Transcripts For CSPAN2 Tim Harford Fifty Inventions That Sha

We just have taken whatever fever dream of a Technology People had in the 1960s and said right, were going to take that in our current pocket. Its never how technological change works. Very often its how we think about it. As we see our lives the way we behave, the way we interact with people at political institutions,our organizations , the office, we see that and we imagine what technology does is it just drops in and it replaces one little bit of what we do and nothing else changes. This is similar to theblade runner problem we have. You have artificial humans and yet people are still making calls from payphones. So we always or almost always adapt to take advantage of the new technology and the adaptation process is not always pleasant but it always happens. Its usually necessary and we prove to be very adaptable and contorting ourselves to make the Technology Work for us or being contorted because you work for an organization, you have to do what the boss of the Organization Says so let me give you an example, this is a famous example in nerve labs, your beautiful and sophisticated people, you may not spend time in nerve labs but i do so ill bring you examples so this is a photograph of a factory in about 1880 and the thing to see about this is that all the workers in this factory are drawing power from a driveshaft on the ceiling. I told you this is nerdland. These big ceiling belts that come down and so everything they do is defined by their relationship with the driveshaft. The drive shaft is going along the ceiling and out of the building and then theres another building next door which has this coal powered steam engine thats driving the driveshaft and that ishow factory was. Our experts in technology and Manufacturing Design around about 1810, whats going to change inthis picture . What is going to change American Manufacturing . They would have said electricity. Its a Steam Powered drive belt, this is a Steam Powered factory. What is going to change is electricity but what actually happened was that factory owners would remove the coalfired steam engine and replace it with a big old electric motor and its sort of selling electricity down the wires, combine electricity from mister edison, westinghouse is designing superefficient turbines and electric motors. Europe placed the old steam engine, put in a big electric motor and nothing else changes and do you know what happened to productivity . Nothing. People are like why are we bothering with this stuff . I thought it was supposed to be awesome. There was a little less coal dust which is good if youre making fabrics but basically it didnt make a huge difference and then around about the end of the first world war, the change in the immigration ratio, it became harder to recruit workers so factory owners party going we need to rethink how we dothis. Going to have to hire fewer staff, even more, train them more and they started to realize you could ask staff to take moreresponsibility. And actually, you know what . These electric motors, the thing about an electric motor if you can have 100 small electric motors instead of one big one. You can have 100 small steam engines because a big one because it would be very inefficient but you can have 100 small electric motors that get powered through the wires. That means thatdriveshaft, we can get rid of the driveshaft. Get read of the driveshaft, hang on. That means you could build a factory with skylights or cranes in the room for both and also we dont have to organize the factory around proximity to thedriveshaft. We can spread out. You can have two or three factories with all these machines turning at the huge top same time and everything is being lubricated by the drip oilers and everything is crammed in around the driveshaft. But with the electric motors you could spread out and organize the factory around the flow of product. This is the first process, this is the second process, this is the third process, doesnt matter whether it needs a little or a lot of power, just arrange it in a logical way and you can have a production line because you have a product moving between people. None of this is possible with a centralized power source in the driveshaft so it turns out electricity did revolutionize American Manufacturing didnt do it in the 1880s. It did it in the 1920s and in order to unlock the technology, you needed to change who you hired, how you paid them, how you trained them, where they sat, the building they sat in, the technology theywere using and the workflow process. After youve done all that technology is brilliant. So organizational change unlocks the power of this technology. This is a very old example, its 100 years old but what . Much more recently a psychologist who is famous for writing books about Artificial Intelligence but about 20 years ago eric von johnson and his colleague lauren studied American Business in the 1990s and what they were interested in was the process of technological change. If an American Business got all lot of computer computer bends, i apologize for the complexity of this graph. Let me explain what this graph is. If you move this way that is more computers. If you move back, thats more decentralization. When you move up its more money. Now i have your attention. So this is what they found. What is this graph showing . It shows if you get the computers in and you dont reorganize you dont make any money. If you reorganize and you dont get the computers and you dont make any money. If you dont reorganize and you dont get computers and, thats not the worst thing you can do. But the real money comes from reorganizing and getting the computers in. In order to make the Technology Work you have to reorganize and im mindful of the fact that with the manufacturing, with electrification it took 40 years. I dont know when we should be measuring from. The invention of the computer in the 1940s or the World Wide Web in the early 1990s, invented by an englishman called tim. Just saying. Or should it be the smart phone, 2007 or what is it we are looking at . Whatever technology youre looking at it can take a long time to figure out how to use it. Arguably the impact of the web, impact of the smart phone, impact of the internet of things, rfid centers , machine learning, were just beginning to get to grips with how these things might reshape our economy. So at the beginning of my remarks i talked about this big debate. What are the robots going to take the job and i said i dont know the answer. I havent figured out in the last 30 minutes, i can assure you. But i think the lessons that ive learned and the lessons i hope ive been able to share with you do sharpen the question a little bit. When we think about the machine taking the jobs we tend to think about this sort of super scary vision of the terminator or hal 9000, just this disconcerting image of hal 9000, these super intelligences that are going to take over our lives and take over everything and destroyed us or at the least force us into lives of complete injury and a ready do all the work and i dont know. That seems to me to be making these two basic mistakes. Folks think too much on the incredibly sophisticated stuff and they dont think about how we are going to change to adapt to them. So let me think about a really interestingtechnology. Its the robot accountant. Now, when i say robot accountant, you are now thinking either Arnold Schwarzenegger walks in and youre working in an Accounting Firm and you get there and theres arnold in a Leather Jacket with an easy on the desk and you backed slowly away and come back to get your things later or youre thinking maybe c3 po might make a good accountant. I know hes a protocol droid. At the image of a robot accountant but i can tell you thats not what a robot accountant looks like. You not want to know what it looks like . Go to your windows computer and fire up Microsoft Office and theres this green, microsoft xl. Click on the button and up comes a spreadsheet and thats the robot accountant and it was invented in 1979. The First Digital spreadsheet. By a lazy guy who wondered why he had to spend all his time adding uprows and columns on pieces of paper, these big pieces of paper by the way or called spreadsheets. Every time something changesi have to recalculate everything, this is crazy, i can get a computer to do this. So it was called dan treason who micro program microsoftxl and microsoft xl , itsnot very sexy. Its not very complicated. But it is a robot accountant because it lowers the task of arithmetic and it lowers the task of arithmetic at a particular kind of accountant did. The accountant clerk, ill translate. The accounting clerks, there were 400,000 accounting clerks in the us at the time. And basically all of them were out of work in about five years and we now have more accountants than ever before because those people in different jobs. Its obvious you dont add up rows and columns, whats the point of that but the accounting profession expanded and the job of being an accountant became muchmore interesting so theres a situation where it wasnt complicated. It wasnt sexy. Its just microsoft xl. They completely reshaped an industry. It didnt destroy any jobs. We have more jobs in accountancy and we did before but it changed the way we did those jobs and changed the kinds of things account instead, they started doing financial forecasting, Strategic Advisory work and it made being an accountant a lot more interesting because the machine was doing the most boring part of accountancy. Let me give you another example of really exactly the same dynamic. Only with a slightly flipped ending. So ill show you a photograph of jennifer. This is not jennifer. Jennifer is what shes wearing. Jennifer is the headset. This woman is working in a warehouse. It could be for any large company. Loads of warehouses around the world. And a few years ago, the job in a warehouse would be you have a list. People have ordered stuff online and you have to go around and find out where the stuff is , put it in the cart , take it to be and then the jennifer unit was invented. The jenniferunit knows where all the stuff is. Knows what you have to pick. Knows how you have to pick it. So if for example you ordered 13 copies of the inventions that shaped the modern economy from a warehouse, which i would not advise, id advise you to buy them here in Rancho Mirage but to you ordered 13 copies of 50 inventions that shaped the modern economy read the jennifer unit would instruct the picker to go to the shelf and would say not take 13 copies, take five copies. Tape take five more copies. Take another five. Take three more copies. Take another three. The jennifer unit doesnt trust the humans to count. You know what humans can do . Theyve got eyes. Peripheral vision, really good at spotting things, very subtle hands, robots find it hard to pick stuff up whether its glasses, books, make rush things, humans are much better at this but this is a case just like the spreadsheet except the spreadsheet took away the most boring part of accountancy. The genesee unit is taking away the most interesting part of a job thats not very interesting. Remembering where the stuff isnt getting around the warehouse in an efficient way. You dont need your brain, we have the jennifer unit for that, just need your hands and eyes when i think about technology, i think about the spreadsheet. I think about the jennifer unit. I think about paper and barbed wire and the shipping container and solar panels. I think aboutall the cheap stuff. And i think about the way that we adapt ourselves, sometimes in inspiring ways, sometimes we contort ourselves in order to fit around that technology. And im not so worried about the robots taking our jobs. Im also worried about the terminator, not so worried about rachel, the super intelligentorganic robot. Im a little bit worried about jennifer. Ill be signing books out there. Thank you forlistening. Thanks a lot. [applause] here are some of the current bestselling Nonfiction Books according to romans bookstore in pasadena area the list is the splendid and the file, eric larsons study of Prime Minister Winston Churchills leadership during the london blitz followed by leonard doyles memoir on she tamed and after that carol westovers account of growing up in the idaho mountains and her introduction to formal education at the age of 17 in her book educated. This book has been on the bestsellers list for more than two years and then katie orphan explores la book culture in readme los angeles. And wrapping up our look at some of the bestselling Nonfiction Books romans bookstore is becoming. Former first Lady Michelle obamas memoir. The coming was the bestselling book of 2018. Am of these authors appeared on the tv and you can watch them online at the information trade. The president from public affairs, available now in paperback and ebook. Presents biographies of every president , organized by their ranking, by noted historian from best to worst. Features perspectives into the lives of our nations chief executives and leadership styles. Visit our website, cspan. Org to learn about historian features and order your copy today wherever books and ebooks are sold. This weekend on book tv, tonight at 9 pm eastern on afterwards, former fbi director andrew mckay with his book the threat rid of the fbi protects america in the age of terror and trauma. I was concerned by what i felt were the kind of corrosive impact that these false narratives about the fbi, the corrosive impact those narratives are having on the people of the fbi and their ability to do their work and it felt like if people understood more about the organization, who we are, how we work, what kind of people are drawn to the fbi and how we make the decisions we do. There based on specific legal authorities and priorities and policies given to us by the departmentof justice, not based on politics and personal preference. Watch after words on cspan2. As the coronavirus continues to impact the country heres a look at what the Publishing Industry is doing to address the ongoing pandemic. Former first Lady Michelle obama has announced a childrens story time that will stream every monday at 12 pm eastern until may 20 and is available to watch online at pbs kids Youtube Channel or Penguin Random houses facebook page. North americas largest expo has canceled this years show , scheduled in new york city. The conference was originally set for spring, then moved back to july before it was ultimately canceled. The american booksellers associations independent bookstore date has been rescheduled for august 29 and the aba has announced a Virtual Bookstore Party april 19 through the 25th and will include Online Events and promotions with purchasing stores and also in the news and pd bookscan reports book sales were up 2. 9 percent for early april from the year prior led by holiday, educational and kids books. Although nonfiction sales saw a decline of 28 percent from the same time in 2019 and book festivals and conferences continue to be canceled or rescheduled. The American Library association canceled their conference in chicago while the city printers wrote a fast casual for june will not takeplace in september. The l. A. Times festival of books has decided to push back their 25th annual festival to october. Book tv will bring you new programs and publishing news. Watch all our archived programs anytime at booktv. Org. Thank you for filling up the house, this is fabulous. My name is adam kushner, im the editor of the sunday outlook section at the post which is our home for arguments and criticism including Nonfiction Book coverage and i am very lucky and you are lucky to be here tonight with Alexis Wichowski who is the author of theinformation trade , how big tech conquers countries and transforms our world. Can you hear me without the microphone