How the Internet has made Humankind Ignorant

Being educated like I was in a time before the digital age sometimes presented challenges, particularly when you had to carry out research for a school or university assignment. The primary place you had to go to for information was the library, and chances were that one of your more enterprising classmates had already borrowed one or more of the books which was going to be critical to your efforts. Therefore it was often a struggle to reference any more than the minimum two sources required to make sure your assignment wasn't blatant plagiarism and thereafter, submit a credibly researched paper.

This is one of the reasons in the mid 1990s I became quite interested in the development of digital encyclopedias like Encarta and then subsequently, on-line research tools. As the internet started to take off, the possibilities for education seemed huge. For the first time ever, all the accumulated knowledge of humankind became instantly available at the click of the button. Surely, I thought, if anything was going to make people informed and lead to a new era of enlightenment, this was it.

Well, fast forward about 20 years and it's clear how wrong I was. 

Instead of becoming more informed, humankind now exists in kind of bizarre "post fact" world where experts are derided, people form their view on issues not through a critical and objective assessment of facts but through the filter of their value system and language and debate has descended into an unintelligible morass of badly punctuated tweets and streams of emoticons. What the hell happened?

I think a significant factor is that while the internet has provided access to a lot of credible and properly researched information, at the same time it has enabled easy publication of complete rubbish, which over time has come to dominate online discourse. 

It's easy to forget in the digital age just how much gravitas used to be associated with publishing something, be that in writing or over a TV or radio network. Most of the news that was available for public consumption was provided either through newspapers or the major television channels, and while they would still often get things wrong, these outlets were subject to journalistic codes of conduct which required them not to distort the basic facts of a story, not to show overt bias, to declare conflicts of interest and certainly not to "troll" anybody because back then, the media companies were attractive targets for anyone wanting to mount a defamation case. Also any journalist who failed to have a basic understanding of grammar, punctuation and how to construct a sentence wouldn't make it past the front door. Similarly with scientific and other specialist journals, anyone looking to have a paper published would have their piece subject to fairly rigorous editorial scrutiny, usually by one of their peer experts in charge of publishing the journal. Quacks looking to promote some form of fringe theory which couldn't be substantiated by fact tended to be dismissed and therefore got the negligible airtime that they deserved.

Because the available "information" was much more limited before the advent of the internet, and was generally of much higher quality, this meant that it was much easier for someone to properly assess what was going on, consider things critically and then come to an informed opinion about the issue of the day, whether that was Australia's involvement in the Vietnam war, Gough Whitlam's sacking or whether taking thalidomide caused defects in unborn children. 

Now, however, with the internet awash with all manner of websites, blogs, v-logs and probably a lot of other things that I've never heard of, the situation is a lot more confused and garbled. While in a sense it is positive that publication is no longer the exclusive domain of a bunch of global media companies, enabling anyone with a keyboard and an internet connection to publish whatever they want online has led to its own set of problems.

First and foremost, it greatly dilutes the quality of information available to people, for the reason that crackpots who would not previously had a platform to spread their misinformation and conspiracy theories and who aren't constrained by journalistic codes of conduct or inconvenient facts are free to run riot.

Secondly, it has encouraged the human tendency to seek out and take as gospel information which is supportive of their world view, even if the source of that information is unreliable or incorrect. It's much more comforting if you are anti-vaccer to read about what an unqualified person like Pauline Hanson has to say on the topic than to take the AMA's expert advice.  It's something I think we are all guilty of to some extent and has no doubt led to the increasing polarisation of the political debate. Witness the situation in America recently where what was basically objective common-sense public health advice in terms of wearing a face mask during a pandemic got turned into another front in the culture wars. Ridiculous as it sounds, if you wore a mask, you were tagged as a Democrat and if you didn't, you were tagged as a Republican. 

Thirdly, the dumbing down of information or its over-simplification such that it gets conveyed by a Facebook post or a 15 word tweet is very dangerous. It is just not possible to communicate complex ideas and concepts that merit lengthy and careful consideration into a throwaway tweet and expect good decisions or outcomes to follow. Worryingly however politicians of all colour seem to have taken to social media like ducks to water, possibly because of the instant publicity it can bring. However as we have seen over the last few years, ignoring key facts and over-simplifying difficult problems are two of the key hallmarks of populism, which method of governing sooner or later ends up in disaster.

I mention all this because looking at the current state of the Presidential campaign in the USA, the same depressing script as 2016 is playing out. It's hard to think of one thing that has got better in the USA over the past 4 years as the country has alienated its allies, weakened its institutions, started an "easy to win" trade war with China and Europe that shows no signs of ending, run up record government debt of $25 trillion, has major civil unrest and is on track to record 300,000 plus COVID-related deaths by the end of the year. Even the economy which was going fairly well before the pandemic has now collapsed, in no small measure due to Trump's complete lack of interest in controlling the virus beyond promoting a couple of dangerous quack cures and telling the country back in February it would somehow just "magically disappear".

Yet in spite of that, you just know what's coming in the run up to the election. Multiple clusterbombs of misinformation, self-serving statements, insults to the Democrats and bald-faced lies will be dropped in the coming weeks. Twitter and his more traditional enablers in Fox News will be awash with constant propaganda which extols Trump's virtues, praises the fantastic job he has done and warning that Biden will do stuff like sell the country out to China, stand down the police force and perhaps most egregiously in the eyes of Republicans, extend health care to all US citizens. Of course, many Americans who have experienced the realities of a Trump presidency won't fall for his BS, but it's almost certain enough of them will to re-elect him for another term. 

Unfortunate though it is, this sort of thing is a salient reminder of the dangers of what can happen when people don't think critically or long enough about the information they take in and the reliability of the source. When people pay heed to the loudest voice in the room instead of the smartest and most qualified, invariably bad outcomes follow. 

It's true that since its inception, the internet and digital communication more generally have played their role in enabling a lot of loud, ignorant voices to drown out the ones who know what they are talking about (and who also know how to spell). However ultimately it's up to humans to decide which voices they are going to listen to, as the information is certainly all there. 

I hope we all make the right choices, because I'm pretty certain the internet with all its foibles is going to be here for the foreseeable future and going back to the library to do our research isn't going to be the best option.

Where to for Employment From Here?

In the brief period between the initial lockdown and the Andrews government stuff-up lockdown, I managed to catch up with 2 colleagues from my Macquarie Bank days for lunch. As usually happens on these occasions, there was a lot of reminiscing and discussion about how different work was 15 or so years ago. Thinking back on our chat later on, I was struck by just how true a statement this is.

The press have always liked to paint a picture of Macquarie as a rapacious money-grubbing organisation with the morals and ethics of your average house cat, but my experience for most of my time there was that they genuinely cared about and tried to look after their staff. When faced with an economic downturn or some other crisis, rather than respond by sacking great swathes of people, the business groups most affected were encouraged to adapt to changing circumstances, or re-deploy excess people into other areas. 

Also while like any big company there were poor performing staff, rather than throwing up their hands in frustration and making them redundant at the stroke of a pen, the inclination of management was to try to make them work in other roles and then if that still didn't work, send a subtle message through the profit-share system to suggest to them that they might be better served looking for employment elsewhere. As a lot of people tend to confuse ambition with ability, this worked surprisingly well. But importantly, while they did look around for another job, even the least effective employees could go about their daily lives knowing that their employment was reasonably secure.

Fast forward a few years however to the Global Financial Crisis and everything suddenly changed, at least in the business I worked in. The senior executives who'd pocketed 10 figure bonuses for years off the back of our exceptional profitability all of a sudden couldn't get rid of us quickly enough. Instead of providing support to work through the issues in the business, we were requested to sack 25 per cent of the staff then make those who were left work crazy hours to stabilise things so they could sell it off to the highest bidder. Of course, being 2009, pretty much no-one had any cash to buy a used property funds business (a fact that seemed completely lost on senior management) and we wound up being flogged off at a bargain-basement price to an organisation that at the time was very much a second tier operator.

In what seemed the twinkling of an eye, more than 100 staff found themselves suddenly parachuted into an organisation where the working environment was very different. Where previously, independent thinking and good ideas to advance the business were encouraged, all of a sudden we found ourselves in a place where we had to accept the fact that the boss was always right. Even when he wasn't, which was quite a lot of the time. 

Not surprisingly, a lot of the staff including myself found this deeply unsettling. It's not great feeling suddenly unwelcome in a business you have spent 13 odd years helping to build, and I for one was quite relieved when 2 years later they put me out of my misery and made me redundant. However, I found the whole process of being parcelled up and sold off to an organisation that I would never have voluntarily have worked for so distasteful that I subsequently decided to go and work for myself and it was a long time before I was prepared to commit to being a salaried employee again. Ultimately however time heals all wounds.

I mention all this, because observing the corporate environment in the time since the GFC, working condtions for employees have not reverted to the relatively benign conditions of pre-2008 but have continued to be quite fraught as far as job security is concerned. The current COVID-induced recession has also made this much worse, with even high-performing staff not being safe, particularly if they are on the wrong side of 45. Recently I've had two exceptionally capable colleagues who are also among my best friends in the industry summarily punted from their senior positions, one because the business he worked in doesn't seem to have any handle on how to deal with the current situation and the only idea they could come up with was to lay a lot of people off, and the other presumably because the management thinks his replacement will somehow do a better job. Well, good luck with that, because this guy is one of the most diligent and hard-working people I know and they are big shoes to fill.

However, can you just imagine how morale must be among the remaining staff seeing this sort of behaviour from their employer, and the stress particularly among junior staff thinking, hang on a minute, what's to stop this happening to me? And as we slowly come out of the mess wrought by COVID and start to try growing the economy again, having employees worrying about this sort of thing is a big, big problem.

It's convenient for Baby-Boomer demographers to dismiss Milennials as a bunch of flaky commitment-phobes who go round eating smashed avocado, drinking awful beer and growing scraggly beards. However, thanks to being part of a large family, I'm related to quite a few of them and I can say confidently that they all want the same things as their elders which is to say, owning their own home and starting families. But when their employers display no patience or inclination to work through short term problems and instead react by flicking off employees at the drop of a hat, can you really blame them for putting off long-term life and investment decisions for as long as possible?

I watched with interest on "Insiders" last weekend as Josh Frydenberg talked up the government's strategy to implement bold changes to stimulate economic growth. I'm not sure how far he's going to get negotiating with the trade unions by invoking the ghosts of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, but it's true they are going to have to make some sweeping changes because the Reserve Bank has run out of ammunition in terms of providing cheap finance as a stimulus. However another key driver of growth is consumer spending and perhaps by giving business an incentive to stop behaving like they have over the last 10 years and instead adopt a more pre-GFC way of thinking, employees will start to feel more secure about their situation and start making longer term life decisions with all the requisite consumer spending that entails.

Ok, so here is an idea. The government wants to pass its company tax cuts but the Senate currently won't let them. But what if they made access to the tax cuts subject to companies signing up to a new employee-employer charter which required companies to offer improved job security? Some of these measures could include:

• A minimum 3 year's salary redundancy payment in circumstances where an employee is not otherwise eligible for dismissal
• Having a minimum percentage of employees hired as either full time or part time employees as opposed to casual labour
• Casual employees having a guaranteed minimum of paid hours each week and being entitled to superannuation and leave benefits after a certain period of service
• Sale of any parts of the business being prohibited unless the purchaser of the business is also a signatory to the charter or agrees to honour the existing employee arrangements

While this would obviously give businesses less flexibility in its labour arrangements, it would however force them to think twice about how they deal with their staff, and cutting their tax bill by a third is probably a big enough incentive to get them to sign up to the charter and make them adopt more longer-term thinking about their business instead of just reacting to problems in an off the cuff way. Particularly seeing if they don't sign up to the charter, the best employees will naturally gravitate to the firms that are prepared to do so.

Also by framing the tax cuts this way, the government could quite rightly heap political pressure on both Labor and the capricious cross-bench in the Senate by pointing out they are holding up an initiative that is designed to improve job security. Even in this partisan and uncooperative age, that ought to be enough to get them through.

As well, it would probably be enough to get people spending again and help grow the economy. God knows I wouldn't have bought the house I did in 2005 if I'd known in 4-5 years time our business was going to be sold off to who it was,  but in the comfort zone I was in at the time, I was more than happy to make that decision. I'm sure the younger generation would too given the same chance.

Plus if they have to spend cash on things like houses, cars and baby infrastructure, they won't have the leftover cash to spend $40 on a slab of undrinkable wheat beer brewed in some converted outhouse in the Adelaide Hills. Which would mean craft breweries would probably all go out of business, and wouldn't that make for a much better Australia?