IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - June 2020 - 10

change was entitled "An Inconvenient Truth." The truth about climate change pushes people out of
their comfort zones, whereby they
have to actively engage with their
infrastructure and with other users.
It recognizes that an alternative to
the invisible hand of the market,
for example the visible hand of the
commons or the cooperative (cf.,
[13]), requires the investment of
some effort.4 It forces administrators
to pay attention to detail, to educate
themselves and their electorate,
and to make, explain, and justify
hard choices (as opposed to satisfying "a perverse desire - to remain
ignorant" [15]). Above all, perhaps,
it obliges technologists to consider the social and environmental
impact of their products. Following [16], instead of feeding technology users' "inner chimp" with the
quest for likes, kudos, and attention,
another approach would be to lower
transaction costs so that people will
engage with an activity that would
be socially beneficial. For this, a different type of mind management is
required, in order for people to tolerate interrupts and pay attention
with their frontal lobe - the bit of
the brain that requires the exercise
of cognitive skills.
But then, why not use Artificial
Intelligence (AI) to support this: arguably this is what, for example, a
SmartMeter should be for. It should
not be a device for utility companies
to determine patterns of consumer
usage for price-setting, but a partner in helping people make their
4

As Alexandra Schwartz wrote of her experience of a food co-operative in New York: it was
"claustrophobically crowded, illogically organized, and almost absurdly inconvenient" [14].

References

contribution to ameliorating climate
change. The SmartMeter should be
the one to say "good job," or, when
generating an interrupt - "apologies for the inconvenience (but
please use it wisely)..."
In Robbins' recent article [17],
he suggests that convenience has
almost been elevated to a moral
value, alongside rights and justice.
But, especially for those who are
already comfortable, a modicum of
inconvenience, with a reasonable
explanation of why, might make a
far more substantive contribution to
building communities to address climate change than taking advantage
of a marginal change in the unit cost
of electricity. Furthermore, those of
us well-off in the "developed" world,
could perhaps stop looking at alternative cultures and thinking of them
as backward, and follow NorbertHodge's prescription: recognize that
there are some values, craft, skills,
and practices - some knowledge -
that we have perhaps lost sight of
in our relentless pursuit of profit,
comfort, and convenience. Part of
that knowledge is knowing that
some inconvenience is the price we
should pay to reconnect ourselves
to our shared humanity, and to preserve our shared planet.

[1] T. Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First
Century. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press,
2014.
[2] K. Raworth, Doughnut Economics: Seven
Ways to Think Like a 21st Century Economist. Cornerstone Digital, 2017.
[3] B. Malinowski, Argonauts of the Western
Pacific: An Account of Native Enterprise
and Adventure in the Archipelagoes of
Melanesian New Guinea. Routledge and
Kegan Paul, 1922. (Enhanced ed. reissued by
Waveland Press, 2013).
[4] H. Norberg-Hodge, Ancient Futures: Learning from Ladakh. Sierra Club, 1991. (Revised
ed. by Rider, 2000.)
[5] E. Ostrom, Governing the Commons:
The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge Univ.
Press, 1990.
[6] C. Shaw, Five Ring Circus: Myths and
Realities of the Olympic Games. New Society, 2008.
[7] J. Pitt, J.H. Clippinger and C. Sørensen, "Values, axial currencies, and computational axiology," IEEE Technology & Society Mag., vol.
37, no. 3, pp. 56-63, 2018.
[8] J. Briggs, Never in Anger: Portrait of an
Eskimo Family. Harvard Univ. Press, 1970.
[9] AA Gill, The Angry Island: Hunting the
English. Phoenix, 2006.
[10] S. Walker, "Russian troll factory paid U.S.
activists to help fund protests during election," Guardian, Oct. 17, 2017; https://www
.theguardian.com/world/2017/oct/17/russian
-troll-factory-activists-protests-us-election.
[11] R. Plutchik, Emotion: A Psychoevolutionary Synthesis. Harper & Row, 1980.
[12] J. Pitt, A. Rychwalska, M. Roszczynska-Kurasinska, and A. Nowak, "Democratizing platforms
for social coordination," IEEE Technology &
Society Mag., vol. 38, no. 1, pp. 43-50, 2019.
[13] D. Bollier and S. Helfrich, Free, Fair and
Alive: the Insurgent Power of the Commons. New Society, 2019.
[14] A. Schwartz, "The grocery store where
produce meets politics," New Yorker, Nov.
18, 2019; https://www.newyorker.com/
magazine/2019/11/25/the-grocery-store-where
-produce-meets-politics.
[15] M. Lewis, The Fifth Risk. Norton, 2018.
[16] S. Peters, The Chimp Paradox: The Mind
Management Programme for Confidence,
Success and Happiness. Random House, 2012.
[17] J. Robbins, "If technology is a parasite masquerading as a symbiont - Are we the host?,"
IEEE Technology and Society Mag., vol. 38,
no. 3, pp. 24-33, 2019.
[18] I. Levin, This Perfect Day. Random House,
1970.

Rain in the daytime! Christ and
Wei, how strange! And how
inconvenient! But there was
something pleasing about it
too. Something natural [18].

Author Information
Jeremy Pitt is Professor of Intelligent
and Self-Organizing Systems at
Imperial College London, U.K. Email:
j.pitt@imperial.ac.uk.

IEEE TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY MAGAZINE

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JUNE 2020

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/oct/17/russian-troll-factory-activists-protests-us-election https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/oct/17/russian-troll-factory-activists-protests-us-election https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/oct/17/russian-troll-factory-activists-protests-us-election https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/11/25/the-grocery-store-where-produce-meets-politics https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/11/25/the-grocery-store-where-produce-meets-politics https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/11/25/the-grocery-store-where-produce-meets-politics

IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - June 2020

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