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there's a lot we can do as individual
consumers but also I think the major
solutions should reside with the
companies that push us to use email for
example and with governments which have
a power to intervene to some extent
different countries are much more tuned
in to this than others Western Europe
seems to be especially attuned to these
issues so in in Germany for example the
car company Daimler has a wonderful
email vacation policy if you work at
Daimler and you're on vacation there's
an automatic vacation notification
message if I email you while you're on
vacation I get a response saying thank
you for your email this person is on
vacation your email has been deleted
instead of the email being delivered to
this person we were happy to deliver it
to this other person who will take over
instead or you can wait until this
original person comes back from vacation
and resend it now that sounds extreme
and it sounds from the business
perspective like it's a bad business
decision but it turns out to be very
wise because if you have employees who
are going on vacation you want them to
come back recharged most employees who
have to keep checking email while
they're away don't feel recharged when
they come back but if you speak to
people who work at Daimler however their
email inbox looks the day they go on
vacation it looks identical the day they
return and they therefore are given an
enforced vacation and so when they come
back to work they do feel recharged
greet energized and they're ready to
work again at maximum productivity which
is not true of people who go on vacation
and feel tethered to work there are
great benefits here I think if you exert
these kind of top-down influences within
a company or by legislation now if your
Facebook and you're making a decision
that could affect two billion people
it's probably worth understanding how
those two billion people will respond
and what's the worst case scenario if
you're going to take up ten minutes
every day from those two billion people
that's a lot of collective minutes and
that should be factored into any
decisions you're making and perhaps the
government could introduce legislation
that takes that into account so one
possibility is if you know from research
that a particular decision that a
company's making will rob people of a
certain amount of time or well-being
every day you could put a monetary
charge attached to that and you could
say well Facebook you've just done this
thing it's going to cost people ten
minutes a day which in productivity
terms and in well-being terms is worth
say fifteen dollars you have two billion
users so you should pay a tax that's
equal to that or perhaps slightly more
$15 times two billion people that is the
tax
you pay for introducing this new feature
now that is a massively extreme measure
but I think it's the sort of thing we
could start to consider because we tax
other companies if you're going to
pollute the environment you should be
taxed because you're compromising the
well-being of the population of the
world of animals of all sorts of other
entities you should pay a penalty for
that it makes you wealthier you're
enriched but you're affecting other
people negatively and that's really how
I think we should start thinking about
tech companies really the best-case
scenario is that companies themselves
that produce the content that we engage
with change how they behave they start
to be more mindful of their consumers
they start to care about our well-being
I don't think that's going to happen
naturally I think they need to be
pressured into it either by top-down
influences like government or bottom-up
influences like consumers who band
together to say you need to behave
differently towards us we're starting to
see that happening Facebook for example
has had to at least appear to be more
mindful about privacy issues because
consumers are starting to demand that
and you know that's really how a lot of
industries evolved if you think about
primary resource production a lot of
those companies were dumping pollutants
into the air and the waterways with
impunity for many years until the
government led in part by consumers who
became more conscious of environmental
issues said that's not okay you need to
pay a tax you need to pay a penalty and
we're going to outright outlaw some of
your practices I think that sort of
thing is going to start to happen more
and more in the tech industry it may not
be there yet but I think it's around the
corner and I think if that happens as it
should over time perhaps there will be
enough regulation
maybe internal regulation within these
companies that we'll all be able to get
the best of these products without a lot
of the worst of them that's my hope for
where we go from here
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