Speaker 1: Gilda.
Speaker 2: I'm Chelsea Daniels and this is the Front Page, a
Speaker 2: daily podcast presented by The New Zealand Herald. After twenty
Speaker 2: two years, video calling platform Skype is shutting down. After
Speaker 2: its inception, to Skype became a verb and it was
Speaker 2: the go to service for many years, that is until
Speaker 2: COVID nineteen and Zoom took over. So how has something
Speaker 2: once thought to be so innovative become so obsolete? Who
Speaker 2: decides what apps and sites we migrate to? And looking
Speaker 2: to the future, what could be the next big bang
Speaker 2: or bust? Today on the front Page, Victoria University of
Speaker 2: Wellington Professor of Information Systems Alex Richter joins us to
Speaker 2: discuss the fickle world of tech.
Speaker 3: Alex.
Speaker 2: Skype amassed more than three hundred million monthly users at
Speaker 2: its peak. Many of us grew up knowing that to
Speaker 2: video call someone was to skype someone. Where in the
Speaker 2: world did it all go wrong?
Speaker 1: I think a lot of this is because of lost
Speaker 1: opportunity during COVID, where Skype basically competed with Zoom and
Speaker 1: maybe also a bit with teams. And the big advantage
Speaker 1: that assume had was that it was very simple to you,
Speaker 1: so Skype had actually a very good opportunity at the infrastructure,
Speaker 1: the user base. As you say, it was actually a
Speaker 1: synonym for even like video conferencing. But Zoom had this instant,
Speaker 1: frictionless success, whereas the Skype interface was increasingly complex from
Speaker 1: a user perspective, especially during COVID. That's when this simplicity
Speaker 1: basically one. Yeah, millions of users over for soon, and Skype,
Speaker 1: which was already owned by Microsoft them at some point,
Speaker 1: was in the eyes, I guess of Microsoft no longer
Speaker 1: that successful.
Speaker 2: I can think of a lot of platforms and applications
Speaker 2: that were once part of our daily lives and they've
Speaker 2: just faded into the background almost. I'm thinking of like
Speaker 2: MySpace being one of them, overtaken by Facebook, then Instagram.
Speaker 2: How do we just all of a sudden decide to
Speaker 2: just stop using one and move to another.
Speaker 1: Yeah, in the case of MySpace is actually also very interesting.
Speaker 1: I would say it's another design principle. So for Skype,
Speaker 1: it was in my eyes it was simplicity. For my Space,
Speaker 1: I would say it was the activity streams that they
Speaker 1: didn't have. So MySpace it let users personalize their pages
Speaker 1: endlessly and had a lot of cool features but they
Speaker 1: were really slow to adopt this activity streamed at Facebook,
Speaker 1: Head and Twitter. This is a core social feature of
Speaker 1: was for many users. They were there because they wanted
Speaker 1: to connect with others. They wanted to have this constant
Speaker 1: stree of awareness what's going on for others. And while
Speaker 1: it turns out users, especially on these platforms are not
Speaker 1: dead loyal, they want easy In both cases, they want
Speaker 1: easy access, easy anti creations, and basically the interfaces that
Speaker 1: work for them. So in both cases users decided to
Speaker 1: move on.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Another one that I always think of is BlackBerry Messenger.
Speaker 2: That was a huge for a moment in time. Hi.
Speaker 2: I had several Blackberries and still have fond memories of them,
Speaker 2: even though I wasn't a business woman in the mid
Speaker 2: two thousands, I was in high school and of course
Speaker 2: Microsoft Messenger or MSN Messenger was a huge part of
Speaker 2: everyone's adolescence and.
Speaker 5: Bebo as well.
Speaker 2: Why do you think some of these I mean, why
Speaker 2: don't they stick around?
Speaker 1: I think what all these the example show is that
Speaker 1: platform dominance doesn't always last. Right today we think of
Speaker 1: these giants and we think, oh, well, they will be
Speaker 1: there in the future. But yeah, BlackBerry is a great example,
Speaker 1: Nokia AOL has some really big names at the time.
Speaker 1: At some point a myths to evolve and grow with
Speaker 1: the expectations of their users, and I think what the
Speaker 1: users were afterward then often not so much features, but
Speaker 1: the whole experience. And in the case of BlackBerry, I
Speaker 1: think that may have been one of the reasons. And
Speaker 1: BlackBerry was also a business tool, so there may have
Speaker 1: been other reasons as well. In the Skype and MySpace case,
Speaker 1: it was a lot of private users who basically decided
Speaker 1: the other platforms had what they needed.
Speaker 2: I guess our relationship and growing immediacy as a society
Speaker 2: has had to contribute to us cycling through this tech quicker, right.
Speaker 2: I mean I read somewhere this morning that Netflix took
Speaker 2: three and a half years to reach a million users,
Speaker 2: while the likes of Threads, which was Instagram's answer to Twitter,
Speaker 2: I've got two million users in just two hours. That
Speaker 2: doesn't necessarily mean longevity nowadays, does it?
Speaker 5: Though?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 1: I agree sometimes these are dynamic developments, but exactly a
Speaker 1: longevity relates more to into still also trying to understand
Speaker 1: what directions could we grow and what do the users want?
Speaker 1: And I see this as a in a way a
Speaker 1: co evolution where the platforms try to understand the users,
Speaker 1: but then the users over time may also adjust the
Speaker 1: way they're they're using the tools, even just the way
Speaker 1: they're doing things. So as long as as a platform
Speaker 1: I can evolve together with the users, then it should work.
Speaker 1: But how this evolution goes that's quite hard to predict,
Speaker 1: and I think there were a lot of smart people
Speaker 1: at these companies that we discussed that still didn't weren't
Speaker 1: able to figure out what way the users wanted to grow.
Speaker 3: They only gave Google Glass to developers. Initially you could
Speaker 3: buy them. It was about twelve hundred pounds, and it
Speaker 3: was only on sale to the developer community, who were
Speaker 3: the best will in the world. Probably aren't supermodels generally,
Speaker 3: and so the user imagery was problematic. And that's by
Speaker 3: the way, going to be a problem with the Apple
Speaker 3: Vision Pro because the only people who'll use an Apple
Speaker 3: Vision Pro in public are going to be weirdos.
Speaker 2: There are also some things that I think that never
Speaker 2: really took off at all. I'm thinking like virtual reality
Speaker 2: hasn't really taken off yet, despite everyone talking about it
Speaker 2: and trying to make it a thing. So why aren't
Speaker 2: we all wearing goggles or going to work in a
Speaker 2: virtual workspace or something.
Speaker 1: So when we look at these design prince, we just dead.
Speaker 1: We discuss I mean, against simplicity. I think is a
Speaker 1: good one here, because it doesn't seem too simple to
Speaker 1: use these goggles in some situations. Right, they're too finicky,
Speaker 1: it takes too long and so on, so the effort
Speaker 1: is quite high. And on the other side, their value
Speaker 1: is not always that clear. And I think indeed there's
Speaker 1: a couple of examples where technologies never took off or
Speaker 1: took a long time because the users were just not
Speaker 1: to sure how to really, yeah, how to use them
Speaker 1: in the most beneficial ways.
Speaker 5: And in other cases it worked.
Speaker 1: So yeah, this is in a way relates and again
Speaker 1: also a bit too well, what do the users, how
Speaker 1: do they perceive these tools fitting in how they work
Speaker 1: or how they do things in their daily lives.
Speaker 2: And I suppose something might need to be embraced by
Speaker 2: the business world to become successful, do you know, like
Speaker 2: BlackBerry messenger?
Speaker 5: Yes, I think the case of BlackBerry.
Speaker 1: I never had one, but from what I remember is
Speaker 1: it was it was an ill using having a BlackBerry
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden having this capability to text
Speaker 1: from a mobile a bit different from compared to phones before.
Speaker 1: But then the iPhone, especially in smartphones the other smartphones
Speaker 1: that then came a bit later, was a major disruption
Speaker 1: because all of a sudden, there was not just the
Speaker 1: phone right, there was this device that was so generative
Speaker 1: or malible. It could do so many things. And I
Speaker 1: think what was surprising in the business world at the
Speaker 1: time was that iPhone originally was rather seen as a
Speaker 1: private device, but many organizations decided, yeah, okay, our managers
Speaker 1: can have iPhones too. And I think that I'm not
Speaker 1: saying that the iPhone alone killed the BlackBerry, but I
Speaker 1: think it came as a surprise that then many businesses
Speaker 1: moved on from the BlackBerry to smartphones like the iPhone
Speaker 1: or and rid phones.
Speaker 2: How do you think how relationship and reliance on technology
Speaker 2: has adapted over time. Has it become a bit of
Speaker 2: a hindrance or a major help?
Speaker 5: I think it is both.
Speaker 1: I think there's fantastic cases how these devices make our
Speaker 1: lives easier. At the same time, the more we integrate
Speaker 1: them in our lives and in a way depend on them,
Speaker 1: or fear we depend on them, the more negative effects
Speaker 1: we also see, and starting with kids and how they
Speaker 1: use these devices at school, often in really detrimental ways,
Speaker 1: things that you and I guess didn't experience, but that
Speaker 1: a lot of young children have to figure out nowadays,
Speaker 1: and also as adults. I mean, so from that perspective,
Speaker 1: I guess it's a balanced views, acknowledging the potential benefits
Speaker 1: but also being aware of all the potential detrimental effects
Speaker 1: and especially important for AI that has taken a lot
Speaker 1: of our private lives and on our business lives by
Speaker 1: storm in just the last couple of years. And again
Speaker 1: then the risks that come with this, various biases and
Speaker 1: problems need to be acknowledged at the same time. And yeah,
Speaker 1: and we need to react to that as well.
Speaker 2: When we're talking about the next big thing, it has
Speaker 2: to have something to do with AI, right. We at
Speaker 2: the point where chat GPT has evolved beyond just being
Speaker 2: a fun trend of making some AI images, sending to
Speaker 2: your friends, making up a little itinerary. I mean, what's
Speaker 2: the next step for AI, especially in I guess, both
Speaker 2: in personal and business life.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, I would say the effects are already
Speaker 1: really there for many freelancers, for example, in creative spaces
Speaker 1: is where AI basically has taken over or in other professions.
Speaker 1: So the question here is really like, how do we
Speaker 1: We cannot really shut it out, but how can we
Speaker 1: react to the fact that AI is all of a
Speaker 1: sudden there and is taking over some tasks and parts
Speaker 1: of of of job roles. So I think that this
Speaker 1: is in some way happened overnight, and and businesses and
Speaker 1: especially also policymakers around the globe bar having trouble catching
Speaker 1: catching up in the private life. I guess it's similar
Speaker 1: to uh to what I said about social media before.
Speaker 1: I see some co evolution in a way we we
Speaker 1: change our our practices, our habits to some extent based
Speaker 1: on what how AI makes our lives easier. And as
Speaker 1: as long as it just makes it easier and we
Speaker 1: don't don't change things in ways that are then depremental
Speaker 1: to our ourselves or to others, then I think, yeah,
Speaker 1: we can see the positive effects. But again there's I
Speaker 1: think what is very important in the space is AI literacy,
Speaker 1: making informed decisions about AI, being aware of what AI
Speaker 1: is actually able to do and where we need to
Speaker 1: be really careful using it, and not being too too
Speaker 1: trusting in its capabilities. So from that perspective, in my opinion,
Speaker 1: what is happening right now is already is a really
Speaker 1: big thing, and the question is how do we how
Speaker 1: do we react, Like, how how can we make sure
Speaker 1: that the ethics that we have, that the values that
Speaker 1: we have are not going overboard now?
Speaker 6: And what about this internet thing?
Speaker 5: Do you do you know anything about that?
Speaker 4: Sure?
Speaker 5: What the hell is that? Exactly?
Speaker 4: Well, it's it's become a place where people are publishing information,
Speaker 4: so everybody can have their own homepage. Companies are there
Speaker 4: the latest information. It's wild, what's going on? You can
Speaker 4: send electronic mail to people. It is the big new things.
Speaker 6: A couple of months ago, there was like a big
Speaker 6: breakthrough announcement that on the internet or on some computer
Speaker 6: deal they were going to broadcast a baseball game. You
Speaker 6: could listen to a baseball game on your computer. And
Speaker 6: I just thought to myself, does radio ring a bell?
Speaker 2: And how can we make sure that AI, the snowball
Speaker 2: of it doesn't get away from us kind of like
Speaker 2: the Internet did. Because I know that there's some legislation
Speaker 2: there that's still trying to catch up to the World
Speaker 2: Wide web. So in the.
Speaker 1: Business lives, in a way it's a little bit easier
Speaker 1: because you can establish guard race and policy saying look,
Speaker 1: you can do this and that's okay, but this is
Speaker 1: where it ends. This is a boundary look that we're
Speaker 1: not crossing, and as the leadership of an organization can
Speaker 1: say that. I mean there's a trade off because some
Speaker 1: may feel that they're missing out if they're not using
Speaker 1: more of the AI capabilities. But I guess it's about
Speaker 1: managing risks there and I think it's a very valid
Speaker 1: approach to assess the risk first and not trying to
Speaker 1: catch up too fast. On a societal level, this is
Speaker 1: a bit more tricky. I think in a way we
Speaker 1: learned a little bit from the case of social media,
Speaker 1: where legislation indeed has taken in many countries forever to
Speaker 1: actually acknowledge the risks and the dangers of social media
Speaker 1: and to catch up with it. I mean, the social
Speaker 1: media band for children in Australia comes now literally decays
Speaker 1: after young people have started using it. So in the
Speaker 1: case of it, I think there's more awareness and there's
Speaker 1: also louder voices that say, look, we need to we
Speaker 1: need to implement guardrails, policies, laws also in private life,
Speaker 1: and and actually also we need to make some of
Speaker 1: these guard rails mandatory for the platform providers. I would
Speaker 1: say policy makers have learned from the past to some
Speaker 1: extent and try to be quicker with their with their implementations.
Speaker 1: There As one example, I would like to mention social companions.
Speaker 1: So there's various platforms where you can have chat with
Speaker 1: with avatars literally having virtual relationships with the I and
Speaker 1: all that, and millions of users actually trust AI quite
Speaker 1: a lot to an extent where we had global cases
Speaker 1: in the US in Australia where people took their lives
Speaker 1: based on advice from a eye. So this is obviously
Speaker 1: this has gone way too far. This is where then
Speaker 1: legislation has step in and say, okay, like we need
Speaker 1: to make sure that I doesn't give these advices and
Speaker 1: basically that there models are only wrote out and can
Speaker 1: be used by the public if they're safe.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's really interesting actually because I read somewhere the
Speaker 2: other day that people have been flocking to AI and
Speaker 2: getting mental health advice instead of actually paying the money
Speaker 2: to go see a psychologist or a counselor, and the
Speaker 2: waiting lists for those are huge and there I've seen
Speaker 2: a couple of psychologists on TikTok warning people saying, no,
Speaker 2: this is not a solution. And I think there needs
Speaker 2: to be a little bit more, like you said, some
Speaker 2: literacy around what AI actually is and the advice that
Speaker 2: it gives. It is only what you feed it, right.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, I mean I think they are as you say,
Speaker 1: we have a growing need for mental support, I would
Speaker 1: say across our societies and not enough psychologists, coaches and
Speaker 1: so on. And I think AI can help to some extent,
Speaker 1: but only in a safe space. There have been studies
Speaker 1: that have shown that it is highly effective, and I
Speaker 1: have examples also in my network that where experts and
Speaker 1: psychologists were quite impressed what AI can actually do. But
Speaker 1: just having a one positive example or a couple of
Speaker 1: nice anecdotes doesn't mean it's safe to use. Somebody who
Speaker 1: potentially uses it needs to be very aware what AI
Speaker 1: can do and cannot do. But also we need to
Speaker 1: make sure that the models go only that far.
Speaker 2: And finally, what do you think the tech world or
Speaker 2: the business world as a whole can learn from the
Speaker 2: downfall of apps like Skype.
Speaker 1: I think that many platforms that have been successful over
Speaker 1: the last years, are very heavily uses centric. They're very
Speaker 1: close to their users, and they're really understand and what
Speaker 1: the users want, and they're quick to react. What we
Speaker 1: can learn is that there's not a lot of tech loyalty,
Speaker 1: so users will move on if they don't get the
Speaker 1: experience anymore that they want. So it's really for a platform,
Speaker 1: it's really important to understand what the users want. At
Speaker 1: the same time, like the case of social media, also
Speaker 1: shows that user interests and platform interests are not always aligned, right.
Speaker 1: I mean, we know that social media platforms really thrive
Speaker 1: with highly emotional for example, inflammatory posts and comments, so
Speaker 1: because they want a high user engagement, they.
Speaker 5: Will encourage that.
Speaker 1: So here we actually also then need policies and laws
Speaker 1: making sure that this yard doesn't further increase or it's
Speaker 1: all contained in a way. So basically that we have
Speaker 1: really key yeah, competing interests. I think in the long run,
Speaker 1: it would be good to see more and more platforms
Speaker 1: taking right decisions, not being after the on the short run,
Speaker 1: after just the money, but also like after sustainable growth
Speaker 1: that also is in the interest of the users in
Speaker 1: terms of yeah, literally mental well being.
Speaker 2: Thanks for joining us, Alex.
Speaker 5: Thank you, Chelsea.
Speaker 2: That's it for this episode of the Front Page. You
Speaker 2: can read more about today's stories and extensive news coverage
Speaker 2: at enzidherld dot co dot nz. The Front Page is
Speaker 2: produced by Ethan Sills and Richard Martin, who is also
Speaker 2: our sound engineer. I'm Chelsea Daniels. Subscribe to the Front
Speaker 2: Page on iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts, and
Speaker 2: tune in tomorrow for another look behind the headlines.