An Operating System for Life

Put technology to work for people and you're already taking steps towards that inspirational aspiration, says Ajaz Ahmed

By Ajaz Ahmed 
Guardian Professional

One of Google's prototype driverless cars. As computer systems do more for us, we're freed to focus on more complicated human tasks. Photograph: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

In an economy obsessed by innovation, we're always on the lookout for cool little startups, clever new ways technology is changing our culture, and smart new software that comes out of nowhere to show us a better way of doing things. When you watch the evolution of popular digital culture – and observe which services people love and are loyal to, which they get infatuated and then bored with, which they ignore, which they actively resent – you get fascinating results.

The era of services accessed through mobile phones has shown us that people really respond to tools configured around (to quote Apple) "solving life's little problems, one app at a time." With this resounding user-focused lesson in mind, maybe the next big thing for us is something a little grander. Perhaps we should strive towards a world where we can promise an operating system for life. Not as an immediate practical aspiration, but as an idea that new examples of digital products and services ultimately take us closer towards.

The Oxford English dictionary says an operating system is: "A set of programs for organising the resources and activities of a computer" – today, people respond to and embrace software that in some way organises their resources (like time and money) and activities (like work and play). Even a smartphone game you play in the supermarket is organising your resources, in this case time, by giving you an activity, sparing you a feeling of watching time pass by.

This week we launched Nike+ Kinect Training, where an ongoing exchange of fine-tuned data gives people an evolving, precise and truly personal training system, improving health and fitness. In September, California's governor Edmund Brown signed the bill that legalised autonomous vehicles – also known as self-driving cars. Doing so wasn't just about space-age headlines, but a response to the findings of initial research by companies such as Google, which suggest computer-controlled drivers can be safer and more efficient than humans.

Luddites might see such developments as the machines taking over, but the rest of us should be able to embrace this example of technology making efficient use of our time and resources. Here's the proof: Nissan recently unveiled early developments from its own autonomous vehicle research program. One part of the technology uses sensors and cameras to understand the spatial terrain around the car and respond accordingly, so drivers can't mistakenly move into too-small spaces, bump into unseen objects, and won't have to correct driving lines. The second key innovation is the replacement of all the mechanical components between steering wheel and front wheels with electronics, for a much quicker, more responsive, and driver-aware experience.

Back in the early 60s, Marshall McLuhan wrote an essay called The Gadget Lover: Narcissus as Narcosis. In it he surveyed the new boom in consumer electronics in America over the previous decade and identified a new archetype: the gadget lover. McLuhan wasn't overly enthusiastic about this emerging obsession, seeing it as a way for consumers to offload the information overload and psychic stress of modern life. The gadget was kind of cyborg extension of the individual that helped them cope by putting them into a kind of trance (narcosis). Though the gadget lover sang the praises of the latest gadget for its innovations, he or she actually, unwittingly, loved it because it reflected his or her own interests and personality back, like a mirror.

We often want help, because we like to do things more easily and quickly, to better manage our resources and activities. We invest ourselves and our personalities in our technology – that's when it becomes interesting and relevant. We like technology to help do more useful and fun things, to make boring things less painful, to save us time, money and misery.

People have become accustomed to having hardware and software working for them, and the internet has made everybody accustomed to having their say and expecting solutions at speed. If we love gadgets and software, it's precisely because we know they reflect our lives. We're not the deluded slaves of new gadgets, we're their impatient masters. New technologies give us more knowledge and control than we are used to. If I go to a firm like 23 And Me and pay $299 (£185) to get my genes analysed, that's not because I want to outsource my identity to machines – it's because the information they give me from a saliva sample will help me learn all sorts of interesting things, from past ancestry to future health problems, that I couldn't have accessed before.

In September, thinktank Demos issued a report on people's attitudes to sharing data in the digital world. "The Data Dividend" was written on the assumption that, used properly, big data can help all of us – at home, in healthcare, in civic life, in science – but thanks to high-profile losses of confidential information, expensive IT projects gone wrong, perceived heavy-handedness and newsworthy errors in its past application, many people are exceptionally cautious about the risks involved, and the likelihood of promised benefits materialising.

What organisations need to do, then, is be modular and responsive. To use the data now generated by people's choices and behaviours to keep refining and improving their systems and making them more responsive. This means combining data with small, speedy manoeuvres – combining clear, reassuring, deeply-held principles with agility and enough leeway for an organisation's employees to use the realtime data available to improve the services they offer.

Theyworkforyou.com is the address where you can cut through the promotional materials and see how your MP acted where it counted, at key parliamentary votes. In a digital era where 'service' is the key aspiration for anybody hoping to continue engaging with people, organisations should take that message to the heart. It may be too late for the US 2012 presidential election, but it's surely a more sensible way to re-engage voters in the data-rich, increasingly transparent world we inhabit today. Put technology to work for people and you're already taking steps towards that inspirational near-future aspiration: creating an operating system for our lives.

Ajaz Ahmed is founder of AKQA and author of Velocity: Seven New Laws For a World Gone Digital – find out more about Nike+ Kinect Training here

Source: Guardian