New technologies have made our lives more convenient, productive and efficient, but they are also having a growing impact on the way we interact and live. The ultimate disruption -- to use the most overused word of our digital age -- could well be a change in what it means to be human.
To make the world a more livable place for all, future technologies need to be human-centred and inclusive to foster positive emotions, experiences and values that differentiate humans from robots and machines.
Technology has already made travelling easier and enhanced job mobility, opening more opportunities for people to follow their passions and dreams. The rise of the tech-enabled sharing economy has helped remove some of the friction involved in moving from one place to another.
However, we still crave the human-to-human experience that goes beyond just finding the right place at a good price. The offline experience of sharing, building relationships and having human conversation cannot be disrupted through technology.
And while no one has come up with an app that will make people kind, well thought-out technology can help create meaningful connections.
Ajay Yadav, the founder and CEO of New York-based Roomi, believes that while the emotional concept of trust in a relationship will always be crucial, the digital world is revolutionising the way people can connect and build trust.
Launched in 2015, Roomi is a marketplace that provides a secure, flexible and affordable way to book room rentals and sublets with the ability to search for the compatible roommates through a wealth of details that can help provide an extra layer of trust.
"Young people move so frequently and they are living in a whole different new lifestyle. They are going to travel, move around and look for better opportunities," he told Asia Focus on the sidelines of the Techsauce Global Summit recently in Bangkok.
The rise of technology has given rise to a debate about “the true purpose of humans within the new hybrid society”, says David Galipeau, chief impact officer for UNDP Sustainable Development Goals.
However, he says, one can feel like a total stranger if he or she doesn't know a new city or the people there. Roomi helps users find their way in the local community and connects people to people so they can have a better experience.
"Roomi is all about sharing and helping people that want to share their living space find the perfect roommate. It's acting as a marketplace that takes care not only of the transaction, but also the people elements behind it," said Mr Yadav.
Currently operating in 24 cities with a core focus on six cities and with 1.2 million users, the platform removes the friction of doubt through layers of verification and information collection to create better matches between people, whether landlords and tenants or roommates.
To create the "Aha" moment, one-click signup is not sufficient, he says. Living with someone is complicated and you need to be able to live with people you can trust or with whom you have something in common. The real relationships and good experiences happen when these people connect offline.
"We only help remove the pain points out of the verification of people and places to enhance their experience and that can only happen when we can carry the trust from one place to another through technology," he said.
ENHANCING EXPERIENCES
John Millar, chief strategic development officer at the Thai property company Ananda Development Plc, believes there is a way to digitise the life experiences associated with property purchasing and ownership in a deeper and more positive way.
"Technology right now is the worst it is going to be but it is still good enough to digitise a once-in-a-lifetime experience to a satisfactory level," he said.
As technologies such as virtual reality improve in terms of fidelity and appeal to the senses, there will be more experiences that could be digitised, he believes. "The digitisation of experiences and the ability to experience things in a digital form will be a profound transformation for humans and society."
"If technology is going to be working with people, we need to make sure that the technological experience feels more human" — MIKE PENG, IDEO Tokyo
On a more practical level, Ananda and the ride-hailing service Grab are working together to merge the data on how people move around the city with where people live in order to reduce stress of urban life and travel.
"We can use technology to create bubbles of trust and to create convenience that can dramatically improve people's lives and increase human satisfaction," said Mr Millar.
"The experience of convenience created through digital trust building can create significant competitive advantage to products and services today."
Mike Peng, partner and managing director of IDEO in Tokyo, has spent seven years in Japan observing the culture and reflecting on why so many local experiences feel so seamless and evoke such strong positive emotions.
He attributes this to omotenashi, a Japanese concept of service that speaks to treating others generously and sincerely without asking for anything in return.
Japanese businesses incorporate this thoughtful concept in their products and services discreetly, with amazing attention to detail, he says. It enables people to enjoy the best experience possible at precisely the right moment.
"We know the future is going to be tech-driven, but at the end of the day, if technology is there to help people, we need to make sure the experience feels more human-centred," he told Asia Focus.
"Kindness is one of the most human of traits and one that I have the utmost respect for. But I feel like we rarely hear about 'kindness' when it comes to our interactions with technology."
In his view, we often talk about technology that's user-centred, but specifically thinking about "kindness" in technology forces people to think about how they want these experiences to make them feel.
Mr Peng referred to an article called "Masters of Love", published by the US magazine The Atlantic, which finds that the traits that allow people to have long and lasting relationships boils down to kindness and generosity.
"If kindness is such an important trait for the relationships between people and people, it should also be the same for the relationship between people and technology," he said.
In his view, as the world becomes more complex and digital technology becomes part of our everyday lives, reminding ourselves what makes us truly human will become more crucial than ever.
The challenge, however, is whether people are willing to go the extra mile to think deeply about human-centred experiences, even if it might cost more and won't help the bottom line immediately.
"At the end of the day, we will always need to balance the 'money' and 'heart' equation," said Mr Peng. "The metrics that define a successful product or service today, such as revenue and profit, may adapt or change in the future.
"Sometimes, we tend to jump straight into the technological feasibility or business viability of a product or service, but we often forget one of the most important factors -- human desirability."
REDEFINING VALUES
The current rate of technological evolution has benefited most people tremendously, but unsustainable development, inequality and social divides undeniably persist. The gaps will only widen if future development of technology focuses solely on cost-efficiency and monetary gains.
"A lot of people have benefited from capitalism but there are still many people being left behind," said David Galipeau, chief impact officer for SDG (Sustainable Development Goals) Impact Finance in Asia Pacific at the United Nations Development Programme.
"The digitisation of experiences and the ability to experience things in a digital form will be a profound transformation for humans and society,” says John Millar, chief strategic development officer at Ananda Development Plc.
Capitalism and economic development have served some sections of society extremely well by reducing global poverty, expanding job creation and improving access to healthcare and education, he said. However, progress has often come at enormous cost to humanity in terms of unsustainable levels of debt and increasing inequality within society.
Thanks to technological advancements, there are huge opportunities to create a more inclusive and equitable society.
"Technologies in the old days were an elitist thing, but because of the absolute reduction of cost and cheap, almost limitless access to computational power, technology has now become financially and geographically accessible. This alone will start changing the shape of future societies," said Mr Galipeau.
"Investors are now looking at valuable returns beyond simple profits and return on investment. They are starting to look at the benefits of taking a societal, citizen-first approach (as opposed to a market-based, consumer-first approach) that questions the true purpose of humans within the new hybrid society."
Mr Galipeau believes society will benefit from a combination of advances such as virtual reality (VR), artificial intelligence (AI), genetics and cybernetics and enter a hybrid society where humans and machines will be integrated and live side-by-side. Unfortunately, these advancements will also drive rapid social and economic decentralisation where employment migration will involuntarily increase.
Therefore, he says, decisions made today must be taken very carefully because they will have a long-lasting effect on the future of humanity, society and the economy.
In the longer term, humans and society will have to redefine how we redistribute wealth given the advancement of robotics and automation, says Peng T Ong, founder of the Singapore venture-capital firm Monk's Hill Ventures.
Society will have to redefine what is valuable, which may allow people to start doing what they want to do as a humans as opposed to what they have to do.
"The good news for us is that human beings are the ones who will decide what is valuable as a society and my expectation is that it will not be about economics," he said.
"With the advancement of technology, we can only hope that it can help us uplift the spirit and values of human beings in ways that will become more engaging and meaningful to society as a whole."