A Global Mirror

“Life outside can’t be trashed and made to look worse than it is. And life inside can’t be propagandized and made to look better than it is. Thanks to the democratization of information, we all increasingly know how each other lives – no matter how isolated you think a country might be.”

- Thomas Friedman (The Lexus and the Olive Tree - Pg.67, paragraph 3)

********Post provided by B. Jefferson*********

        From CNN to the homepages of Yahoo and AOL, it seems that we are always being updated with not just the happening of our own country, but the happenings of the world. Whether it be giant sink holes in South America or protests in Cairo, Egypt, today's mass information system allows us to get a glimpse of what is underneath the superficial front that so many countries try to uphold. Unfortunately, this uncovering is universal; this also means that other countries are able to see past our superficialities as well. I think this is what Thomas Friedman described in his book The Lexus and The Olive Tree, when he wrote, “Life outside can’t be trashed and made to look worse than it is. And life inside can’t be propagandized and made to look better than it is. Thanks to the democratization of information, we all increasingly know how each other lives – no matter how isolated you think a country might be.” 

Over the past year or so I have come to wonder if being globally aware is a two-edged sword. Yes, people need to know that other countries have it worse than us and our constant debate over our “liberties” and, yes, we also need to be aware that some countries run more effectively and have procedures that we can learn from and implement to be more effective. For example, we are currently going through a healthcare reform. What can we learn from other countries that can help us make the best reforms possible? Should we follow what Switzerland does and make policy so that everyone has to buy insurance, instead of receiving it as a benefit from their jobs, and make it so that health insurance companies compete which in turn will drive down cost? Or, should we maybe follow Austria’s example and have everyone pay into the healthcare system? The price that each citizen pays into the system will be determined by their income, because let’s face it, if we, the people of middle class America, can buy a new IPhone, IPad, or 62’ flat screen TV, and are using the excuse that “healthcare is expensive”, we are being irresponsible. The money we spend on fancy gadgets could have paid for our healthcare or better yet, our children’s healthcare. 

The problem that I have with this new sense of global awareness is that, unfortunately, there are many people in our country who can tell you the political structure of the Middle East and what they need to do to sustain “democracy”, along with people who can tell you exactly what caused the riots in Greece and how the people were trying to effect change in the Grecian government. And yet these people cannot even begin to examine some of the key discussions concerning what we need, as Americans, to manifest the future which we truly desire.

Ultimately, I fear that the very information that links us together with the world and allows us to think past our superficial understandings of what happens in different parts of the country could cause us to down play what happens in our own. For instance what are we doing to make our future generations more competitive? Have we made it easier for our children to get quality education? Or, are we making it more difficult to give them the tools that they need to succeed? Are we creating viable jobs for our children or are we outsourcing everything we can to technology and other countries? Lastly, and more importantly, I daresay that we are not holding our government accountable for its actions and not holding ourselves accountable for thinking that we are blameless in the doings of our government considering that, cough, we participate in a democracy. I hope to see you at the polls, whatever your position is -politically- in the coming months as we move through election season.

Efficiency is Great, but...

Humans, unlike machines, easily use something called case-based reasoning. We consider the current set of circumstances, compare them with situations that occurred in the past, and determine what we can take from those experiences. This is a kind of flexibility that's very hard to teach a machine.

-          Jeffrey Kluger  (Simplexity, p. 121)

******Post provided courtesy of M. Rodriguez******

Although in the 21st century, we are living in a technologically dependent world, humans are still an integral part in communicating any business' mission, vision, and product/service. Customers and shareholders are major players in whether or not a business will survive, and they need to be fully taken care of to solidify their loyalty to a business. Throughout the years of innovation, businesses have found ways to provide customers with situational responses using technology.  This includes computerized phone survey questions based on consumer responses, as well as Internet surveys that alter the questions that follow based on responses.  

Based on my experience, the most utilized technology providing customers with situational responses are self-service machines like ATMs and self check-out counters in grocery stores. To withdraw cash and to check out at a grocery store for oneself is considered a convenience to many citizens of the 21st century working class. To maximize the availability of time is a goal that many workers representing other times and places could only wish to have. These machines do just that but at the cost of personalization. Numerically, these machines can do the calculations and provide the services needed; but the machines are not capable of case-based reasoning. They do not have the ability to be flexible in their responses based on situations that have occurred in the past.

Businesses have recognized that these technological solutions are useful, but are not a sufficient way of communicating with customers. Humans need an actual person to listen to them, to personalize their experiences, and to see and feel even a little bit of empathy. It seems that this quality that Jeffrey Kluger, the author of Simplexity, calls "case-based reasoning" is an important difference that is present and palpable when humans engage one another. Unfortunately, many large corporations have submitted themselves to utilizing technology instead of human labor due to its theoretical lower long-run cost.

In terms of business processes, the cost of substituting technology for human labor is supposedly less than paying salaries and hourly labor costs. Recently, a major hotel chain on Oahu let go of most of their parking attendants and replaced them with parking ticket machines. When this major change occurred, there were many aggravated customers. No one knew how to use the machine. Now, this machine walks you through the whole process of paying for parking, but the monotonous, robotic voice can get a little irritating.

By the time one reaches a parking exit, drivers just want to leave. We expect what we know. Driving up to the parking attendant, handing over a ticket, being told a price, and paying the cost is what we know as normal today. Human interaction is what we are accustomed to. When a machine takes that away, this service becomes impersonal. What if we want to question the cost of the ticket? What if we don't know how to use the machine because we can't follow a machines direction? What if we just want to have a short conversation or hear a parking attendant say, "Thank you" and "Have a good day"? Even the smallest "Thank you" being voiced can make a person's day.

With this change in technology taking over human labor, we lose a part of communication with our customer. Only a human being should do marketing and personal selling because humans still have the corner on the ability to adapt responses and behaviors based on context, complex and nuanced interactions emerging in real-time with endless permutations.  Based on previous experiences, if the customer seems to want everything done for them, then we can make that happen. If the customer seems to want to figure everything out for him or herself, then we can leave them alone. This adaptability to case-by-case scenarios is something that no technology can replace.