Reinvent Podcast

Lee Rainie, Director of Internet, Science and Technology Research at Pew Research Center, believes we are in the middle of the fourth major technology-based revolution of the 21st century. The first was Internet broadband, Rainie says, which has skyrocketed from zero percent of Americans using it to 73 percent. The second was the explosion of mobile phones—today 77 percent of Americans have smartphones and 51 percent have tablets. The third was social media, which 69 percent of Americans use. The fourth revolution, which we are currently in the middle of, is the rise of the Internet of Things and artificial intelligence. When Pew first began tracking Internet usage, in March of 2000, fewer than half of American adults were on the Internet. “We’ve never seen a suite of consumer electronic technologies be adopted this fast with this much impact,” Rainie says. Rainie views the story of the sharing, or platform, economy as paralleling the growth of the Internet. From the earliest days of the Internet, people used it swap things, says Rainie. While 72 percent of Americans have used some kind of sharing or gig service, broadly defined, the percentage of people who have used ridesharing services (15 percent) or home sharing services (11 percent) remain more modest. Most Americans don’t think that new sharing services should be regulated with old regulatory frameworks, Rainie says, and the majority don’t think that service providers should be treated the same as traditional employees. Despite a growing backlash against the tech industry that has become more pronounced in the past year, most Americans say they couldn’t live without the Internet or smart phones, despite their drawbacks. “It’s as predictable as the sun rising the next morning,” Rainie says, “the role of technology and the enthusiasm for tech companies and tech inventors and innovators is really high in America. They still think it serves them well; they still like the ways in which they feel more productive. They feel more socially engaged; they feel like they learn new things; they feel like they can take better care of their health.”

How can we better prepare everyone from teens to Millennials for a more decentralized and increasingly independent future of work?

Martjin Arets, an international expert on the emergence and development of the collaborative economy, has studied and discussed the sharing economy in many European countries. Arets sees a difference between sharing economy innovation in the northern half of the continent, which he says is focused more on online platforms, and the southern half, which is focused more on offline sharing, like cooperatives. In the southern half of Europe, people are more accustomed to living in tight communities, says Arets.

Kai Jia, a lecturer at the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China and visiting scholar at UC Davis, talks about two models of the sharing economy: one requires the platform to own little capital, like Airbnb and Uber (or Didi Chuxing, largest ride-sharing platform in China). The other model is capital intensive. The bike-sharing startups that have proliferated across China in recent years are an example of this. In this second model, the suppliers are not the consumers, Jia says, but rather, the suppliers are the companies. Because bike-sharing grew so quickly in China, the industry has very little regulation, and there are so many bikes that they have become a source of waste and overproduction rather than a means for creating more sustainable cities. On the positive side, bike-sharing apps are often far more convenient than alternative forms of transportation, and don’t contribute to the pollution of China’s cities. Jia argues for increased regulation of the sharing economy on the part of the government, and points out that Chengdu has recently issued guidelines around sharing university parking lots. The government can choose to either impose regulations on the platform itself, or on the behavior of the users, says Jia.

Kai Jia, a lecturer at the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China and visiting scholar at UC Davis, talks about two models of the sharing economy: one requires the platform to own little capital, like Airbnb and Uber (or Didi Chuxing, largest ride-sharing platform in China). The other model is capital intensive. The bike-sharing startups that have proliferated across China in recent years are an example of this. In this second model, the suppliers are not the consumers, Jia says, but rather, the suppliers are the companies. Because bike-sharing grew so quickly in China, the industry has very little regulation, and there are so many bikes that they have become a source of waste and overproduction rather than a means for creating more sustainable cities. On the positive side, bike-sharing apps are often far more convenient than alternative forms of transportation, and don't contribute to the pollution of China's cities. Jia argues for increased regulation of the sharing economy on the part of the government, and points out that Chengdu has recently issued guidelines around sharing university parking lots. The government can choose to either impose regulations on the platform itself, or on the behavior of the users, says Jia.

Orville Schell, veteran reporter and Arthur Ross Director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations at the Asia Society, has covered China for decades and recently accompanied President Trump to Asia as a Vanity Fair correspondent. Trump loves to be pandered to, Schell pointed out, and cares more about whether he’s “winning” the leader of a foreign country than advancing the national interests of the United States. Despite the aggressive and often antagonistic remarks that Trump made about China while on the campaign, the Chinese government has treated Trump in a more strategic and less reactionary way. They appreciate the transactional nature of the relationship, Schell suggests, and the fact that Trump doesn’t raise vexing questions about democracy and China’s record on human rights.

Robin Chase is here to say the future is coming much more quickly than many of us think, particularly where autonomous vehicles (AVs) are concerned. Chase, who co-founded Zipcar, believes that AVs will go on the market as early as 2020. Chase is a proponent of what she refers to as FAVES (fleets of AVs that are electronic and shared) as those will be much better for the environment and urban congestion than independently owned fuel-guzzling AVs. With FAVES, according to Chase, people will be able to travel at a cost of around $2 for maybe 10 percent more time, which will help accelerate the adoption rate. Transitioning to FAVES is the fastest way we can electrify passenger vehicle miles, says Chase. In what Chase refers to as the hell scenario of AVs, the low cost and effort of a ride will lead to an explosion of unnecessary trips. “I can imagine there being 50 percent more cars on the road at all times,” said Chase. To ward off this dystopic future, it’s important to engage these questions now before it’s too late.