This talk, given at the Global IoT Conference in Silicon Valley - touches on the social / psychological aspects of digital transformation, including #socialmedia #IoT #blockchain #crypto

1. IoT and the Internet of Me in an
UntetheredWorld
Dr. Julie M. Albright, USC

2. We’re living in a time of digital
transformation …
Technology
Behavior
Technology and
behavior
are increasingly
intertwined…
Double Helix of Technology and Behavior

3. Triad of
Technological
Immersion
✤ Untethered Society - Unhooking
from traditional processes/
structures while hyper attached to
digital technologies
✤ Internet of Me: More critical
processes getting wired into the
Net - tailored to your preferences -
including “the quantified self” -
digital health, alerting for heart
attacks etc.
✤ The Internet of Them - IoT and the
emergence of AI (ex: IBM Watson)
and robotics / automation (e.g.,
human out of the loop)

4. Growing Up Digital…
✤ Young adults today grew up in a world where
there always was an Internet…
✤ Kids today (Gen Z) - grew up in a world where
there always was mobility… (e.g., Internet
enabled smartphones)
✤ They’ll grow up in a world where technology is
increasingly embedded in the physical world …
in The Internet of Things… and where soon,
interacting with things and AI enabled digital
“agents” will become commonplace…
✤ Babies are now acquiring digital skills before
language… rewiring their brain neuro-
pathways…
✤

5. 1979 Album Cover for the Tubes2018 Baby Chair
Available on Amazon

7. Coming “untethered”…
✤ Young people are unhooking from traditional social structures -
they’re not going to getting married, buying a house, having
kids, staying at a career for years…. buying a car… going to
church…joining a political party.
✤ The majority of high school kids now have never been in a
relationship…
✤ Contrast that with many Post World War II folks marrying
their “high school sweetheart”
✤ But they’re hyper-attached to digital technologies…

8. Most Millennials and younger
sleep with their cellphones…

9. Global phenomenon

10. “Addictive” qualities keep us
coming back for more…
Socially connected
technologies have
behavioral drivers “baked
into” the design
✤ In a study of students in
10 countries, “a clear
majority” experienced
distress when they tried
to go without their
devices for 24 hours.

11. “One armed bandit” - slot machines.
Sometimes you win, sometimes you
don’t…
(Psychology = random
reinforcement)
Gambling Addiction
Scrolling on social media much the
same:
Content can be exciting, interesting - or
boring.
Likes drive posting behavior.
Its random reinforcement- built right in.

12. People are hooked…
✤ Nearly one in three Americans would rather give up
sex for three months than give up their smartphone
✤ A global survey found that most people can’t live
without their phones, never leave home without them
and, if given a choice, would rather lose their wallet or
purse than their cellphone…

13. ✤ Digital natives
would rather text
than call; Often a
deficit in face to face
“soft skills.” (e.g.,
deskilling effect).
✤ Unmediated
conversations may
be uncomfortable:
Many Millennials
find phone calls
"distasteful and
obtrusive.”
Desire for a digital interface
Artist: Eric Pickersgill

14. Co-working spaces and adult dorms … Infrastructure for “digital nomads”
Services springing up for the Untethered
Ephemerality / No commitments / Not buying house, car, no longer term career or relationship.

15. Key word in an Untethered Society:
Disaggregation
Now: With emergence of IoT, human-machine relationships become
increasingly important

16. What’s next: Radical Disaggregation
via the Blockchain
✤ Blockchain continues and amplifies this trend of untethering into
radical disaggregation from social structures - like banks, even Nation
States.
✤ Expansion needed in terms of IoT and Connected Devices feeding data
to dApps on the blockchain.
✤ Example: IoT + the Quantified Self + Behavioral Drivers —>
incentivizing behavior through mining tokens on the blockchain
✤ Use Case: Connected gym equipment - which sends data about your
performance to a blockchain app - users can earn everything from
lower insurance rates - to tokens redeemable for fitness wear/ shoes
etc.

17. The bad news: As more of our lives becomes connected - data being
used in unintended ways…
✤ We need to rethink privacy, app permissions, and what is being done
with that data

18. ✤ What we need -
✤ “Nutrition Info” data
use labeling -
✤ Standardized, easy to
read
Data Use Facts

19. Lastly - Four stages of digital
connectivity in our lives:
✤Enablement - (by Internet connectivity)
✤Dependency - (Deskilling, Displacement; Phone as appendage) - ex:
can’t read a map… Some kids can’t read an analog CLOCK
✤Vulnerability - Hacking, Power outages, Malfunctions, Psychological
vulnerabilities - “ennui” / what’s my purpose; “Lost My Phone;”
opening oneself up due to (unintended) data sharing.
✤Fracturation - As opposed to mass media/ TV (McLuhan) - Living in a
“bubble world” of narrow cast information; Allows polarization of
beliefs, knowledge, experiences - and manipulation of those (see: recent
Cambridge Analytica - hyper targeting + bots)
✤

20. Which leads us to the final issue; the problem with
radical disaggregation - the end of jobs problem/end of
occupations though accelerating IoT/smart systems:
✤ In a world where increasingly- AI enabled agents
agents are connected to an increasing array of
devices that run our homes, cars, factories and
other aspects of our lives…
✤ What do we do?

21. People say we’ve been here before.. that there’s always been transformation
based upon new technologies in society….
That this is nothing new.
Here’s the difference -

22. I explore these ideas in more
depth in my new book:
“Left to Their Own Devices: How
Digital Natives Are Reshaping the
American Dream”
Random House/ Prometheus
Available for Preorder on Amazon:
https://tinyurl.com/
LeftToTheirOwnDevices
Follow me on twitter @drjuliea or LinkedIn:
Dr. Julie Albright
www.drjuliealbright.com
Email: albright@usc.edu
Thank you!