Tag: technology

Less technology can mean more sophistication

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Steve Jobs, the founder and long-time leader of Apple, is credited with saying that “simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” He was talking about the intuitive design of the phones, tablets and computers the company makes.

An open book resting on a wooden surface, showing pages fanned out, against an orange background.

But I have been embracing the concept of simplification in my own life recently, ironically due to a bad experience with Apple.

Sophistication is a misunderstood word. It is positively associated with complexity, elegance and being cultured or important. The word comes from the Greek “sophists,” a group of people who were itinerant teachers for pay, experts in rhetoric and philosophy, known for their ability to persuade. It’s how we get the notion of a “sophisticated” argument. In the fourth and fifth centuries, a sophist was a term of contempt for someone who engaged in fallacious arguments intended to mislead.

Whatever the meaning of the term, in modern usage related to technology, sophistication has come to mean having multiple devices and apps and programs. But, as I noted, I was moved by a tech company to make some significant reductions in technology in order to be more simple, or the ultimate sophistication.

The issue I had with Apple was the sudden closure of my Apple account. I don’t know what I did wrong and customer service would not tell me. I suspect I forgot to monitor my cloud storage and went over the limit. As I result, I had to start a new Apple account and rebuild much of my digital life.

Fortunately, I was able to recover some vital documents and other parts of my digital life. But in the process I made some significant, dare I say sophisticated (ie simple) changes:

  • I eliminated many apps that I was no longer using;
  • I purged my contacts, including hundreds of people who I no longer had a professional or personal relationship with. A surprising number of contacts are now deceased.
  • I no longer back anything up to the cloud, since that was the source of my problem and exposed the fact that someone else controlled a lot of my stuff. I have several high capacity thumb drives and a large external hard drive and back up to those so I am not dependent on an impersonal company to retain access to my personal documents if anything happens to my equipment.
  • I separated my work and personal lives by no longer syncing anything but calendar. Its a sophisticated, technological work-life balance.
  • I have started to favor reading hard copy books from the library over electronic anything. I still have e-books and news online. But for a pleasant diversion I am enjoying free access, no power requirement, and no interruptions by ads, emails etc. 

I thought I was doing something unique, emerging as “Tim Penning, unplugged.” But as I have spoken to people about this, I find a broader cultural movement with eliminating or reducing technology in our lives. Around the world, including various US states, there is a move to ban or limit cell phones for kids in schools and to monitor social media access. Many adults are voluntarily using technology less. I read an article that old basic flip phones are popular among young professionals. And of course there are all sorts of cautionary objections to the adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) in our culture. 

This view of technology may remind some of the Luddites, a group of British craftsmen in the 18th century who objected to automated machinery for fear of losing their lives. The term Luddite is unfairly used to indicate people just against all technology. But they were merely responding to a practical concern about their livelihood.

I am responding to a practical concern for my life.

Since going not no-tech but less tech, I have found I have greater energy and less stress. I savor times when I am walking in nature or reading a book on paper. I often set my phone in another room, shut down the computer, and do what comes naturally as opposed to waiting to respond to the next device “bing” like one of Pavlov’s dogs. 

I feel sophisticated.  

ChatGPT AI and PR–Useful Tool or Dangerous Threat?

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The new year started with a flurry of discussion about ChatGPT, both in the public at large and in the community of public relations professionals and professors.

ChatGPT is a database, not an internet search tool. The GPT stands for generative pre-trained transformer. It is created by OpenAI and free to use with a registration. In demonstrations and comments I’ve read and seen, the tool is being met with both excitement and horror.

That mixed reaction is because ChatGPT can write like a human.

I’ll share a few reactions I’ve read this week and my own thoughts here.

An article in PR Week discussed the practical implications of ChatGPT with healthy skepticism. The article’s headline summed up overall reaction: “AI can do PR, but should it?” One point the author makes is that CEOs and CCOs should not “leave sensitive information to a robot.” Indeed, certain information and tasks would not be left to a junior staffer or intern. 

Meanwhile, there is already a book on the market that offers measured guidance for how ChatGPT can be added to the arsenal of ‘COM Tech’ tools. Authors Richard Bowman and David Boyle have a positive take in their book “Prompt: A practical guide to AI-powered brand growth with ChatGPT.”

Among educators, there is the natural concern for cheating, plagiarism and lazy scholarship. One K-12 school has already banned ChatGPT. At the college level, Ryan Watkins, a Professor of Education Technology Leadership at George Washington University, wrote a helpful blog post about updating syllabi for ChatGPT. As a PR professor who teaches writing courses among others, I like Watkins’ assignment idea to have students take actual ChatGPT output and have students edit and improve on it. If you can’t beat it, join it. But this way students can’t cheat, they have to acknowledge the limitations of ChatGPT and use their own human thinking to make writing less perfunctory and information and more creative and persuasive.

I also attended a webinar this week sponsored by Packback, a company that offers a tool that  teaches students how to write by giving instant, line-by-line feedback. This spring they are launching a tool for educators to detect ChatGPT and other AI generated content. I imagine this will be similar to SafeAssign, which professors use in Blackboard and other online course systems to detect plagiarism. An educator on the panel in this webinar pointed out some limitations of ChatGPT:

  • It does not cite sources
  • It can not be really specific
  • It can not speculate or predict future
  • It refused to write a 5-page paper, and cut off after 665 words.

Even though scholarly work has a long publication lead time, there is already an academic journal article on the subject. John Pavlik authored “Collaborating With ChatGPT: Considering the Implications of Generative Artificial Intelligence” for Journalism and Media Education” in the current issue of Journalism and Mass Communication Educator. Pavlik addresses some good thoughts, such as whether computers really be creative and the ethical issue of accountability. What I liked most is the verbatim output in Q&A format of ChatGPT responses to a series of questions. The best part is when ChatGPT actually cautions that educators should teach students about legal and ethical limitations of itself. 

In addition to all of the above, here are my initial thoughts about ChatGPT for professionals and professors:

  • Like with Google—you don’t know what you don’t know
  • If ChatGPT is a database, selection of information is done by human agents and is therefore subjective and can be incomplete or biased
  • ChatGPT will be like other AI, such as chatbots—efficient for some but frustrating for end user
  • I wonder if the writing is purely informational or can be persuasive
  • Can tone be altered to ensure a reader-focused perspective, reflect dialogue, demonstrate responsiveness, emotion?
  • Can ChatGPT writing segment audiences and appeal to specific publics or is all writing generic?
  • Is it ethical for organizations to use AI content and pose as persons?
  • Is there legal liability for AI generated ‘misinformation’?
  • How will the publics receive such content? Will reputation be harmed by perceptions of inauthenticity?
  • Has anyone thought that AI content will be met with AI response and corporate and public machines will talk to each other but there will be no human interaction?

With regard to new technology, I’ve always been between the luddites and the lemmings, neither an immediate adaptor nor a hold out. ChatGPT will likely be added to a toolbox of communication technologies. But a human agent will be required to know when and how to use each tool.

Tech Media Now Must Take Role of Journalists

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As the media shake-up continues, it seems that the role and responsibility of “journalism’ is shifting from conventional news organizations to the modern digital companies responsible for the changes.

Consider the confluence of recent headlines.

Today I read that the Detroit News is offering buyouts to all journalists on staff, no matter the role or length of service, in order to meet new budget guidelines as the economic model of traditional journalism continues to struggle. This is just the latest in a long list of news outlets reducing reporting  and editing staff.

The shrinking of conventional journalism means an erosion of the role journalists should play in our society in several ways.

One is the role of providing a public forum. For years the letters to the editor and op-ed pages were what the taverns and coffee shops were modern communication–a place for what German scholar Jurgen Habermas called the “public sphere”, where citizens discussed and informed themselves about politics and other news of the day.

But these days, people don’t need the op-ed pages and letters forum to engage in public debate. Even the online comments sections on mainstream news organizations’ apps and websites are losing traction, so much so that some news sites are eliminating comments. People talk about news on social media. Traditional media don’t host the conversations, they participate.

Another journalistic function being taken away from journalists is the editing and verification role. Sure, the digital revolution made communication more of a democracy, but it also made it more of a cacophony. Tech companies like Facebook and Google–where much of the control of society’s information has shifted–are being asked to vet content they allow into the public realm after reports of fake news appearing along side legitimate information. Facebook and Google don’t want to take on this function. It means moving from what the law would call providing access to providing content. Essentially, it means they are being asked to move from being a technology company to being news organizations, going from algorithm to journalism.

In a similar way, Facebook has recently been embroiled in controversy over targeting ethnic groups in Facebook advertising. Micro-targeting is a huge advantage in digital advertising, particularly on Facebook, as a speaker to the GVSU Advertising Club recently shared. This is largely an ethical issue, since in some cases–such as housing ads–certain ethnic groups have been excluded. It raises the old question of do we mainstream all minorities in our communication? Is targeting them a positive way of reaching out to them or is it a negative way of marginalizing them? A lot depends on intent, and requires human oversight.

So even as our technology changes, the issues in our society–and our need for a professional class that can report, monitor, verify, curate and edit content–will be needed.

Advertising and public relations professionals who understand ethics and have integrity can and should fill some of this social role.

But I also wonder if certain former employees of the Detroit News and other “old media” will be snapped up by tech companies like Google, Facebook and other companies who realize the formulas of technology can’t fully replace the art and wisdom of actual human agents.

Reluctance to Wear Apple Watch–Theory in Practice

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I read with interest this article in Fortune about people who bought an Apple watch not wearing them.

If you look at the specific reasons why people aren’t wearing the latest tech gadget, they match the key concepts of the Diffusion of Innovation Theory. In addition to spelling out the main types of adapters of innovation, the theory addresses the five specific factors that influence–or inhibit–adoption of technologies. Those five factors seem at play in the Apple watch owners:

  1. Relative Advantage – The degree to which an innovation is seen as better than the idea, program, or product it replaces.
  2. Compatibility – How consistent the innovation is with the values, experiences, and needs of the potential adopters.
  3. Complexity – How difficult the innovation is to understand and/or use.
  4. Triability – The extent to which the innovation can be tested or experimented with before a commitment to adopt is made.
  5. Observability – The extent to which the innovation provides tangible results.
Relative advantage relates to “missed my old watch.” Compatibility relates to the various “didn’t like” comments. The other specific comments fall into complexity. While these owners have conducted their own trial and observation of the watch, you can see how those factors did not in this case compel them to “adopt” (i.e. wear) the watch.

I teach this theory in several of my PR classes, and like to point out to undergraduate students that theory is not boring, abstract or irrelevant. It is immensely practical in explaining human behavior, and in forming strategies as a result. 

So, I thought I’d use the latest real-world example of adoption–or rejection–of new technology to illustrate the practicality of theory once again.