We, at The Global Tiller, have kept a close eye on what’s going on around us. Since we started writing this newsletter in April 2020, we have examined closely how the Covid-19 pandemic has impacted big sectors, such as airlines, supply chains, energy, etc. We’ve also zoomed in on how personal behaviours are impacted by these big changes, like how we work, what we eat, and who we live with.
A lot of those trends are now bearing fruit in the real world. If we wrote about what vaccine rollout could look like, we are seeing what’s unfolding on our newsfeeds today. If we were worried vaccine passports will further divide our societies, we can see every day how geopolitics is determining which ones are the right or wrong vaccines.
In today’s issue, we take a look back at some of our reflections on the trends we foresaw at that time and how they have actually turned out.
When we talked about robots and the automation of workplaces, we wondered what would have happened had our factories been manned by robots instead of, well, mankind. Are robots really coming after our jobs or are we creating 'robotic slaves' instead? Turns out, the reality is more complex. While robots have automated repetitive parts of many jobs, their human managers are mostly using them to "watch" their human workers and make sure those humans are working as much as robots.
The pandemic has increased sales of tracking softwares that watch remote workers and tracks how many minutes they spend doing work. Warehouses, delivery services and most app-based gig workers are being subjected to intense scrutiny, thanks to their new robot managers.
The future of self-driving cars has also been pushed off by ride-hailing giants, such as Uber and Lyft. Both companies sold off their self-driving units and are betting on human workers to make money for the business in the future - even if they are fighting tooth and nail to keep these humans classified as independent contractors to avoid paying them health benefits.
When it comes to working from home, we got it somewhat right when we talked about it in May last year. The key word here is still: uncertainty. More than a year later, workplaces are still asking the big question of where they should work. There have been no significant changes in care-giving or childcare benefits making it harder for many people to return to their offices, and promotions are still highly dependent on how much someone is seen working, making remote work far less beneficial.
Not all of our analysis turned out the way we anticipated but, in this case, we are happy about it. We, and the rest of the world, were expecting a huge global mental health crisis last year. We spoke about how our brain is struggling to keep up with the constant uncertainty with seemingly no way out of the crisis. We were also worried of what could be the potential long-term effects of the stress caused by the pandemic.
Turns out, the scientists tracking mental health actually saw global levels of depression, anxiety and stress fall by the summer of 2020. Initially, The Lancet team believed this was only the case in developed countries where vaccines were acting as the light at the end of the tunnel. So they expanded their research to 100 countries around the world and discovered the same trends, leading them to this conclusion: people are more resilient than they themselves realise.
This study offers hope as we move into the future, which is likely to be even more challenging:
Human beings are not passive victims of change but active stewards of our own well-being. This knowledge should empower us to make the disruptive changes our societies may require, even as we support the individuals and communities that have been hit hardest.
We are all, individually and collectively, stewards of our shared future. When we try to anticipate what will happen, when we venture on the border of prediction, we obviously know that “it’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future” as Yogi Berra would say, but we don’t do this to be right, we do this to be proactive. Once you imagine how the future can be, you can decide if you like it or not. And if you don’t, as a steward of the world that comes after us, we can decide to act upon it. Because, as Jim Dator would tell us, the future doesn’t exist yet. We create it.
So we may all be more resilient than we think. But that doesn’t mean we can keep on like this without reflecting on the deep causes of our daily stress, at work or at home. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t talk about the ethics of work as it gets more and more automated and people continue to be treated as ruthlessly as machines. A positive result isn’t a guarantee that we can be complacent and no longer committed to maintain our ship at the best point of sail to reach the destination we want, and not the one that will be imposed on us by the winds of change.
At The Global Tiller, we believe that studying it the way we do is the best way to call to action and change whatever should change now and after.
On this positive note, we have an announcement. The Global Tiller is off on a short break. We will take this time to pause and brainstorm what are some of the more pressing issues facing our world in the second half of 2021. This doesn’t mean that you won’t be hearing from us. Do check out below the details of our upcoming session on 'Myth and Myth-information' next week. We promise we will be back soon with some exciting topics and, who knows, maybe a new look?
Take care and, if you’re celebrating, Eid Mubarak from us!
Hira and Philippe
The Global Tiller team
If you’d like to read our previous issues, you can access our archives here.
Join The Global Tiller team live!
Philippe and I are super excited to be a part of Gen2, a virtual summit hosted by the East-West Center. If you are keen to:
Understand how stories shape our resilience and help us learn from our experiences;
Gain an understanding of what constitutes disinformation to be able to find best sources of information;
Or, learn more about how The Global Tiller came into being and where we hope to take it,
then please join us for this session. We’d love to see you there!