Explainer: Why Every New Technology Is Both 'The Death of Britain' and 'Our Only Hope' by Friday

Explainer: Why Every New Technology Is Both 'The Death of Britain' and 'Our Only Hope' by Friday

On Tuesday, a new technology was the death of Britain. On Wednesday it was still the death of Britain, but with a panel discussion. On Thursday the death was postponed pending a review. By Friday it was our only hope, and a minister was standing in a warehouse near Coventry in front of a whiteboard, explaining that the country had no choice but to lead the world in it.

It was the same technology all week. Nothing changed except the furniture around the story.

You can watch this happen with any launch: artificial intelligence, a cryptocurrency, a pair of glasses with a camera in the frame. The gadget differs each time; the shape of the coverage does not. Below is that shape, so you can spot it while it is happening rather than a fortnight later, when it has already been folded into a documentary.

The cycle, in five movements

1. The sighting. A demo, or a demo of a launch. Someone on the radio says "extraordinary" and then cannot explain what it does in one sentence. A share price moves. Nobody in the studio has used it.
2. The doom. By Monday, three opinion pieces. Jobs, children, the electricity grid, democracy — pick two. The word "sleepwalking" appears. A committee announces an inquiry with a reporting deadline somewhere after the next general election.
3. The counter-doom. A piece pointing out that the doom pieces are overdone and that the same claims were made about spreadsheets. It runs at six in the morning and gets a fifth of the traffic.
4. The conversion. A columnist admits they were wrong. Or a former minister discovers the thing on a train and becomes its loudest advocate. The word "journey" is used without a shred of irony.
5. The boredom. The technology becomes a line item. Your bank app does it. Your kettle does it. Nobody writes a leader about the kettle. This is the stage where the real change happens, which is roughly why nobody covers it.

The movements are not always in this order, and they can run at different speeds. A cryptocurrency can do all five in a bank holiday weekend. Artificial intelligence has been doing them in a loop since about 2016, like a washing machine that never reaches the rinse. Camera glasses did them once in 2013, then again when the battery improved and the design stopped looking like a CCTV unit strapped to a face.

Nobody is lying, which is the annoying part

It would be tidier if there were a villain. There is not. There are incentives, and they are structural.

News needs a shape

A story wants conflict, two sides and a clock. "Probably fine over ten years, with sensible policy" has none of those. Panic and hope are not opposites in this cycle; they are the two legs of the same walk. The doom column and the Friday speech need one another, and are frequently commissioned by the same desk.

Watch the booking diary. The same programme that runs a segment called "Are we sleepwalking into an AI dystopia?" will, three days later, run "Can Britain win the AI race?" with a minister and a founder. The questions contradict each other. The guests overlap. The intro music does not change.

Careful gets trimmed

The honest version of most technology stories runs something like this: some jobs will change, some will be created, the totals are guesswork, and what actually happens depends on decisions nobody has taken yet. That is accurate and it is nine hundred words of nothing to put above the fold. So somebody writes "bloodbath?" and the piece rearranges itself around the question mark. Not out of malice. Out of Monday.

It is worth remembering that the same pattern greeted the spreadsheet, the cash machine, the internet, email, and the smartphone. Each was going to end work, childhood, privacy or the high street. Each did change things, often profoundly. But the change rarely arrived in the shape the first week of coverage predicted. The cash machine did not abolish bank staff; it moved them from counting notes to selling mortgages and apologising for hold music. Email did not kill the letter; it killed the lunch hour and created a new genre of passive aggression.

The same voices, on rotation

A trade body, a think tank, a union, an academic with a book out, and a founder who has just raised money. All five get asked for a quote. Four have a line to take and a press officer who will ring back within the hour. The fifth is on holiday and will be quoted anyway.

The rotation has a tell. If the founder says "we take safety seriously" while the deck behind them says "move fast and break things", you are in the conversion stage. If the academic says "the genie is out of the bottle", you are in the doom stage but the book is already in paperback. If the trade body calls for "a proportionate regulatory framework", the technology has already become a line item and the lobbyists are drafting the annexes.

The vocabulary of the cycle

Learn these and you can date a piece of coverage from the first paragraph.

• Existential. Means important, and also that no witness will be called.
• Unprecedented. Usually means recent. Occasionally means televised.
• The genie is out of the bottle. Means the technology exists and cannot be uninvented. Also means the speaker has no policy.
• National conversation. A conversation that will be announced, funded by a grant, and never actually had.
• We must not repeat the mistakes of the past. Usually said by someone about to repeat them, but with a better logo and a diversity statement.
• The UK is uniquely placed to lead. Means we have one research lab, three graduates and a former minister who has been to California once.
• This time it's different. It never is, except when it is, which is the problem.
• Sovereign capability. A procurement framework with a flag on it.

How to tell doom from real change

Most coverage tells you how to feel. It rarely tells you what to check. If you want to skip the cycle, ask three questions.

1. Does it replace a task or a whole job? Almost every technology replaces tasks. Very few replace entire jobs without creating new ones, often in places nobody was looking. The ATM did not replace the bank teller so much as replace the cash drawer.
2. Who owns the data and the failure? If the answer is "the user" in the terms and "a venture capital firm" in the cap table, you have found the actual story.
3. What does the boring version look like? The boring version is the one that matters. A chatbot that writes council planning notices is less exciting than a chatbot that passes the bar, and more likely to change a Tuesday.

There is also a simple rule of thumb for demos. If someone has to stand off-camera to make it work, it is not a product yet. If the demo includes a person saying "as you can see", you cannot see. If the share price moves before the use case is explained, you are watching finance, not technology.

The Friday speech, annotated

The Friday speech is the most reliable part of the cycle. It usually happens in a warehouse, a lab, or a converted foundry with exposed brick and a funding announcement. The minister stands in front of a whiteboard that says "AI" or "quantum" or "fintech" in three colours. Here is a translation.

"We are at a crossroads." We have been at this crossroads since 2010, and the signpost has been stolen twice.

"This is a global race." Other countries have been mentioned. Some of them have a plan.

"We will not let the opportunities pass us by." A review has been commissioned. Its chair has a knighthood and a diary conflict.

"Our only hope." The doom pieces worked. The counter-doom piece did not. The technology is now a national survival strategy, which means nobody has to say what it is actually for.

None of this is dishonest in the ordinary sense. It is the sound of a system trying to make a story out of a process. A technology is not a character. It does not have a will, a moral arc or a plan for Britain. It has affordances, costs, business models and distribution. Those are dull words, and dull words do not get a minister into a warehouse on a Friday.

What to do while the cycle turns

Ignore the first week. Read the second year. The first week is about the furniture: the panel, the inquiry, the column, the speech. The second year is about the line item: the procurement, the outage, the training course, the small change to your insurance premium.

If you want to know whether a technology is real, find someone who uses it every day and complains about it. Complaints are the sound of adoption. Enthusiasm is the sound of a launch. Apathy is the sound of success. When your kettle does it, and nobody writes a leader about the kettle, the change has already happened. By then the coverage will have moved on to the next thing that is either the death of Britain or our only hope, possibly by Friday.

Photo: Jeevan / Pixabay