FUTURE TRENDS - More People Watch TV on Computers than Televisions

A new study, which surveyed 26,000 internet users worldwide, has reinforced the global shift from traditional media to digital.

The percentage of consumers who prefer watching TV shows on television sets plummeted by 55 percent over the past year, from 52 percent to 23 percent, according to findings from the Accenture 2017 Digital Consumer Survey.

More than four in 10 consumers (42 percent) said they would rather view TV shows on a laptop or desktop, up from 32 percent in last year’s survey.

Thirteen percent said they prefer watching TV shows on their smartphones, compared with 10 percent last year.

“The dominance of the TV set as the undisputed go-to entertainment device is ending,” said Gavin Mann, global managing director for Accenture’s broadcast business.

“While a great number of people still watch plenty of TV shows on TV sets, our research uncovers a rapid acceleration in their preference for viewing on other digital devices — especially laptops, desktops and smartphones.”

The decline in TV viewing over the past year tracks with a four-year trend.

As recently as 2014, the survey revealed that nearly two-thirds (65 percent) of consumers preferred the TV set for viewing TV shows.

The study also showed the smartphone is becoming the preferred device for watching short video clips.

More than one-third (41 percent) of consumers said they would rather view these clips on their mobile handsets, a substantial increase from 28 percent last year.

The report makes several recommendations for how media companies should respond to the shift in consumers’ video consumption habits from TV sets to other devices. These include:

• identifying new ways to engage consumers with more-personalized video content across more types of screens;
• using more granular consumer data, segments and predictive analytics to help anticipate consumer preferences and find content they desire; and
• focusing more on their target audiences to identify exactly what content their viewers want to receive – and when, for how long and on what type of screen.
  
  
  
  

FUTURE TRENDS - The Rise of the Barter Economy

Economies around the world are struggling.

What fills the gap when banks and currencies fail? In many instances, the answer is barter.

Unlike the common perception that currency economies are an evolution of barter economies, it now seems that the reverse is true.

Barter economies develop in the wake of currency collapse, such as the rise of barter following the collapse of the Roman empire. (Interestingly, it seems that the actual precursors to currency economies are gift economies.)

Contemporary economies suffering under the current global financial crisis have seen a surge in barter as citizens find creative ways to get their needs met.

Greece has developed a substantial barter economy, facilitated by online barter clubs and direct trades.

The Greek economy has stabilized somewhat in recent years, but the barter system continues to thrive, perhaps due to the ongoing global trust crisis.

Spain has also developed a barter system in response to economic hardship, and a new generation of Spanish farmers and other workers are embracing their new normal.

Their focus on food – growing it, preserving it, storing it, and preparing it – fits with a movement of people preparing for economic (or environmental) collapse.

In India, where the government pulled a huge number of bank notes out of circulation in order to combat corruption, citizens quickly developed their own barter economy to fill the gap.

But barter economies are not limited to situations of extreme stress.

Two companies, Simbi and City Network, offer online barter systems that are less about survival, and more about connection.

According to a profile for Motherboard, City Network (an expansion of the popular Bunz Trading Zone) hopes to “bring users out of their existing circles to interact with strangers, meet people with common interests, get information that will make living in a city easier, and trade without cash.”

Simbi founder KJ Erickson told Y Combinator that she hopes the site will “enable people to do what they love and get what they need without being restricted by costs.”

Echoing the young people in Spain, Erickson says, “The millennial generation is reconceiving work. They want to do things that are both flexible and fulfilling.”

Both Simbi and City Network have plans to monetize, but aren’t forthcoming about how.

Ad revenue, sponsorships, hosted events, or partnerships with charities or festivals are possibilities.

Neither service charges its members, and, as one City Network member told Motherboard, “charging a membership fee for a cashless community is counterintuitive.”

Last year, Simbi raised 1.2 million in funding, and TechCrunch theorized that the site could charge for credits if users want access to services without providing a swap.

Both sites will need to find a way to monetize or they’ll run into the same issues that barter economies across the globe encounter – you can trade for food or skills, but some things, like electricity and other vital services, aren’t (yet) available outside of the currency economy.

People are creative, though.

In Detroit, where economic hardship has been a reality for decades, citizens have created their own gift economy, and communities will continue to find ways to meet their needs through barter, trade, gift, or otherwise.  

About Tiffany Sostar

Tiffany is a published academic, an editor with the Editors Association of Canada, an independent scholar and researcher, and a self-care and narrative coach. She is particularly interested in the intersection of technology and identity - how our tools shape our selves and change our stories, and in how the nature of work is changing as we incorporate more technology into our daily lives.

HEALTH - Fentanyl Crisis Impacting People and Animals Around the World

(fentanylsafety.com)

The opioid crisis in North America is taking lives.

Synthetic opioids like carfentanil, W-18, and especially fentanyl, are showing up in greater numbers by the year, and causing deaths not only among individuals who use the drugs, but also among law enforcement officers and K-9 unit dogs.

The number of fatal fentanyl overdoses in the US jumped 79% between 2012 and 2014, and in eight American states - Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, Ohio, Florida, Kentucky, Maryland and North Carolina – the fatal overdose rate jumped 174% between 2013 and 2014.

And the opioid crisis isn’t slowing down.

Estonia, a small country with one of the strongest economies in the European Union, has been dealing with a fentanyl crisis for years.

In 2002, there were 105 drug overdose fatalities, and 90 percent of those were fentanyl.

The synthetic drug filled a gap in the drug supply caused by the Taliban’s ban on opium and the resulting scarcity of heroin on the streets.

Although Estonia’s economy was, and is, one of the strongest in Europe, the issue of fentanyl addiction remains stubbornly entrenched.

HIV rates and Hep-C rates are significantly higher than the European average because most users take fentanyl intravenously.

Fentanyl causes more overdoses than the heroin that it replaced in Estonia, and causes more overdoses than unadulterated heroin in North America.

The drug is deadlier, and the DEA has warned that exposure to even a small amount of the powdered form can cause major health issues.

But the opioid crisis is much bigger than fentanyl.

In Estonia, the problem started with a generation of young citizens who struggled to keep up with a rapidly changing economic context.

They lacked social supports, they lacked jobs, and they lacked hope.

It fits with what the latest research reveals about drug use and addiction – in situations of social deprivation, drug use prevails.

Estonia offers a glimpse into what the future may hold for a generation of North American youth, struggling with similarly rapid change and shrinking social supports.

But it doesn’t have to go that way.

Harm reduction is a proven method for reducing overdose fatalities, and creating rich social supports will help everyone in the community – users and non-users alike.

Portugal is another European country that offers insight into responding to an opioid crisis.

Rather than cracking down, as many governments do, Portugal decriminalized drug use.

14 years later, they have the second-lowest overdose rate in the European Union.

Despite the fact that their economy is struggling, their investment in healthcare and reducing stigma around drug use has proven effective.

Is the same progress possible with fentanyl?

Canada is already looking into opening safe injection sites, which are a step in the direction that brought success to Portugal.

In the meantime, law enforcement officers will continue to try and stem the flow of fentanyl from illegal labs onto the streets, and to help affected users.

The next article in this two-part series will look at how agencies and officers in Canada are approaching the problem, and working to keep citizens, their own colleagues and their canine partners safe.

About Tiffany Sostar

Tiffany is a published academic, an editor with the Editors Association of Canada, an independent scholar and researcher, and a self-care and narrative coach. She is particularly interested in the intersection of technology and identity - how our tools shape our selves and change our stories, and in how the nature of work is changing as we incorporate more technology into our daily lives.

HEALTH - Artificial Intelligence is Revolutionizing Healthcare

Bots have the potential to revolutionize healthcare.

Long wait times, understaffed and underfunded clinics, lack of access to medical professionals, and poor compliance with treatments after leaving the clinic are all common in contemporary medical practices.

Some people cite doctors themselves as the source of the problem, while others see the high rates of physician burnout (over 50% as of 2014, and across specialties) as an indication that it is the system that’s failing.

Some countries, such as Malaysia, Costa Rica, Colombia, and Mexico, have found ways to prioritize and standardize healthcare, but many countries struggle.

Particularly in areas where the impact of colonialism continues to be felt, such as much of the African continent, there are too few doctors per capita to adequately address health concerns.

Lack of access to effective healthcare is not only an issue among previously-colonized populations.

Although it is Canada’s Aboriginal populations who experience the most restricted access to healthcare, many “first world” countries, including the United States, have areas of reduced or insufficient healthcare access.

Poverty is one of the most reliable indicators both of disease burden and of restricted healthcare access.

Chatbots have the potential to provide some healthcare to these underserved populations.

In India, where patients in rural areas often experience a lack of access to medical professionals, iCliniq offered the first medical bot system and has had significant success matching users with healthcare providers.

According to Entrepreneur India, “iCliniq’s user base comprises of 1110 doctors for over 80 plus specialties and 110,000 patients spanning 160 countries.”

Although the technology may have started in India, it has quickly gone global.

Not only is iCliniq now serving users across the globe, but other healthcare companies are looking at bots as a way to reduce the workload on doctors and allow them to focus on patient care, while providing quick, accessible healthcare information to patients.

China is investing in healthcare chatbots, with their recently launched Melody, an interactive AI that can help diagnose and refer patients to healthcare providers.

The UK also has multiple start-ups working on AI healthcare chatbots, including Babylon, which hopes to improve the accuracy of doctor’s diagnoses.

A recent Digital Trends in-depth look at the topic of AI chatbots in healthcare highlights current work on sophisticated chatbot technology, and also digs into some of the concerns with AI healthcare.

There are legal issues, such as liability for inaccurate diagnosis or recommendations.

There are also privacy and security issues.

But there is the potential for chatbots to free doctors up so that they can focus more easily on the parts of their job that computers can’t do – the intuition and interaction that can only be provided by another human. (With the interesting, and long-established, caveat that people seem much more willing to discuss mental health and STI status with a bot than with a doctor.)

Most predict AI will play an assistant’s role in healthcare.

Although chatbots are becoming more common in human healthcare, they’re still on the horizon for vets.

VetPronto’s VetTriage chatbot launched last year, but with limited interest from pet owners.

About Tiffany Sostar

Tiffany is a writer, editor, academic, and animal lover who came late to her appreciation of pets. At 18, a rescue pup named Tasha saved her from a depression and she hasn't looked back. She has worked as the canine behaviour program coordinator for the Calgary Humane Society, and was a dog trainer specializing in working with fearful and reactive dogs for many years. She doesn't have any pets right now, but makes up for it by giving her petsitting clients (and any dogs she comes across on her frequent coffee shop adventures) extra snuggles.

With Growing Distrust Across Sectors, is Trust in Crisis?

Distrust in “the system” has been a trope of disenfranchised groups for generations.

In many cases, such as the distrust of the American healthcare system among African Americans, this distrust is rooted in long-standing issues.

Similarly, the prevalence of racialized youth distrusting the justice system, or Indigenous parents distrusting the education system, represent fractures in trust that are rooted in ongoing and historical tensions.

But the results from the 2017 Edelman Trust Barometer hint at a different type of distrust in government, business, NGOs, and media.

Rather than an identity-specific distrust based on systemic failures, this widespread loss of trust hints at something else - the trope of “The Man” (which dates back to 1918), a metaphor for a system governed by elites who are not working for the good of the people they are supposed to serve.

This distrust is in the system as a whole, and is found across a wide variety of identity groups.

This is not a specific distrust, by a specific group, for specific reasons – it is general distrust, by the general population, for a variety of reasons.

The results are alarming - according to the Edelman report, trust is in crisis.

Trust levels fell in all four institutions: business, government, media, and NGOs.

Both the media and the government were significantly below 50% in terms of trust, meaning that most people do not believe that the institutions will do what’s right.

Trust in media, particularly, is at an all-time low.

This is supported by Gallup research released late last year, indicating that American trust in media has plummeted.

Similarly, trust in government is, in the words of the report, “evaporating” – government is distrusted in 75% of countries.

Trust in business also fell, although it remained higher than either government or media.

The Trust Barometer also tests trust in various spokespeople, and found that only 37% of people find CEOs credible, and only 29% find government officials credible.

This finding puts trust in CEOs lower than previously recorded.

Overwhelmingly, people believe that the system is broken. And this lack of trust fuels a global social climate that is fearful and susceptible to further erosions of trust.

 

The fear/distrust cycle is self-perpetuating, and leads to the kind of populist politics that are on the rise globally.  

The impact on marketers and small businesses is only one facet of the problem, but it may offer insight for others.

Consumer trust in brands has been falling for years.

It is currently reaching a crisis point, as indicated by the Edelman Trust Barometer. But research into how to fix a problem happens quickly in business, and researchers have been engaged with this issue for years.

Consumers distrust brands because brands have been caught, too often, posting fake reviews and misleading the public.

The solution is simple - though hardly easy.

Engage honestly and transparently with consumers. Welcome user generated content, especially in the form of reviews, and especially when those reviews are not always glowing.

The Edelman Trust Barometer showed that people trust their peers far more easily in this political climate than they do experts or spokespeople.

As marketers and small businesses, there is the potential to leverage new technology in order to give consumers a voice, and facilitate the peer-to-peer engagement that is so much more likely to succeed in this climate.

And perhaps “The Man” will learn from small businesses, and find a way to engage honestly and transparently, to start to build back the trust that has been so drastically eroded.

About Tiffany Sostar

Tiffany is a writer, editor, academic, and animal lover who came late to her appreciation of pets. At 18, a rescue pup named Tasha saved her from a depression and she hasn't looked back. She has worked as the canine behaviour program coordinator for the Calgary Humane Society, and was a dog trainer specializing in working with fearful and reactive dogs for many years. She doesn't have any pets right now, but makes up for it by giving her petsitting clients (and any dogs she comes across on her frequent coffee shop adventures) extra snuggles.

FUTURE TRENDS - The Rise of the Virtual Assistant

Increasingly, the term “virtual assistant” refers to two entirely separate ideas.

On the one hand are the Virtalent and Zirtual assistants – remote human help that can, according to many, be the “secret weapon” busy people need in order to find those few extra hours that can make a huge difference in productivity and work-life balance.

The market for these virtual assistants has hit a significant boom in the last few years, and is tied in with the gig economy.

Virtual assistants are enabling anyone to access their own personal assistant, in a similar fashion to Uber allowing anyone to hire their own valet.

The gig economy opens up potential for both service providers and users, although it has definite limitations and drawbacks.

Zirtual is an interesting exception to the gig focus of most virtual assistants – CEO Maren Kate Donovan was committed to an employment model rather than a gig model, and all Zirtual assistants were employees with benefits.

But the cost of an employee is 20-30% higher than the cost of an independent contractor, and Zirtual wasn’t able to keep up.

The company is back up and running, but the business model has changed.

Although the goal of hiring employees rather than contractors is arguably more effective at providing a living wage to support a sustainable workforce, the gig economy challenges that model.

As the market for human virtual assistants continues to grow, the term now also, and perhaps more commonly, refers to the Siris, Alexas, and Cortanas that are virtual not because they are remote, but because they are digital.

With the arrival of Amazon’s Alexa on the Intelligent Virtual Assistant (IVA) scene, it’s clear that IVA’s are just beginning to make an impact.

The global market is changing as users become more comfortable engaging in conversations with computers, and IVA technology continues to improve.

There are a wide variety of Intelligent Virtual Assistants currently available.

Apple’s Siri and Microsoft’s Cortana are the most well-established, but Amazon’s Alexa and Google’s Voice Search/Google Now are gaining traction.

And there are new technologies on the horizon, with Viv, from the creator of Siri, promising a much more seamless conversational interaction and a wider variety of services.

These new iterations of the current IVA technology have the potential to once again change the way humans interact with their computers.

Voice activation and voice control, particularly when paired with a responsive interface, could free up a significant amount of time for users.

The ability to ask questions in a natural and conversational flow, and get answers that are relevant and precise, would cut out a lot of piece-by-piece information assembly on the human side.

Artificial intelligence is already disrupting the economy, and is just one part of the move towards automation.

It will impact job creation and job availability for more than just the human virtual assistants who may be replaced by IVA devices and services.

However, humans have adapted to new technology before.

This new wave of advancement is coming faster than previous waves, but there is hope. 

Manual, creative, and interpersonal roles will remain in the hands of humans for the foreseeable future.

And although IVAs represent an exciting and accessible new technology to save time and provide useful services, it’s unlikely that even a service like Viv could replace human virtual assistants in every instance.

Not only has this technology not caught up to humans when it comes to interactivity and intuition, there are also ongoing mishaps, such as Alexa’s recent dollhouse purchasing spree (and the security and privacy issues that this highlights).

The gig economy and the rise of automation are already intersecting, not only with virtual assistants and Intelligent Virtual Assistants, but also with Uber and their flagship fleet of self-driving cars, and in other areas.

It’s an intersection of technology and economics that is, and will continue to be, important to watch.

About Tiffany Sostar

Tiffany is a writer, editor, academic, and animal lover who came late to her appreciation of pets. At 18, a rescue pup named Tasha saved her from a depression and she hasn't looked back. She has worked as the canine behaviour program coordinator for the Calgary Humane Society, and was a dog trainer specializing in working with fearful and reactive dogs for many years. She doesn't have any pets right now, but makes up for it by giving her petsitting clients (and any dogs she comes across on her frequent coffee shop adventures) extra snuggles.