 1186 01:03:33,280 --> 01:03:36,200 contrive all kinds of reasons to be offended. 1187 01:03:38,040 --> 01:03:42,040 And it they also think it's a massive limitation to creativity 1188 01:03:42,040 --> 01:03:45,120 because you can't be mildly provocative anymore. 1189 01:03:45,360 --> 01:03:48,040 You can only be boring or scandalous. 1190 01:03:48,920 --> 01:03:52,640 And you know, if you look at Avatar, I mean, we mentioned 1191 01:03:52,640 --> 01:03:55,680 friends that you know, one of the reasons I think Gen. 1192 01:03:55,680 --> 01:03:58,040 Z are watching friends. You couldn't make friends today 1193 01:03:58,560 --> 01:04:01,640 for all kinds of reasons, OK, because you know, it'd be 1194 01:04:01,640 --> 01:04:04,040 subject to all kinds of censor. Peep Show. 1195 01:04:04,040 --> 01:04:06,360 I was watching Peep Show. Another thing my daughter is 1196 01:04:06,720 --> 01:04:09,160 watches all the time. I don't think you can make that 1197 01:04:09,160 --> 01:04:10,680 now. You know, you couldn't make 1198 01:04:10,680 --> 01:04:11,680 faulty towers. No. 1199 01:04:13,480 --> 01:04:15,800 And you know, you know, I'm mildly worried about 1200 01:04:15,800 --> 01:04:17,480 advertising. I'm actually more worried about 1201 01:04:17,720 --> 01:04:18,640 comedy. Yeah. 1202 01:04:18,760 --> 01:04:21,200 The fact that it's now I'll. I'll give you an example of an 1203 01:04:21,200 --> 01:04:22,400 adverse. My brother had been in 1204 01:04:22,400 --> 01:04:23,840 California. It's quite an interesting 1205 01:04:23,840 --> 01:04:28,480 timeline, California in so this this chief marketing officer 1206 01:04:28,480 --> 01:04:32,600 survey by Census wide mentioned this fundamental fear that we 1207 01:04:32,600 --> 01:04:35,160 can't actually be mildly interesting anymore. 1208 01:04:35,520 --> 01:04:39,240 There are only two and both unattractive extreme positions. 1209 01:04:39,680 --> 01:04:41,680 So my brother had been in California, which was already 1210 01:04:41,680 --> 01:04:45,280 politically correct in 1993. It was already kind of consumed 1211 01:04:45,280 --> 01:04:48,400 by this kind of anxiety about someone somewhere might be 1212 01:04:48,400 --> 01:04:51,960 offended and he was missing kind of British banter. 1213 01:04:53,200 --> 01:04:55,480 And he came back and I dated exactly because it would have 1214 01:04:55,480 --> 01:04:58,600 been, I guess 1993 or something, shortly after the death of 1215 01:04:58,600 --> 01:05:02,080 Robert Maxwell. And he suddenly found himself on 1216 01:05:02,080 --> 01:05:05,400 the tube, convulsed in laughter because there was an ad for the 1217 01:05:05,400 --> 01:05:10,040 Sun on the tube opposite. And this was during the price 1218 01:05:10,040 --> 01:05:11,440 war between the Sun and the Daily Mirror. 1219 01:05:11,440 --> 01:05:14,800 And the Sun was still at 10 P and the Daily Mirror was at 30P. 1220 01:05:15,160 --> 01:05:17,840 And the ad for the Sun simply said the Daily Mirror now cost 1221 01:05:17,840 --> 01:05:20,160 30 P Don't go overboard to buy it. 1222 01:05:20,520 --> 01:05:23,160 This was shortly after the proprietor of the Daily Mirror 1223 01:05:23,240 --> 01:05:26,680 had basically fallen or jumped off his yacht to his own death. 1224 01:05:27,000 --> 01:05:29,880 OK. And my brother had felt so 1225 01:05:29,880 --> 01:05:34,400 deprived of this kind of bad inage and mischief in California 1226 01:05:34,560 --> 01:05:37,000 that he kind of had this moment of, like, I'm home again. 1227 01:05:37,000 --> 01:05:39,800 Yeah, no, it's something. You couldn't do that here now. 1228 01:05:39,800 --> 01:05:40,520 Yeah. Yeah. 1229 01:05:40,680 --> 01:05:42,520 Nothing. You know, some bereavement 1230 01:05:42,520 --> 01:05:44,640 group. In other words, there are a lot 1231 01:05:44,640 --> 01:05:48,040 of organisations which effectively confect offence or 1232 01:05:48,040 --> 01:05:52,240 outrage for their own purposes. And it's having a majorly 1233 01:05:52,240 --> 01:05:54,880 problematic effect, I think, on discourse because what we want 1234 01:05:54,880 --> 01:05:58,880 our children to be exposed to is, you know, mildly contentious 1235 01:05:58,880 --> 01:05:59,720 opinions. Absolutely. 1236 01:06:00,640 --> 01:06:03,560 And what a university should be is, you know, you know, it 1237 01:06:03,560 --> 01:06:06,640 shouldn't be Jordan Peterson and, you know, Andrew Tate all 1238 01:06:06,640 --> 01:06:08,800 the time. They have their place, I'm sure. 1239 01:06:08,800 --> 01:06:11,080 OK. But you should at least expose 1240 01:06:11,080 --> 01:06:15,960 people to opinions that are mildly discomforting and yet 1241 01:06:16,120 --> 01:06:20,000 that content doesn't. It's very, very difficult to 1242 01:06:20,000 --> 01:06:23,880 generate that content because, as I said, you're you're always 1243 01:06:23,880 --> 01:06:26,000 drawn towards one of two. Bizarre. 1244 01:06:26,080 --> 01:06:28,600 Dreams business model, that's what the attention of business 1245 01:06:28,600 --> 01:06:31,480 model is. It's in their business interests 1246 01:06:31,480 --> 01:06:36,320 to keep us outraged and or affirmed in our opinions, which 1247 01:06:36,320 --> 01:06:41,440 is why the attention economy has to by default set up or a view 1248 01:06:41,440 --> 01:06:44,360 of the world as a battle between good and evil people, of course. 1249 01:06:45,080 --> 01:06:47,080 And that's what it is. And of course that line runs 1250 01:06:47,080 --> 01:06:49,840 through the middle of each and every one of us, you know, and 1251 01:06:49,840 --> 01:06:52,120 if you think that you can understand Middle Eastern 1252 01:06:52,120 --> 01:06:55,400 politics on the basis of a 3 minute TikTok video, you know 1253 01:06:55,400 --> 01:06:57,480 you've got a problem. And yet there's people marching 1254 01:06:57,480 --> 01:06:59,760 that have done that, you know, that don't know which river and 1255 01:06:59,760 --> 01:07:02,840 don't know which city, you know, and that, but that's just one 1256 01:07:02,840 --> 01:07:05,560 example. And it and it's profoundly 1257 01:07:05,560 --> 01:07:07,160 worrying. I mean, one of the solutions 1258 01:07:07,160 --> 01:07:10,520 that I've I've tapped into is, you know, basically media 1259 01:07:10,520 --> 01:07:15,280 literacy and actually doing that work with children to understand 1260 01:07:15,560 --> 01:07:18,800 it's complicated stuff right now, the motivations of the 1261 01:07:18,800 --> 01:07:22,480 creator, you know, and where you get your content from. 1262 01:07:22,480 --> 01:07:27,160 And in the media and advertising world, there was a great debate 1263 01:07:27,160 --> 01:07:33,320 that I was at last week about the efficacy of quality media 1264 01:07:33,360 --> 01:07:37,360 buy versus social media media buy. 1265 01:07:37,480 --> 01:07:40,000 And apparently there's, you know, there's something like 15% 1266 01:07:40,000 --> 01:07:44,080 wastage when you buy social media ad spend, you know, and, 1267 01:07:44,520 --> 01:07:49,240 and the the effectiveness of, of sitting your adverts next to 1268 01:07:49,240 --> 01:07:51,520 quality journalism. And, you know, no. 1269 01:07:51,520 --> 01:07:54,760 No context. Context effects conviction 1270 01:07:54,760 --> 01:07:56,960 effectively, yeah. And, and the extent to which 1271 01:07:56,960 --> 01:08:00,160 the, to some extent, I, I would argue that the digital media 1272 01:08:00,160 --> 01:08:02,640 world has been desperate to commoditize everything. 1273 01:08:03,200 --> 01:08:06,600 And the metrics of marketing have been to some extent hacked 1274 01:08:06,600 --> 01:08:11,040 by the people like Meta and their own homework, their own 1275 01:08:11,040 --> 01:08:14,000 homework, OK. And, you know, they've managed 1276 01:08:14,000 --> 01:08:17,640 to infect with this idea of efficiency, the whole judgement 1277 01:08:17,640 --> 01:08:21,200 of, you know, what effective marketing is and reduced it to a 1278 01:08:21,200 --> 01:08:25,120 kind of bizarre competition to throw money at $2 trillion 1279 01:08:25,120 --> 01:08:28,000 companies. And I, you know, I think we, we 1280 01:08:28,000 --> 01:08:29,720 should hold ourselves responsible for this because I 1281 01:08:29,720 --> 01:08:33,479 think it's been, I mean, having said that, OK, the clients 1282 01:08:33,479 --> 01:08:36,760 themselves would much prefer to have numerical comparable 1283 01:08:36,760 --> 01:08:39,760 metrics than to actually engage in any kind of subjective 1284 01:08:39,760 --> 01:08:42,240 decision making. But if the metrics are there, 1285 01:08:42,240 --> 01:08:44,240 which they are. Yeah, the I mean. 1286 01:08:44,240 --> 01:08:48,439 And the CSR is there, yes. You know, that's when this 1287 01:08:48,600 --> 01:08:51,960 becomes a really interesting table that the brand should all 1288 01:08:51,960 --> 01:08:53,359 be set. At Well, the other interesting 1289 01:08:53,359 --> 01:08:55,800 finding, if you think about it, is that influencer marketing is 1290 01:08:55,800 --> 01:08:58,319 extraordinarily effective. And it occurred to me that's 1291 01:08:58,319 --> 01:09:01,120 because influencer marketing is to some extent the opposite of 1292 01:09:01,120 --> 01:09:02,840 what performance marketing is done. 1293 01:09:03,160 --> 01:09:06,560 You know, it lasts for a long time, the effects really endure. 1294 01:09:07,200 --> 01:09:10,319 You know, it has real humans and appears within a contextual 1295 01:09:10,319 --> 01:09:12,240 setting. And so, you know, it's 1296 01:09:12,240 --> 01:09:15,439 everything, which the other form of digital advertising isn't. 1297 01:09:15,720 --> 01:09:18,240 So we shouldn't be really surprised by it's success 1298 01:09:18,240 --> 01:09:19,880 because it's filling a void I think. 1299 01:09:19,880 --> 01:09:22,080 But what's going to be really interesting though, is that Meta 1300 01:09:22,080 --> 01:09:26,479 have just announced that they will soon be allowing people to 1301 01:09:26,479 --> 01:09:31,160 opt out of ads and allow them to pay £4 a month. 1302 01:09:31,160 --> 01:09:36,080 I think it's £3.99 a month to have a YouTube Premium X 1303 01:09:36,080 --> 01:09:39,960 experience, right? Right where they don't get any 1304 01:09:39,960 --> 01:09:42,000 ads. So what's going to happen back? 1305 01:09:42,000 --> 01:09:44,279 On the platform at that point, and this is weird from someone 1306 01:09:44,279 --> 01:09:49,000 working in advertising because if they can stop doing that 1307 01:09:49,000 --> 01:09:53,479 thing where they go so and so's just posted and I have no idea 1308 01:09:53,479 --> 01:09:57,920 from the e-mail whether it's because a child has died or 1309 01:09:57,920 --> 01:10:01,000 because their daughter has just baked a cake. 1310 01:10:01,200 --> 01:10:05,320 OK, And I am forced to go to Facebook to find out, OK, if 1311 01:10:05,320 --> 01:10:08,080 they can actually, you know, get themselves back into the 1312 01:10:08,080 --> 01:10:11,360 provision of consumer value and away from this absolutely 1313 01:10:11,360 --> 01:10:15,840 maniacal focus on hacking attention, then I'm back in 1314 01:10:15,840 --> 01:10:17,760 there. I mean, you know, I pay for 1315 01:10:17,760 --> 01:10:22,280 caggy.com, which is a paid for search engine because I no 1316 01:10:22,280 --> 01:10:24,960 longer trust Google to be in the business of telling me what I 1317 01:10:24,960 --> 01:10:28,000 want to know rather than in the business of telling me what 1318 01:10:28,000 --> 01:10:31,120 someone else wants me to know. And I've had enough bad 1319 01:10:31,120 --> 01:10:34,840 experiences where you end up paying $60.00 for that Canadian 1320 01:10:35,080 --> 01:10:36,720 Ester. You know what, CS, whatever it's 1321 01:10:36,720 --> 01:10:39,320 called, the kid, you know, the Canadian equivalent of an Ester. 1322 01:10:39,400 --> 01:10:39,840 Yeah. OK. 1323 01:10:40,160 --> 01:10:43,120 Well, the top search result is basically a company that sells 1324 01:10:43,120 --> 01:10:45,920 you something that should cost 14 Canadian dollars for 60. 1325 01:10:45,920 --> 01:10:50,080 Yeah, Well, unsurprisingly, the dishonest actor can outbid the 1326 01:10:50,080 --> 01:10:54,040 honest actor, in this case, the Canadian government in 1327 01:10:54,080 --> 01:10:56,080 effectively reaching the top of the search rankings. 1328 01:10:56,080 --> 01:10:58,480 Now, I'm sorry, if you're a trillion dollar company packed 1329 01:10:58,480 --> 01:11:01,840 with Stanford's PhDs, someone should have clocked this. 1330 01:11:02,280 --> 01:11:04,360 You know that we are effectively, we have an auction 1331 01:11:04,360 --> 01:11:09,000 mechanism which will undoubtedly privilege whoever is the highest 1332 01:11:09,000 --> 01:11:12,800 margin or or least honest actor in the marketplace. 1333 01:11:12,800 --> 01:11:17,280 You know, now you know, my argument is this is this is, you 1334 01:11:17,280 --> 01:11:19,760 know, this isn't rocket science. This is basic economics and 1335 01:11:19,760 --> 01:11:21,240 someone should have been alert to this. 1336 01:11:21,520 --> 01:11:24,720 And so this inshitification problem is really, really acute, 1337 01:11:24,880 --> 01:11:26,000 I think. I think it's going to be 1338 01:11:26,000 --> 01:11:28,320 interesting, though, going back to the argument about the fact 1339 01:11:28,320 --> 01:11:32,200 that currently influencer marketing is human and paid 1340 01:11:32,200 --> 01:11:35,280 media is robotic. Now that paid media's 1341 01:11:35,280 --> 01:11:38,960 effectiveness will start to go down, will advertisers put all 1342 01:11:38,960 --> 01:11:41,600 their money on creators and turn them robotic? 1343 01:11:41,680 --> 01:11:43,480 Because marketers are in everything, right? 1344 01:11:44,680 --> 01:11:47,160 The other thing though that worries me, I actually don't 1345 01:11:47,160 --> 01:11:49,840 think paying a premium for ads is going to solve a lot of the 1346 01:11:49,840 --> 01:11:52,280 problems that we're seeing in the attention economy because 1347 01:11:52,280 --> 01:11:56,240 the ads don't kind of, you know, they don't polarize you, they 1348 01:11:56,240 --> 01:11:59,200 don't addict you. You know, they don't, they're 1349 01:11:59,200 --> 01:12:02,280 not designed to be addictive. That you, you know, how 1350 01:12:02,320 --> 01:12:04,720 effective they are as a result. I don't know, some are. 1351 01:12:04,720 --> 01:12:06,440 I mean, I bought half my Christmas presents based on 1352 01:12:06,440 --> 01:12:11,560 Instagram advertising, but. Has the engagement that you put 1353 01:12:11,560 --> 01:12:15,160 in and the increased value that that has for the advertisers, 1354 01:12:15,160 --> 01:12:19,200 does that reduce because they're not trying to get you to engage 1355 01:12:19,680 --> 01:12:21,160 because? The business model of the 1356 01:12:21,160 --> 01:12:24,000 business completely changes if it's a subscription model. 1357 01:12:24,000 --> 01:12:29,000 I mean, it's interesting to see the popularity of the paper 1358 01:12:29,000 --> 01:12:31,800 publications like The Spectator, The New Statesman, The Week, it 1359 01:12:31,800 --> 01:12:35,080 said for The Economist, which are because they're 1360 01:12:35,080 --> 01:12:40,680 predominantly read by subscribers, their motivation is 1361 01:12:40,680 --> 01:12:45,520 to reward the reader rather than to hack attention because the 1362 01:12:45,520 --> 01:12:47,760 attention is already a given. These are the people who 1363 01:12:47,760 --> 01:12:49,600 subscribe. They're they're extremely 1364 01:12:49,600 --> 01:12:51,640 successful. I mean, I asked Michael Gove, 1365 01:12:51,640 --> 01:12:54,920 who edits The Spectator, if you close down every single digital 1366 01:12:54,920 --> 01:12:57,280 part of the publication, would you survive? 1367 01:12:57,280 --> 01:12:59,080 Oh yeah, yeah. They'd still make money as a 1368 01:12:59,080 --> 01:13:02,840 paper publication. And one of the interesting 1369 01:13:02,840 --> 01:13:07,320 things is, and this is a a marketing person at the FT who 1370 01:13:07,320 --> 01:13:10,320 first made this point, which is if most of our readers are 1371 01:13:10,320 --> 01:13:17,080 subscribers, we have to focus much more on effectively because 1372 01:13:17,080 --> 01:13:19,520 we can take their attention, you know, attention or at least 1373 01:13:19,520 --> 01:13:21,320 their money as a given. OK. 1374 01:13:21,720 --> 01:13:24,880 And our, our incentive then is to keep them as subscribers by 1375 01:13:24,880 --> 01:13:27,480 being as long term rewarding as possible. 1376 01:13:28,000 --> 01:13:31,320 So I would really miss having that on the mat on Saturday. 1377 01:13:32,120 --> 01:13:34,320 Whereas if you have an advertiser funded model, 1378 01:13:34,600 --> 01:13:38,400 effectively the advertiser isn't really appraised of the mood the 1379 01:13:38,400 --> 01:13:40,840 person's in when they're exposed to the message. 1380 01:13:41,240 --> 01:13:45,280 And so anything you can do to garner attention is sort of Fair 1381 01:13:45,280 --> 01:13:47,360 game. And of course, that will end up 1382 01:13:47,360 --> 01:13:49,360 with your race to the bottom. Yeah. 1383 01:13:50,160 --> 01:13:52,520 That's interesting. And, you know, you know, 1384 01:13:52,520 --> 01:13:56,840 essentially it's sort of you get what you pay for and, you know, 1385 01:13:57,000 --> 01:14:00,200 you know, and, you know, I, I would argue that. 1386 01:14:00,200 --> 01:14:01,760 And, you know, I think, you know, if we're going to be 1387 01:14:01,760 --> 01:14:05,200 really happy about this, a world where we pay for this stuff, 1388 01:14:05,760 --> 01:14:08,720 yeah, it's very difficult psychologically to get people to 1389 01:14:08,720 --> 01:14:10,400 pay for something they're used to having free. 1390 01:14:10,840 --> 01:14:12,800 Yeah. Extremely difficult. 1391 01:14:13,280 --> 01:14:16,000 And cynically, I wonder whether having learned the lessons of 1392 01:14:16,000 --> 01:14:18,560 attention, why wouldn't they just keep both, You know, if 1393 01:14:18,560 --> 01:14:20,920 they've got premium, if if people aren't complaining 1394 01:14:20,920 --> 01:14:24,280 themselves about the attention. I mean, and and and let's be 1395 01:14:24,280 --> 01:14:26,240 honest, creators do this for themselves. 1396 01:14:26,240 --> 01:14:29,920 Be interesting to see, you know, how as as this podcast takes 1397 01:14:29,920 --> 01:14:34,880 off, what you learn about algorithmically, you know, what 1398 01:14:34,960 --> 01:14:39,280 is the most effective real that you'll put out? 1399 01:14:39,280 --> 01:14:42,360 Because I've noticed so many of these creators that I've really 1400 01:14:42,360 --> 01:14:45,400 enjoyed become extreme versions of themselves. 1401 01:14:45,400 --> 01:14:46,920 It's called content capture, right? 1402 01:14:46,920 --> 01:14:51,720 Audience capture and they they play the game now you know, 1403 01:14:51,720 --> 01:14:56,320 they've all got the you'll never guess what this what this person 1404 01:14:56,320 --> 01:15:00,720 said and you know, the click make click bait is I just think, 1405 01:15:00,720 --> 01:15:03,240 oh, what a shame. I loved you because you were so 1406 01:15:03,240 --> 01:15:06,400 nuanced and now you're getting on more and more extreme guess 1407 01:15:06,400 --> 01:15:09,760 you're, you know, you're playing that click bait game and I've 1408 01:15:09,760 --> 01:15:13,520 I'm susceptible to it. I do click on it and I, I just 1409 01:15:13,520 --> 01:15:14,520 say I didn't want to click on that. 1410 01:15:14,520 --> 01:15:16,840 And it's not actually a good representation of what you were, 1411 01:15:17,160 --> 01:15:19,520 what your whole podcast was about in that moment. 1412 01:15:19,520 --> 01:15:23,200 It's cynical, but it it's playing the the clicks game. 1413 01:15:23,200 --> 01:15:27,840 I was on a podcast where the headline completely 1414 01:15:27,840 --> 01:15:30,840 misrepresented my opinion. I know how that was. 1415 01:15:31,200 --> 01:15:33,120 I had to get it taken. I've got it taken down because I 1416 01:15:33,160 --> 01:15:38,080 said at no point in this podcast did I say anything that was in 1417 01:15:38,080 --> 01:15:41,800 any way equivalent to the quote you'd attributed to me. 1418 01:15:42,160 --> 01:15:46,040 But it was simply optimized most for, you know, again, anger, 1419 01:15:46,160 --> 01:15:47,320 really. Yeah. 1420 01:15:47,640 --> 01:15:51,640 And so, so one of the reasons why when I, when I was speaking 1421 01:15:51,640 --> 01:15:54,080 to worry about this podcast was exactly that. 1422 01:15:54,160 --> 01:15:59,720 We said everything is about, well, we want to know people. 1423 01:15:59,760 --> 01:16:03,120 But then we want to be able to have almost like discussions 1424 01:16:03,120 --> 01:16:05,840 about things that are actually happening in the world and want 1425 01:16:05,840 --> 01:16:09,680 to do it not in a way to kind of like bait people out or to try 1426 01:16:09,680 --> 01:16:11,560 to get people to see them as extreme. 1427 01:16:11,560 --> 01:16:13,920 We actually want to humanize everybody, right? 1428 01:16:14,080 --> 01:16:16,040 It's almost like the space where you get the opportunity to 1429 01:16:16,040 --> 01:16:17,920 speak. You're allowed to speak your 1430 01:16:17,920 --> 01:16:21,320 mind and we have a human discussion around topics. 1431 01:16:21,320 --> 01:16:23,560 I think a lot of the times, especially in this world, as 1432 01:16:23,560 --> 01:16:26,760 soon as somebody doesn't align with your opinion, you almost 1433 01:16:26,760 --> 01:16:29,200 like shunned them to one side. Whereas really what you should 1434 01:16:29,200 --> 01:16:31,280 be able to do, and one thing that I learned really early on 1435 01:16:31,280 --> 01:16:34,520 was the fact that I should be able to sit next to somebody 1436 01:16:34,520 --> 01:16:37,440 that has a completely different opinion to myself, but I can 1437 01:16:37,440 --> 01:16:40,560 hear them out and try to understand why they think that 1438 01:16:40,560 --> 01:16:42,280 way. And I think that actually the 1439 01:16:42,280 --> 01:16:44,560 human bottleneck that's happening in society right now 1440 01:16:44,560 --> 01:16:46,600 is that people don't even give each other the courtesy to do 1441 01:16:46,600 --> 01:16:47,240 that. Right. 1442 01:16:47,240 --> 01:16:51,160 We, we always did that in pubs. I mean a standard pub table 1443 01:16:51,440 --> 01:16:56,280 would have around it people with opinions verging from fanatical 1444 01:16:56,280 --> 01:17:00,640 Marxists, you know, to, you know, you know, rabid right 1445 01:17:00,640 --> 01:17:03,720 wingers, OK. And they accommodated each other 1446 01:17:04,760 --> 01:17:07,800 partly because each of the people, particularly those with 1447 01:17:07,800 --> 01:17:10,720 extreme opinions, knew that there was a limit to how much 1448 01:17:10,720 --> 01:17:13,240 you could bang on before you became boring. 1449 01:17:14,040 --> 01:17:18,240 But of course, when you can effectively one, find a 1450 01:17:18,240 --> 01:17:21,280 completely receptive audience or secondly, you can continually 1451 01:17:21,280 --> 01:17:25,840 find new people to bore the usual constraints on being a 1452 01:17:25,840 --> 01:17:30,200 kind of single issue fanatic, which were simply social censor, 1453 01:17:30,880 --> 01:17:34,280 OK, no longer really applied. Another one that interests me 1454 01:17:34,280 --> 01:17:38,440 fascinatingly is trolling the people who just go online and 1455 01:17:38,440 --> 01:17:41,720 just are just randomly rude with no constructive point to be made 1456 01:17:41,720 --> 01:17:44,440 whatsoever. By the way, I I wouldn't see any 1457 01:17:44,440 --> 01:17:47,560 objection to taking that content down because it's worthless, OK, 1458 01:17:47,560 --> 01:17:49,800 You know, if it's just a gratuitous insult, I don't think 1459 01:17:49,800 --> 01:17:51,800 it falls under free speech. It's pointless. 1460 01:17:53,360 --> 01:17:57,840 But very interesting thing, in the 18th century in London, the 1461 01:17:57,840 --> 01:18:00,200 people who travelled along the river on the riverboats 1462 01:18:00,280 --> 01:18:03,240 routinely used to shout abuse at people on the bank, Just random 1463 01:18:03,240 --> 01:18:06,240 abuse, OK. And they just had wanker fatso, 1464 01:18:06,240 --> 01:18:08,200 whatever it might be. And we know this from Boswell's 1465 01:18:08,200 --> 01:18:11,160 Life of Johnson and the reason between us, if you think about 1466 01:18:11,160 --> 01:18:15,040 it, you had, in order to do that, to abuse someone without 1467 01:18:15,040 --> 01:18:20,720 the risk of consequences, there were very, very few situations. 1468 01:18:20,840 --> 01:18:22,800 You know that Monty Python scene, your mother was a 1469 01:18:22,800 --> 01:18:24,440 hamster. Well, your father was a hamster 1470 01:18:24,440 --> 01:18:26,080 and your mother smells of elderberries. 1471 01:18:26,320 --> 01:18:28,880 You can do that because you're in the wall of a castle and no 1472 01:18:28,880 --> 01:18:30,200 one can get at you. Okay. 1473 01:18:30,720 --> 01:18:33,920 There weren't many situations where taunting was possible 1474 01:18:34,080 --> 01:18:36,840 because either you were in a small community where people 1475 01:18:36,840 --> 01:18:39,840 knew who you were, so they'd bump into you again and then 1476 01:18:39,840 --> 01:18:42,480 beat you up. Or, you know, in a large city, 1477 01:18:42,480 --> 01:18:43,880 they could come after you and beat you up. 1478 01:18:44,200 --> 01:18:46,680 But if you're in a city of a million people, which was London 1479 01:18:46,680 --> 01:18:50,360 in the 18th century, and you're on a boat in the river, there 1480 01:18:50,360 --> 01:18:51,720 was no way they could get to you. 1481 01:18:52,080 --> 01:18:54,480 So there's this awful, terrifying thing which occurs to 1482 01:18:54,480 --> 01:18:58,040 me about human nature, which is it somehow in our nature, in the 1483 01:18:58,040 --> 01:19:01,440 rare, when it was rare to be able to abuse people, that was 1484 01:19:01,440 --> 01:19:03,040 our natural instinct. Yeah. 1485 01:19:03,160 --> 01:19:05,640 There were these rare occasions where you could abuse people 1486 01:19:05,640 --> 01:19:08,880 without consequences, and we naturally found that amusing. 1487 01:19:09,160 --> 01:19:13,160 And then you end up with, for example, anonymity online. 1488 01:19:13,400 --> 01:19:14,720 I mean, there are various people. 1489 01:19:14,720 --> 01:19:17,720 I think Scott Galloway makes the point, which is, yeah, you kind 1490 01:19:17,720 --> 01:19:21,640 of have the right to free speech but not to do it anonymously, 1491 01:19:22,200 --> 01:19:23,560 that they've always been anonymous. 1492 01:19:23,800 --> 01:19:27,080 Graffiti was anonymous, you know, vehicle. 1493 01:19:27,240 --> 01:19:29,920 But the extent to which people can just drift around 1494 01:19:29,920 --> 01:19:34,040 anonymously in this world without any effectively 1495 01:19:34,040 --> 01:19:36,720 reputational consequences attached to their actions? 1496 01:19:37,120 --> 01:19:40,040 That's a stretch on free speech. Yeah. 1497 01:19:40,040 --> 01:19:41,960 And once you get that. You know, in in other words, you 1498 01:19:41,960 --> 01:19:44,280 know, yeah, you, yeah, you have an absolutely right to say what 1499 01:19:44,280 --> 01:19:46,640 you like, but you do live with the consequences of what you 1500 01:19:46,640 --> 01:19:49,120 say. But that ability and the 1501 01:19:49,120 --> 01:19:53,240 temptation that then comes comes across effectively just to turn 1502 01:19:53,240 --> 01:19:55,360 yourself into a mindless abuse engine. 1503 01:19:56,560 --> 01:19:59,800 You know, it's not something we evolved to cope with. 1504 01:19:59,800 --> 01:20:01,680 That's what I'm saying. You know, whereas we have 1505 01:20:01,680 --> 01:20:04,960 evolved all kinds of mechanisms for dealing with ourselves in 1506 01:20:04,960 --> 01:20:09,480 non anonymous groups of 150 people, you know, those are self 1507 01:20:09,480 --> 01:20:13,800 policing to a large extent, as are smaller online communities. 1508 01:20:13,800 --> 01:20:16,640 Of course you know they're self policing and perfectly amicable. 1509 01:20:17,040 --> 01:20:18,280 Yeah. When you look at like platforms, 1510 01:20:18,280 --> 01:20:20,760 like LinkedIn for example, there's a billion users on the 1511 01:20:20,760 --> 01:20:23,640 platform, but only 1% of the people on the platform actually 1512 01:20:23,640 --> 01:20:27,640 engage or post, right? Well, I think it's 40% of the 1513 01:20:27,640 --> 01:20:30,840 people actively engaged with posts on LinkedIn, but only 1% 1514 01:20:30,840 --> 01:20:32,840 actually create. It's because of that very 1515 01:20:32,840 --> 01:20:34,960 reason. Not only is your name there, 1516 01:20:34,960 --> 01:20:37,640 your picture there, your jobs there, right? 1517 01:20:37,880 --> 01:20:40,520 So you're a little bit more conscious about what it is that 1518 01:20:40,520 --> 01:20:43,000 you put out there because there's consequences, right? 1519 01:20:43,280 --> 01:20:45,920 It's not like you're driving in New York and you can yell at the 1520 01:20:45,920 --> 01:20:48,360 person and then keep driving because everybody's just yelling 1521 01:20:48,360 --> 01:20:50,240 at people. Yes, it's almost like you're at 1522 01:20:50,240 --> 01:20:52,400 the stop and people know who you are. 1523 01:20:52,880 --> 01:20:54,880 And if you really want to say something, it's because you 1524 01:20:54,880 --> 01:20:58,400 actually mean it, right? When I go down to East Kent, far 1525 01:20:58,400 --> 01:21:01,520 enough away from London, if someone, if you're in it, if 1526 01:21:01,520 --> 01:21:04,320 you're driving along next to a row of parked cars and someone 1527 01:21:04,320 --> 01:21:08,680 waits for you and you don't give them a wave of thanks, that's a 1528 01:21:08,680 --> 01:21:11,880 pretty major social infraction. Yeah. 1529 01:21:11,880 --> 01:21:15,600 And so levels of politeness and general sort of concern for each 1530 01:21:15,600 --> 01:21:18,920 other undoubtedly seems seem to correlate to degree. 1531 01:21:19,160 --> 01:21:22,600 In other words, the likelihood that I'll, I'll tell you 1532 01:21:22,600 --> 01:21:24,400 something. I used to travel in first class 1533 01:21:24,400 --> 01:21:27,360 by train from 7 Oaks. On the train, OK, you would 1534 01:21:27,360 --> 01:21:30,880 never see anybody who boarded at 7 Oaks or Tunbridge or 1535 01:21:30,880 --> 01:21:33,160 Tunbridge, well, sitting in a first class seat without a first 1536 01:21:33,160 --> 01:21:39,040 class ticket because if they got called out, OK, you know, it was 1537 01:21:39,120 --> 01:21:40,520 a matter of social embarrassment. 1538 01:21:40,520 --> 01:21:42,760 Someone on the train would know who they were. 1539 01:21:43,040 --> 01:21:45,800 Once you got to Orpington or Bromley South or something, all 1540 01:21:45,800 --> 01:21:49,440 bets were on OK because you've reached that level of population 1541 01:21:49,440 --> 01:21:53,400 density where nobody expected to encounter anybody ever again. 1542 01:21:53,840 --> 01:21:57,920 And so, you know, I mean, we're not really designed for worlds. 1543 01:21:57,920 --> 01:22:00,600 I include big cities in this. We're not really designed for 1544 01:22:00,600 --> 01:22:05,000 worlds in which we don't expect to meet the same people more 1545 01:22:05,000 --> 01:22:08,160 than once. Yeah, and it was, it always 1546 01:22:08,160 --> 01:22:10,600 struck me as there there was also a friend I had who used to 1547 01:22:10,920 --> 01:22:14,000 travel to Petersfield. I think there was one train a 1548 01:22:14,000 --> 01:22:17,960 day on Southwestern which didn't stop until Petersfield. 1549 01:22:17,960 --> 01:22:21,680 And the people who lived in Petersfield Oblong beyond loved 1550 01:22:21,680 --> 01:22:25,200 that train because the level of courtesy and kind of deference 1551 01:22:25,200 --> 01:22:28,040 to each other on that train because it didn't stop anywhere 1552 01:22:28,040 --> 01:22:31,000 with a high density population was just delightful. 1553 01:22:31,000 --> 01:22:34,160 You know, like sort of lives like the Railway Children. 1554 01:22:34,160 --> 01:22:37,080 It was a charming old fashioned train atmosphere. 1555 01:22:37,680 --> 01:22:39,840 And so, you know, there are, there are, you know, we've 1556 01:22:39,840 --> 01:22:43,320 undoubtedly suddenly exposed ourselves to effectively not 1557 01:22:43,320 --> 01:22:45,960 just the information environment, but a social 1558 01:22:45,960 --> 01:22:49,800 environment to which we're, you know, our evolved brains have 1559 01:22:49,800 --> 01:22:55,560 left us completely unprepared. And, you know, and you know, 1560 01:22:55,720 --> 01:22:59,240 you're absolutely right to say, I mean, you know, we have to, 1561 01:22:59,320 --> 01:23:02,280 you're, you're right also to be healthily ambiguous about this 1562 01:23:02,280 --> 01:23:04,960 because I'm always, you know, I always make this point that, you 1563 01:23:04,960 --> 01:23:08,440 know, it's very easy to want a Black Hat, white hat, 1564 01:23:08,440 --> 01:23:10,600 everything. And if you take some like 1565 01:23:10,600 --> 01:23:14,160 Airbnb, well, there are areas where I think Airbnb is actually 1566 01:23:14,160 --> 01:23:15,720 wonderful. You know, there's some farmer 1567 01:23:15,720 --> 01:23:18,520 who's got some crappy outbuilding, which you can turn 1568 01:23:18,520 --> 01:23:20,960 into a source of revenue and people can spend the weekend 1569 01:23:20,960 --> 01:23:24,000 there and it's all wonderful. And then you go to Barcelona and 1570 01:23:24,000 --> 01:23:27,080 you kind of go, it's more profitable to rent a 2 bedroom 1571 01:23:27,080 --> 01:23:33,400 apartment for 9 weekends of the year to Airbnb is than it is to 1572 01:23:33,400 --> 01:23:37,200 actually rent it as a full time residence to a local Barcelona. 1573 01:23:37,200 --> 01:23:40,040 And you go, that's actually kind of shit, isn't it? 1574 01:23:40,640 --> 01:23:43,200 You know, that's actually, and then you go to Barcelona and 1575 01:23:43,200 --> 01:23:46,080 effectively all it is, is people Wheeling suitcases through the 1576 01:23:46,080 --> 01:23:48,240 streets to go to their various Airbnb's. 1577 01:23:48,280 --> 01:23:51,160 As you know, I mean, this is the interesting thing. 1578 01:23:51,160 --> 01:23:56,600 Now we've, you know, maybe we can use technology to, you know, 1579 01:23:56,600 --> 01:24:00,000 we can ultimately start to self correct. 1580 01:24:00,200 --> 01:24:02,760 But I think the problem we've got is that, I mean, weirdly, 1581 01:24:03,120 --> 01:24:07,360 although I'm, you know, politically to the right of most 1582 01:24:07,360 --> 01:24:11,080 people at my office, they're much more naive in their 1583 01:24:11,080 --> 01:24:14,880 enthusiasm for free market capitalism than I am in some 1584 01:24:14,880 --> 01:24:18,680 respects. In that, you know, it's 1585 01:24:18,680 --> 01:24:21,720 automatically assumed that the perfect purpose of a company is 1586 01:24:21,720 --> 01:24:23,840 to reward its shareholders, which I don't accept. 1587 01:24:23,920 --> 01:24:27,400 In fact, in fact, I think the companies that pursue that route 1588 01:24:27,400 --> 01:24:29,440 aren't actually very good at rewarding their Shell 1589 01:24:29,440 --> 01:24:32,120 shareholders in the long term because they tend to neglect 1590 01:24:32,120 --> 01:24:35,360 their customers. Who's the most of them and. 1591 01:24:37,000 --> 01:24:43,040 So 10/15/20, forty years ago, everybody in television, in 1592 01:24:43,040 --> 01:24:46,160 advertising, et cetera, would have moral discussions about the 1593 01:24:46,160 --> 01:24:49,280 consequences of what they did. And what free market economics 1594 01:24:49,280 --> 01:24:53,360 has created is a kind of very narrow utilitarianism, which 1595 01:24:53,440 --> 01:24:56,520 effectively makes it possible to sort of justify more or less any 1596 01:24:56,520 --> 01:24:58,320 self interested position you hold. 1597 01:24:59,360 --> 01:25:04,160 And David Ogilvy didn't believe he thought that billboards were 1598 01:25:04,160 --> 01:25:06,440 immoral. So they're the most prominent 1599 01:25:06,440 --> 01:25:09,880 advertising person in the 19, you know, 50s and beyond until 1600 01:25:09,880 --> 01:25:12,600 the 70s. And his argument was they broke 1601 01:25:12,600 --> 01:25:15,440 the contract with the public because if you advertised on 1602 01:25:15,440 --> 01:25:17,800 television or if you advertised in The Washington Post or the 1603 01:25:17,800 --> 01:25:21,080 New York Times or whatever, OK, you were funding the surrounding 1604 01:25:21,080 --> 01:25:23,320 content. So everybody won the advertiser 1605 01:25:23,320 --> 01:25:25,520 benefit. The consumer benefited, the 1606 01:25:25,520 --> 01:25:28,240 publication benefited. It was part of a kind of kind of 1607 01:25:28,240 --> 01:25:31,920 benign feedback loop, which was, you know, essentially a win win 1608 01:25:31,920 --> 01:25:34,600 for all three parties. He argued that the Billboard 1609 01:25:34,600 --> 01:25:36,880 benefited the landowner and it might have benefited the 1610 01:25:36,880 --> 01:25:40,360 advertiser, but to the detriment of the passers by who had to 1611 01:25:40,360 --> 01:25:42,400 cope with an ugly their environment because of the 1612 01:25:42,400 --> 01:25:44,840 Billboard. Now, you could actually, I mean, 1613 01:25:44,840 --> 01:25:47,280 digital billboards you can make useful, by the way, 1614 01:25:47,280 --> 01:25:49,840 technologically, you know, you can have weather forecasts and 1615 01:25:49,840 --> 01:25:52,440 cube information in amongst the ads. 1616 01:25:52,680 --> 01:25:55,120 So you might argue that a digital billboard could 1617 01:25:55,120 --> 01:25:59,320 actually, you know, meet David Gulvey's moral criteria. 1618 01:25:59,320 --> 01:26:01,720 Certainly if it's a bus shelter or something, you know, rather 1619 01:26:01,720 --> 01:26:04,080 than the middle of an area of outstanding beauty. 1620 01:26:04,560 --> 01:26:08,160 But nobody really has. I mean, part of the problem of 1621 01:26:08,160 --> 01:26:12,000 the, you know, of sort of neoliberal consensus is that 1622 01:26:12,280 --> 01:26:15,640 nobody really has these moral discussions anymore about the 1623 01:26:15,640 --> 01:26:18,400 second order consequences of the things they do. 1624 01:26:18,600 --> 01:26:21,800 We need a chief philosophy officer, particularly in these 1625 01:26:21,800 --> 01:26:24,400 AI companies, you know, the ability to actually think 1626 01:26:24,400 --> 01:26:27,360 through the ramifications of where these models would get. 1627 01:26:27,360 --> 01:26:30,360 I'd like to give the attention economy the benefit of the doubt 1628 01:26:30,360 --> 01:26:33,360 that they didn't intend to become the addiction economy. 1629 01:26:33,840 --> 01:26:37,720 The more that this evidence comes out and the more we see 1630 01:26:37,720 --> 01:26:43,160 our most base human behaviours monetized, you know, and, and 1631 01:26:43,160 --> 01:26:46,960 the, and the proof continues to mount up and up and up as to 1632 01:26:46,960 --> 01:26:50,360 what it's doing to loneliness and mental health and anxiety 1633 01:26:50,360 --> 01:26:53,240 and sleep deprivation and polarization and you know then. 1634 01:26:53,520 --> 01:26:57,800 I think some, I think it's mostly unintentional in a sense, 1635 01:26:59,000 --> 01:27:02,160 but what happens with a large company is you compartmentalize 1636 01:27:02,160 --> 01:27:05,760 it and everybody is responsible for their own narrow part of the 1637 01:27:05,760 --> 01:27:07,760 whole. And when you, when you get a 1638 01:27:07,760 --> 01:27:12,160 whole bunch of people optimizing the parts, the whole can turn 1639 01:27:12,160 --> 01:27:15,120 toxic. So it is a problem that other 1640 01:27:15,120 --> 01:27:19,240 than the CEO and maybe two or three people, there's no one 1641 01:27:19,240 --> 01:27:22,880 there who's rewarded for taking the holistic view of what this 1642 01:27:22,880 --> 01:27:25,200 business is about and what it does, because everybody else has 1643 01:27:25,200 --> 01:27:27,480 their own little weird. I'll give you a lovely example. 1644 01:27:27,480 --> 01:27:32,120 Someone who does retail advertising was asked to stop 1645 01:27:32,120 --> 01:27:35,400 advertising because it was very successfully selling premium dog 1646 01:27:35,400 --> 01:27:39,200 food and they said you've you've just told us it's very anything. 1647 01:27:39,200 --> 01:27:43,360 I know, but I'm bonused on margin, not on profit. 1648 01:27:43,840 --> 01:27:47,040 And the margin on our own brand dog food is higher than on the 1649 01:27:47,040 --> 01:27:49,200 premium dog food as a percentage. 1650 01:27:49,680 --> 01:27:53,400 Consequently, I get a bigger bonus if we sell a lot of low 1651 01:27:53,400 --> 01:27:59,040 priced, low profit, but high percentage margin own brand dog 1652 01:27:59,040 --> 01:28:00,760 food. Whereas if we sell the premium 1653 01:28:00,760 --> 01:28:03,000 dog food, every single case is out. 1654 01:28:03,200 --> 01:28:06,120 So you literally end up with these utterly stupid forms of 1655 01:28:06,120 --> 01:28:09,680 gamification of the system. And it's, it's all a product of 1656 01:28:09,680 --> 01:28:12,840 this idea that you have to effectively construct a company 1657 01:28:12,840 --> 01:28:16,480 from individual parts. And I've argued about online 1658 01:28:16,480 --> 01:28:21,160 retailers for ages that they would sell more, a lot more, if 1659 01:28:21,160 --> 01:28:22,760 they gave people a choice of who delivered. 1660 01:28:23,480 --> 01:28:25,400 Because people have strong preferences. 1661 01:28:25,560 --> 01:28:27,480 Some people have stronger versions. 1662 01:28:27,720 --> 01:28:30,920 People like to know sometimes that I'd pay Amazon extra quid 1663 01:28:30,920 --> 01:28:32,640 just to put the fucking thing in the post. 1664 01:28:32,960 --> 01:28:35,720 If I'm ordering Ausb cable, I don't want a van coming up the 1665 01:28:35,720 --> 01:28:37,720 drive, you know, just to deliver. 1666 01:28:37,720 --> 01:28:41,640 It's not really Zen as in, you know, postman's coming anyway. 1667 01:28:41,720 --> 01:28:46,240 You might as well drop it off. And yet because that decision is 1668 01:28:46,240 --> 01:28:49,280 taken by a procurement function within the company, which is 1669 01:28:49,280 --> 01:28:52,280 principally motivated by the amount of discount they can 1670 01:28:52,280 --> 01:28:55,400 negotiate and would not be rewarded by the fact that you 1671 01:28:55,400 --> 01:28:58,440 had 20% more customers as a consequence of this decision, 1672 01:28:58,840 --> 01:29:01,640 you end up with this fundamental thing of things that are micro 1673 01:29:01,640 --> 01:29:05,440 rational but macro stupid and companies are becoming, and of 1674 01:29:05,440 --> 01:29:07,600 course very, very large companies. 1675 01:29:07,600 --> 01:29:12,320 Effectively, these individual silos run away with their own 1676 01:29:12,800 --> 01:29:15,480 daft metrics. And so a lot of it, you know, 1677 01:29:15,680 --> 01:29:17,920 there's someone there who is basically, you know, 1678 01:29:18,000 --> 01:29:22,480 incentivized on the basis of attention, who has no concern 1679 01:29:22,480 --> 01:29:25,360 whatsoever as part of their job description for the quality of 1680 01:29:25,360 --> 01:29:28,600 the attention or the mood the person's in while that attention 1681 01:29:28,600 --> 01:29:32,000 is actually being earned. I think the conversation needs 1682 01:29:32,000 --> 01:29:34,960 to be had much more seriously. And I think the one part of 1683 01:29:34,960 --> 01:29:38,560 society that's not at the table to have that conversation, 1684 01:29:39,280 --> 01:29:42,640 bringing it back to why I'm here is, you know, how do we bring 1685 01:29:43,040 --> 01:29:47,000 the brands and famous individuals together to have a 1686 01:29:47,000 --> 01:29:51,720 seat at the table and say, look, what what can we do about this? 1687 01:29:51,800 --> 01:29:56,080 You know, how far are we responsible or can we help drive 1688 01:29:56,160 --> 01:29:59,640 a more healthy way of living our lives? 1689 01:30:00,080 --> 01:30:03,120 You know, where we sell the benefits of community. 1690 01:30:03,120 --> 01:30:05,640 You know, we just fell down that rabbit hole around, you know, 1691 01:30:05,640 --> 01:30:11,440 polarization and and the lack of mixing and trolling online. 1692 01:30:11,640 --> 01:30:15,520 The antidote to that is people colliding more and making more 1693 01:30:15,520 --> 01:30:19,440 eye contact in the real world, you know, and I think that is an 1694 01:30:19,440 --> 01:30:21,200 antidote. I think more sport is an 1695 01:30:21,200 --> 01:30:24,680 antidote, more art and culture is an antidote, more event is is 1696 01:30:24,680 --> 01:30:26,720 an antidote. You know, hobbies. 1697 01:30:26,960 --> 01:30:31,040 And the irony is that so many advertisers and brands in the 1698 01:30:31,040 --> 01:30:36,560 world are selling embodied real world experiences, right? 1699 01:30:36,640 --> 01:30:38,440 You know, they're selling venues. 1700 01:30:38,720 --> 01:30:40,680 They're selling. Well, live music is an 1701 01:30:40,680 --> 01:30:44,200 extraordinary phenomenon. Yeah, live music, events, food 1702 01:30:44,200 --> 01:30:47,560 and drink, hospitality, sporting goods. 1703 01:30:47,560 --> 01:30:50,880 Travel and leisure, yeah. These are all products designed 1704 01:30:50,880 --> 01:30:55,120 to be enjoyed in company, you know, or in place in the real 1705 01:30:55,120 --> 01:30:58,240 world. And yet the brands are spending 1706 01:30:58,240 --> 01:31:00,840 60 to 70% of their marketing budget to keep people further 1707 01:31:00,840 --> 01:31:05,520 addicted for three to four hours on on in these platforms now. 1708 01:31:05,760 --> 01:31:06,960 You could. You could actually, if you 1709 01:31:06,960 --> 01:31:09,920 describe the problems of the modern world, excluding things 1710 01:31:09,920 --> 01:31:13,120 like war, famine, etcetera, not my area of specialism. 1711 01:31:14,600 --> 01:31:16,400 A large part of it is two things. 1712 01:31:16,400 --> 01:31:19,800 It's that the cost of property in real estate soaks up too much 1713 01:31:19,800 --> 01:31:23,600 of our discretionary income and screens soak up too much of our 1714 01:31:23,600 --> 01:31:26,640 discretionary time. You can find a solution to those 1715 01:31:26,640 --> 01:31:29,520 two things. Well, I think the point where 1716 01:31:29,520 --> 01:31:33,760 the brands are concerned is not to scare them and say stop 1717 01:31:33,760 --> 01:31:35,320 spending, stop buying your media there. 1718 01:31:35,360 --> 01:31:37,840 No one's an idiot. You know, there's great content 1719 01:31:37,840 --> 01:31:39,680 there. It's where the eyeballs are. 1720 01:31:39,680 --> 01:31:42,000 There's great engagement, there's great relevancy. 1721 01:31:42,400 --> 01:31:45,160 But there is a question to say, we'll come together and let's 1722 01:31:45,160 --> 01:31:47,120 talk about what responsible looks like. 1723 01:31:47,600 --> 01:31:52,000 Let's talk about, you know, where how we can drive trusted 1724 01:31:52,000 --> 01:31:54,480 media and work with them as advertisers. 1725 01:31:54,600 --> 01:31:58,400 Perhaps we can start putting end screens, you know, around our 1726 01:31:58,400 --> 01:32:00,480 content. They say now get offline and do 1727 01:32:00,480 --> 01:32:02,480 or take a break. You know, almost like the. 1728 01:32:03,440 --> 01:32:07,640 Drink responsibly. Campaign because everything is 1729 01:32:07,640 --> 01:32:11,840 fine in moderation. It's addiction that we need to, 1730 01:32:11,920 --> 01:32:16,520 we need to watch for and and create more boundaries and and 1731 01:32:16,600 --> 01:32:19,920 and breaks around and. It's just boundaries and breaks. 1732 01:32:19,920 --> 01:32:23,680 It's not bands. Is it is it is difficult to 1733 01:32:25,080 --> 01:32:32,680 recreate the kind of Jonathan Haidt acceptance of risk in 1734 01:32:32,680 --> 01:32:36,000 childhood that your child would come home having fallen out of a 1735 01:32:36,000 --> 01:32:38,840 tree. I mean, what was weird is that 1736 01:32:38,840 --> 01:32:41,880 when I was about 9 or 10, I'd cycle 8 miles to Monmouth to see 1737 01:32:41,880 --> 01:32:43,800 my grandmother. When I was about 15. 1738 01:32:43,800 --> 01:32:46,400 My parents couldn't believe that they allowed me to do it. 1739 01:32:46,400 --> 01:32:49,040 And that was, you know, the space of about 5 or 6 years that 1740 01:32:49,040 --> 01:32:51,920 there were things I did, you know, I used to climb up on the 1741 01:32:51,920 --> 01:32:54,960 roof of the house and just sit on the apex roof and climb out 1742 01:32:54,960 --> 01:32:58,600 of a skylight and, and barefoot and just climb and just scuttle 1743 01:32:58,600 --> 01:33:00,120 all over the roof. OK. 1744 01:33:00,600 --> 01:33:04,240 When this was literally when I was like, you know, 8 or 9, my 1745 01:33:04,240 --> 01:33:09,040 parents didn't know I was doing it, admittedly, OK, but they 1746 01:33:09,040 --> 01:33:11,320 wouldn't have had an absolute heebie jeebie fit if they'd 1747 01:33:11,320 --> 01:33:13,360 known I was doing it. But, you know, they was just 1748 01:33:13,360 --> 01:33:16,200 accepted that that and, and that seemed to happen. 1749 01:33:16,200 --> 01:33:18,800 And we don't quite know why. But of course, it's very 1750 01:33:18,800 --> 01:33:24,920 difficult because the level of blame you're exposed to just 1751 01:33:24,920 --> 01:33:27,840 what I mean. Previously, if something bad 1752 01:33:27,840 --> 01:33:30,720 happened to your kid, the default mode would be sympathy. 1753 01:33:30,720 --> 01:33:33,480 Yeah, and now it's blamed. You're a bad parent. 1754 01:33:33,560 --> 01:33:36,040 You're a bad parent. And of course, the fewer people 1755 01:33:36,040 --> 01:33:38,320 who allow their children to run around in the streets, the 1756 01:33:38,320 --> 01:33:40,480 vastly more at risk those people are. 1757 01:33:40,600 --> 01:33:43,120 There's a lot of arguments though that parents are waking 1758 01:33:43,120 --> 01:33:45,120 up to the fact that the paedophiles are not on the 1759 01:33:45,120 --> 01:33:46,400 street, they're all on the Internet. 1760 01:33:46,440 --> 01:33:50,000 You know, the overprotection in the real world versus the under 1761 01:33:50,000 --> 01:33:54,960 protection in the online world is absolutely paramount. 1762 01:33:55,280 --> 01:33:57,760 And there's statistics like you'd have to leave your child 1763 01:33:57,760 --> 01:34:01,000 outdoors on their own for 150,000 years for them to be 1764 01:34:01,000 --> 01:34:01,800 abducted. Is that? 1765 01:34:01,960 --> 01:34:05,400 Yes, I know, I know. But statistics are no good when 1766 01:34:05,400 --> 01:34:07,840 we live in a doom economy and one abduction is wall to wall 1767 01:34:07,840 --> 01:34:10,240 coverage for, you know, three months. 1768 01:34:10,240 --> 01:34:13,040 And then and and I think it was Jonathan who raised in his 1769 01:34:13,040 --> 01:34:16,320 previous book the fact that it started in the 80s because they 1770 01:34:16,320 --> 01:34:18,640 would put missing children on milk cartoons. 1771 01:34:19,280 --> 01:34:21,560 And you think what a brilliant idea you can publicize. 1772 01:34:21,760 --> 01:34:24,600 Children that are missing. But it put the prospect of 1773 01:34:24,600 --> 01:34:29,000 children being abducted on every breakfast table in America 1774 01:34:29,000 --> 01:34:32,440 overnight and suddenly kids stop being blared out. 1775 01:34:32,920 --> 01:34:36,200 And that was around the time that we started to get news 1776 01:34:36,200 --> 01:34:39,720 channels where obviously to fill their schedules, they follow 1777 01:34:39,720 --> 01:34:42,240 these stories. And you know, so we lived in 1778 01:34:42,240 --> 01:34:44,960 this heightened sense of it was called the doom economy. 1779 01:34:44,960 --> 01:34:47,800 And that happened even before social media and social media is 1780 01:34:47,800 --> 01:34:51,520 now recognized that the doom economy really works so that we 1781 01:34:51,520 --> 01:34:54,920 put more and more of the doom into into social media. 1782 01:34:54,920 --> 01:34:58,880 So we have this very, very warped sense of the safety of 1783 01:34:58,880 --> 01:35:02,000 the world that we live in, whereas the statistics are in 1784 01:35:02,000 --> 01:35:05,600 minuscule and negligible and and parenting has changed massively, 1785 01:35:05,600 --> 01:35:08,600 you know, but I'm having a lot of conversations with my 1786 01:35:08,600 --> 01:35:12,480 generation of parents who do over parent massively about 1787 01:35:12,480 --> 01:35:15,440 these these sorts of things and I'm arranging how. 1788 01:35:15,480 --> 01:35:18,760 Frightened were you when you dropped your children off what, 1789 01:35:18,760 --> 01:35:22,520 5 miles from home with £10 each and told them to work out how to 1790 01:35:22,520 --> 01:35:25,920 get their own way home? I was a little, I was a little 1791 01:35:25,920 --> 01:35:29,040 anxious, but we've been, I mean, I've been trying more and more 1792 01:35:29,040 --> 01:35:32,600 of these experiments because I'm very familiar with the data on 1793 01:35:32,600 --> 01:35:34,600 it. And I have to say, the fact that 1794 01:35:34,600 --> 01:35:37,640 my eldest has a phone gave me a lot of reassurance. 1795 01:35:37,960 --> 01:35:41,720 So this is where the phone actually plays into these 1796 01:35:41,720 --> 01:35:45,680 opportunities and trends. To ever find my I. 1797 01:35:45,800 --> 01:35:48,120 Knew that he could. And this is what parents are 1798 01:35:48,120 --> 01:35:50,400 asking, even on dumb phones. I said we would get a dumb 1799 01:35:50,400 --> 01:35:52,000 phone, but we want tracking. Yeah. 1800 01:35:52,400 --> 01:35:54,440 And actually, I think that's a good technology. 1801 01:35:55,880 --> 01:35:58,200 It's Peace of Mind to know where they are. 1802 01:35:58,200 --> 01:36:00,520 And the fact that, you know, he's got to go, Henry means 1803 01:36:00,520 --> 01:36:02,960 worst case scenario, he can get on the bus. 1804 01:36:02,960 --> 01:36:06,120 Also, by the way, it means you need to ring them up much less. 1805 01:36:06,320 --> 01:36:09,640 Yeah, because you just, you can basically interpret where they 1806 01:36:09,640 --> 01:36:12,400 are and what they're doing. And if you need to go and fetch 1807 01:36:12,400 --> 01:36:15,080 them, you don't have to have 5 coordinating phone calls about 1808 01:36:15,080 --> 01:36:17,760 where they happen to be, which was usually all bar one in 1809 01:36:17,760 --> 01:36:19,320 Tunbridge Wells in my experience. 1810 01:36:20,520 --> 01:36:23,760 But, and actually I think there's also an interesting 1811 01:36:23,760 --> 01:36:26,240 point which someone needs to make, which is these kids are 1812 01:36:26,240 --> 01:36:28,360 going to leave home, they're going to go to university. 1813 01:36:28,800 --> 01:36:32,560 And in my experience, it was their most helicoptered children 1814 01:36:33,160 --> 01:36:35,520 who went most catastrophically off the rails. 1815 01:36:36,320 --> 01:36:39,840 Because in sense you haven't actually learned boundaries or 1816 01:36:39,840 --> 01:36:42,160 you haven't learned a kind of sensible risk tolerance. 1817 01:36:42,760 --> 01:36:47,080 And so if at that moment you decide to reject your own 1818 01:36:47,080 --> 01:36:52,680 parents risk values rather than just going a bit over the line, 1819 01:36:52,680 --> 01:36:55,000 which is a totally healthy and same thing to do, there are 1820 01:36:55,000 --> 01:36:59,400 people who just go bonkers. Yeah, I mean, we don't even let 1821 01:36:59,400 --> 01:37:01,920 we don't let kids make mistakes as small children. 1822 01:37:01,920 --> 01:37:04,280 You know, all these middle class parents shouting across the soft 1823 01:37:04,280 --> 01:37:07,000 play. Share Share Johnny, It's. 1824 01:37:07,000 --> 01:37:09,200 Like eight place. Proceeds let them be a little 1825 01:37:09,200 --> 01:37:11,560 shit because they'll learn the hard way that no one will want 1826 01:37:11,560 --> 01:37:14,200 to play with them. We don't have to intervene on 1827 01:37:14,200 --> 01:37:16,520 everything. Let them fall off unless there's 1828 01:37:16,520 --> 01:37:18,160 going to be a serious head injury. 1829 01:37:18,400 --> 01:37:20,520 Let. But soft play itself has 1830 01:37:20,520 --> 01:37:23,040 changed, apparently. The way that brains break 1831 01:37:23,520 --> 01:37:26,680 because kids don't steal themselves for falls anymore. 1832 01:37:27,320 --> 01:37:30,120 You know, rubberized playground. Book. 1833 01:37:30,120 --> 01:37:31,440 It was someone's book where they were. 1834 01:37:31,480 --> 01:37:38,160 No, I know I'll remember his name in a second, but he won't. 1835 01:37:38,160 --> 01:37:40,680 One writer in America was complaining about the fact that 1836 01:37:40,680 --> 01:37:44,440 underneath climbing frames there was sort of padding and it was 1837 01:37:44,440 --> 01:37:47,960 rubberized. I remember having a climbing 1838 01:37:47,960 --> 01:37:52,040 frame in my local village where the ground was concrete, which 1839 01:37:52,040 --> 01:37:54,840 actually even at the time struck me as a bit extreme because 1840 01:37:54,840 --> 01:37:56,880 there is risk of serious brain injury. 1841 01:37:57,000 --> 01:37:59,880 We'd, let's face it, in the ancestral environment, we'd fall 1842 01:37:59,880 --> 01:38:02,640 onto grass or leaves or something. 1843 01:38:02,720 --> 01:38:04,960 OK. And the congruent, you know, I'm 1844 01:38:04,960 --> 01:38:06,880 trying to remember who it was. He wrote about that as a 1845 01:38:06,880 --> 01:38:10,360 fascinating writer and he he's very much in vain against this 1846 01:38:10,360 --> 01:38:13,560 culture of effectively not giving people the opportunity to 1847 01:38:13,560 --> 01:38:16,560 test their own risk tolerances, which means they're, you know, 1848 01:38:16,560 --> 01:38:19,400 their instincts for what's sensible and what's crazy don't 1849 01:38:19,400 --> 01:38:22,120 really develop properly. I thought he was a bit extreme 1850 01:38:22,120 --> 01:38:26,880 in that, but I mean, he's it is very interesting how also it's 1851 01:38:26,880 --> 01:38:30,720 worth noting, of course, that let's be honest, to a lazy 1852 01:38:30,720 --> 01:38:34,120 parent that you know, the one eyed babysitter is bloody 1853 01:38:34,120 --> 01:38:39,080 convenient because because you plump a child with you, you 1854 01:38:39,080 --> 01:38:42,080 plump a child with a tablet. Yeah, a tablet. 1855 01:38:42,080 --> 01:38:44,800 Basically, you've got 2 hours to yourself, yeah. 1856 01:38:45,080 --> 01:38:47,680 Yeah, it's the square. Repair it. 1857 01:38:47,760 --> 01:38:50,920 I'm a bit equally terrifying, you know, and I've have found 1858 01:38:50,920 --> 01:38:54,880 since opening up this, this, you know, this conversation that 1859 01:38:54,880 --> 01:38:57,440 I've become like a priest and a confessional. 1860 01:38:57,880 --> 01:39:00,960 You know, the 1st 10 minutes of every meeting I have involves 1861 01:39:00,960 --> 01:39:04,000 them saying how horrified they are at seeing these devices 1862 01:39:04,000 --> 01:39:07,200 shoved into push chairs and how worried they are about their own 1863 01:39:07,200 --> 01:39:10,280 attention and focus and depressed they feel walking 1864 01:39:10,280 --> 01:39:13,520 around the world and sitting on a train and everyone's lies down 1865 01:39:13,520 --> 01:39:16,240 and their children. Everyone talks about their 1866 01:39:16,240 --> 01:39:20,280 children and their risks there. And I used to stop them and say, 1867 01:39:20,280 --> 01:39:22,560 yeah, I know that's why I'm doing what I'm doing. 1868 01:39:22,560 --> 01:39:26,920 And I thought, no, no, no, no. Let them talk themselves into 1869 01:39:26,920 --> 01:39:29,920 the problem area. And I say, I cannot keep having 1870 01:39:29,920 --> 01:39:31,640 this. Everybody worrying about this on 1871 01:39:31,640 --> 01:39:35,800 a personal basis and not being prepared to jump the chasm into 1872 01:39:35,800 --> 01:39:39,000 the professional conversation. And that is what needs to 1873 01:39:39,000 --> 01:39:42,400 happen. Now we've got and, and as we're 1874 01:39:42,400 --> 01:39:46,080 demonstrating amply, I think within this conversation, we 1875 01:39:46,080 --> 01:39:48,760 don't know what the solutions are, but we do know we need to 1876 01:39:48,760 --> 01:39:51,880 come together to think and talk responsibly. 1877 01:39:52,200 --> 01:39:55,000 Because it's only by coming together that we can have a 1878 01:39:55,000 --> 01:39:58,480 voice that can ask these questions, that can sit down in 1879 01:39:58,480 --> 01:40:02,160 collaboration with the platforms and say, you know, what can we 1880 01:40:02,160 --> 01:40:07,600 do about this and how can we? As the people that do impact 1881 01:40:07,600 --> 01:40:12,120 culture so significantly with our fame, with our passion for 1882 01:40:12,120 --> 01:40:15,920 what we do, with the eyeballs and the fans that we attract, 1883 01:40:15,920 --> 01:40:18,320 whether that's Ben, who you're talking to tomorrow and Jim 1884 01:40:18,320 --> 01:40:22,640 Shark and they're they're great. You know, huge number of fans or 1885 01:40:22,920 --> 01:40:26,960 it's the it's the influencer that does, you know, St. dance 1886 01:40:26,960 --> 01:40:30,520 or whatever it might be. How can we use our influence on 1887 01:40:30,520 --> 01:40:34,160 culture to actually say this stuff? 1888 01:40:34,440 --> 01:40:40,000 Analogue is cool, you know, and we need to reclaim time for it 1889 01:40:40,320 --> 01:40:44,120 because the street dancing is analogue, you know, the content 1890 01:40:44,120 --> 01:40:46,480 about it isn't, but the street dancing is. 1891 01:40:46,760 --> 01:40:49,760 Don't just watch it, do it, you know, and that, or it's 1892 01:40:49,760 --> 01:40:52,600 gardening or it's cooking or it's bird watching. 1893 01:40:52,880 --> 01:40:54,840 You know it. We've got to get these things 1894 01:40:54,840 --> 01:40:59,240 back into a healthier balance for our own sanity and take some 1895 01:40:59,240 --> 01:41:02,400 of this overwhelm out of the world because the businesses 1896 01:41:02,400 --> 01:41:06,000 will find this productivity gains in their own people as 1897 01:41:06,000 --> 01:41:08,520 well. You know, there's CSR value in 1898 01:41:08,520 --> 01:41:12,560 it, but there's also brand and marketing power because this 1899 01:41:12,560 --> 01:41:16,640 zeitgeist is shifting, you know, with, you know, Gary Vee saying 1900 01:41:16,640 --> 01:41:19,840 that 26 is will be the year of unplugged. 1901 01:41:19,840 --> 01:41:24,480 That's his prediction that next year will be, that will be the 1902 01:41:24,480 --> 01:41:28,120 biggest trend of 2026 Gen. Z is waking up to. 1903 01:41:28,760 --> 01:41:32,880 So there's only opportunity, opportunity, opportunity, but 1904 01:41:32,880 --> 01:41:35,320 people need to come together, I think, to have that 1905 01:41:35,320 --> 01:41:37,680 conversation. And that's ultimately what I 1906 01:41:37,680 --> 01:41:41,120 would love, love to convene in some way in full 1907 01:41:41,120 --> 01:41:42,880 acknowledgement. We don't have all the answers, 1908 01:41:43,240 --> 01:41:46,960 but it has to be a positive conversation, antidote based, 1909 01:41:46,960 --> 01:41:51,920 positive, bringing soul back in as something that's actually 1910 01:41:51,920 --> 01:41:55,160 cool to talk about. I've also got a weird one, which 1911 01:41:55,240 --> 01:41:58,800 is I think driving lessons should start at school. 1912 01:41:58,800 --> 01:42:01,640 No, no, no. I think that I know it sounds 1913 01:42:01,640 --> 01:42:04,760 very weird, but I think the car isn't anti. 1914 01:42:04,760 --> 01:42:07,960 You know, one of the things that always bothers me is that if 1915 01:42:07,960 --> 01:42:12,760 you, the car is an extraordinarily important kind 1916 01:42:12,760 --> 01:42:14,840 of rite of passage. Being able to drive, being able 1917 01:42:14,840 --> 01:42:18,280 to move around your parents, accepting that you are going 1918 01:42:18,280 --> 01:42:21,880 places on your own. And, you know, I think there are 1919 01:42:21,880 --> 01:42:24,720 all these kind of weird problems which, you know, we've demonized 1920 01:42:24,720 --> 01:42:28,520 the car, but, you know, or, or, you know, other forms, mopeds, 1921 01:42:28,520 --> 01:42:29,960 whatever they may be. OK. 1922 01:42:30,360 --> 01:42:33,160 But actually, you know, one of the things I think would be 1923 01:42:33,160 --> 01:42:35,800 quite beneficial is maybe if we had a kind of 15 year old 1924 01:42:35,800 --> 01:42:38,600 vehicle that people could use to get around in France. 1925 01:42:38,600 --> 01:42:40,400 I, I can't remember you. You can use a moped. 1926 01:42:40,400 --> 01:42:42,640 Yeah, they are bloody dangerous. I'm going to acknowledge that. 1927 01:42:42,760 --> 01:42:45,520 But you can use a moped younger than you can drive a car, can't 1928 01:42:45,520 --> 01:42:46,480 you? That's one of the reasons why 1929 01:42:46,480 --> 01:42:48,640 there are a lot of French people buzzing around on these things. 1930 01:42:49,120 --> 01:42:52,960 I mean, something like that. So that they could actually, you 1931 01:42:52,960 --> 01:42:56,200 know, people could socialize autonomously for three or four 1932 01:42:56,200 --> 01:42:58,040 years earlier than they currently do. 1933 01:42:58,320 --> 01:43:00,760 I love this conversation first and foremost, especially as 1934 01:43:00,760 --> 01:43:05,560 somebody that's probably like made my my career in digital 1935 01:43:05,560 --> 01:43:07,320 space. The more that we're having 1936 01:43:07,320 --> 01:43:10,720 conversations like this, the more we're giving brilliant 1937 01:43:10,720 --> 01:43:12,880 people like yourself the platform to able to wonderful 1938 01:43:12,920 --> 01:43:14,280 this conversation. It's been amazing. 1939 01:43:14,360 --> 01:43:17,120 Really opened my mind and really great to have you back. 1940 01:43:17,680 --> 01:43:20,040 Anytime I can't, I can't. I don't talk about this enough, 1941 01:43:20,040 --> 01:43:24,240 but it's more in the spirit of us all having this conversation 1942 01:43:24,240 --> 01:43:26,600 more so I really appreciate you giving me the opportunity to. 1943 01:43:27,440 --> 01:43:30,480 Everybody thinks about the opportunity cost more of the 1944 01:43:30,480 --> 01:43:34,160 time because I think the concentration of conversation is 1945 01:43:34,160 --> 01:43:39,360 all about the evils of the thing itself, which doesn't quite 1946 01:43:39,360 --> 01:43:41,880 land. Whereas once you mention the 1947 01:43:41,880 --> 01:43:44,760 opportunity cost, the other words what you could have been 1948 01:43:44,760 --> 01:43:47,360 doing when you were mindlessly scrolling. 1949 01:43:48,240 --> 01:43:50,800 Time and attention. Our ability to focus. 1950 01:43:50,800 --> 01:43:52,680 Focus, yeah. So important. 1951 01:43:52,680 --> 01:43:55,280 We lose that at a peril as a society. 1952 01:43:55,600 --> 01:44:00,000 Those, to my mind, are the greatest risks to us as as 1953 01:44:00,000 --> 01:44:03,080 humanity. And yes, there's harms, but time 1954 01:44:03,080 --> 01:44:05,920 and our attention. It is so precious and what we 1955 01:44:05,920 --> 01:44:10,440 give it to dictates the lives that we will have or won't have. 1956 01:44:11,000 --> 01:44:14,440 Well, and that, that's perfect. Amazing. 1957 01:44:14,880 --> 01:44:15,600 I love that.