CREDIT SUISSE Bulletin - United States of America · and India, once among the world’s poorest...

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Digital World, Analog Life

Big interview with digital pioneer Sebastian �run Page 22

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#youthbarometer

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Man and Machine – How We Change Each Other

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BS251016_DG_Anz_Bulletin_Credit_Suisse_CH_220x297_engl.indd 1 07.09.16 10:50

— Editorial —

Bulletin 3 / 2016 — 1Cover: Photo: Mathew Scott; Illustration: Bryan Christie Design

Now is a time of great upheaval, in all areas of the economy and society. New technologies are permanently

changing the way we do business. As digitaliza-tion transforms the economy sector by sector, traditional patterns of thinking are giving way to new opportunities. Digitalization isn’t re-placing people with machines. Instead, it en-courages us to focus on people. “Technology gives us superhuman abilities,” says technology pioneer Sebastian �run (cover photo), senior advisor to the newly established �ntech innova-tion factory “Credit Suisse Labs,” in the inter-view on page 22.

�is Bulletin is devoted to the interplay be-tween analog human beings and digital technol-ogies. �e digital revolution represents an im-mense challenge for the Swiss economy. But the outlook for mastering this challenge is bright. 21.9 percent of respondents to our SME survey say that their companies are already strongly or very strongly digitized (page 20). Our research unit has investigated the e�ects of this develop-ment on the Swiss labor market (page 18).

I recommend the report on San Francisco’s AltSchool, which provides a glimpse into how the education of tomorrow might

look. Memorization is losing signi�cance, while creativity is in greater demand than ever before.

Credit Suisse’s traditional Youth Barome-ter investigates how the younger generation feels, thinks and acts. �e main topic of this year’s survey is politics online. �e results strike

me as positive. Young people react critically to what they read on the Internet. �ey use digital technologies with ease, they assume responsi-bility for their online behavior and they take issues like privacy and data protection seriously. Young people in Switzerland represent the sub-ject of a discussion between Flavia Kleiner (Co-President, Operation Libero), Lukas Rei-mann (Member of the National Council, SVP) and communications professor Otfried Jarren (University of Zurich). Sociologist Sherry Turkle from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology analyzes the results of the interna-tional Youth Barometer survey in Switzerland, the United States, Singapore and Brazil.

I hope you’ll �nd this issue fascinating and informative! And yes – this issue of Bulletin on digitalization is available on paper. A

high-quality business magazine is as important as ever in this transient digital age.

Urs Rohner, Chairman of the Board of Directors, Credit Suisse Group AG

Focus on People

Bulletin has won gold in “Best of Content Marketing” (BCM), the most prestigious European competition for corporate communication.Having received this honor three times, Bulletin will be inducted into the Hall of Fame next year.

Our Commitmentto Lower Youth Unemployment.

credit-suisse.com/youthunemployment

Through the initiative to tackle youth unemployment, Credit Suisse has been committed to improving the opportunities for career starters in Switzerland since 2010. More than 8,800 young adults have already received assistance from our partner organizations and from the bank. Since April 1, 2015, these services have been supported by the legally autonomous “Check Your Chance” association and managed sustainably by the partner organizations.

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Bulletin 3 / 2016 — 3

— Digital /Analog —

4 At Our Service We’re still learning to use our digital instruments.

8 Revolution in 3D 3D printing will radically alter business models.

18 �e End of Routine Will digitalization turn up the pressure on SMEs in Switzerland?

20 Countering Locational Disadvantages �e role of technology for Swiss SMEs.

22 Sebastian �run A digital prophet on the modern era and the opportunities presented by technology.

28 Clouds, Shadows … Nineteen terms you should know for the digital future.

32 Trial and Error Visit to a school of the future in California.

40 Homo Digitalis How machines are changing people.

42 “1 + 1 = 3” Digitalization head Marco Abele explains how bank advisors and computers complement each other.

46 Racks of Lettuce Vertical agriculture in Japan.

50 A Formula for Love Can algorithms on dating websites really bring people together?

52 Letters to the Editor / Publishing Information

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Photos: Chris Keulen; David Magnusson; Jonathan Alcorn/Reuters; Illustration: QuickHoney

#1 Politics OnlineThe Internet makes politics more exciting. Terrorism is a cause for concern. — p. 55

#2 Communications Digital is not the same as global: the regional differences. Online bullying as a new problem. — p. 58

#RoundtableHow do e-politics work?A discussion with Flavia Kleiner (Operation Libero), Lukas Reimann (SVP) and Otfried Jarren (University of Zurich). — p. 60

#3 Trends and MediaMobile phones and apps are in, drugs and clubs are out. — p. 65

#4 Job, Finances and CareerHome ownership and stocks instead of a savings account. More mobile phone debt in Switzerland. People want independence and a home office. — p. 67

#InterviewResearcher Sherry Turkle warns about being online too much and advocates regular breaks from smartphones for both parents and children. — p. 69

IS DIGITIZATION TAKING OUR JOBS? ARE ROBOTS TAKING OVER? NOT SO FAST! WE’RE STILL LEARNING TO USE OUR DIGITAL INSTRUMENTS.

BY WOLF LOTTER

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nies and the military. Apple has long since become an icon in the movement to bring computers to the masses, a precondition for the Internet.

�ese innovations led to much more than Google, Facebook and Snapchat. By promoting and accelerating globalization, the �ird Industrial Revolution enabled the tremendous rise of China and India, once among the world’s poorest countries. �e comput-er is a blessing, pure and simple; its mere existence would be revo-lutionary enough. And yet there’s more to come.

�e Machine Comes of Age�e Fourth Industrial Revolution takes all of this one decisive step further. Computers, robots and software have developed to the point that they not only support production, they take charge of it. Arti�cial intelligence encourages a kind of super automation, al-lowing machines to organize, control, repair and adapt themselves. Having shaped our lives and culture more than anything else in the past two hundred years, the machine is coming of age. Digiti-zation in the next, de�nitive industrial revolution will be impres-sive. But how will it a�ect us?

Time to return to Cologny – or more precisely, to the Villa Diodati. Two hundred years ago, the (�rst) industrial revolution was still young. In England, its homeland, weavers armed with sledgehammers stormed factories where new machines wove cot-ton into cloth more quickly, cheaply and e±ciently than ever be-fore. Named after their leader Ned Ludd, the machines’ assailants inspired fear and awe. Condemned by some as dangerous reaction-aries who were halting the progress of the world, the Luddites

Big things can sometimes happen in small spaces. Take the suburb of Cologny, just outside Geneva. With just over 5,500 residents on Lake Geneva’s eastern shore, it is also home to the in¬uential World Economic Forum (WEF).

�e foundation is known far and wide for its annual meeting in Davos, the most in¬uential forum for discussion about the glob-al economy. �is annual get-together of the world’s movers and shakers is organized from Cologny – and along with it, the agenda of billions of people worldwide.

In 2016, the central focus of the WEF meeting was the transformation from an industrial to an information society, a transition that will occupy us for decades to come. With the Fourth Industrial Revolution, an age-old fantasy of humankind is becom-ing very real. Heavy labor, boring jobs, monotonous work? Ma-chines will do the dirty work for us. We’ve got better things to do.

�e Dream: Information for All In the years after the Second World War, the �rst computers and electronic control systems touched o� the �ird Industrial Revo-lution. Production and factories were automated on a massive scale. Robots welded, soldered and drilled away with a speed and precision that their human coworkers couldn’t approach.

Now digital technology is everywhere. It’s one of the main reasons why prosperity continues to grow, and not just in the old industrialized nations that are becoming information societies. Four decades ago, Apple was launched. Its young founders, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, dreamed of giving everyone access to in-formation technology that was once available only to large compa-

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were honored by others as heroes who stood up to the arti�cial power of machines.

Tales of Horror From the House on the Lake�e young luminaries who came together at the Villa Diodati in Cologny during the summer of 1816 knew about the Luddites. �e large house on the lake was rented by the English poet George Byron, who spent the summer there with his friend Percy Shelley and Shelley’s lover, Mary Godwin. At the time, Shelley and Byron

“Frankenstein” is a dystopia, or a negative utopia, of the machine age. �e moral of the story is that vengeance is terrible for those who presume to play God.

�is was the position of many “critical intellectuals,” then and now. �at, too, is nothing new. According to the ancient Greeks, Prometheus stole �re from the gods on Olympus and gave it to humans. �ey were “enlightened,” gaining self-assurance and creativity. But in return, Prometheus’s relatives chained him to a rock, where eagles picked at his liver for the rest of time. In the Bible, it was an apple that Eve picked for Adam. Independent ini-tiative became the fall of humankind. From this point forward, humans had to provide for themselves and toil for survival.

We’ve come a long way since then, although in some re-spects, we remain just as fearful as before. Automation has achieved tremendous things in the past 200 years, but its reputa-tion is still suspect.

�e Price of Too Much ProgressHuman life expectancy is nearly three times what it was during Mary Shelley’s lifetime. In the year 2000, economic prosperity in Western Europe was 44 times greater than two centuries earlier.

Nevertheless, in¬uential members of our society – particu-larly the middle classes and academic elites – still see Industry 4.0 as a grisly tale of horror. If blue-collar and clerical workers were the ones to lose jobs in previous waves of automation, now even the highly educated are threatened by the “ghost in the ma-chine.” For three years, critics have cited a study by the research-ers Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael Osborne, “�e Future of Employment.” �e notorious Frey-Osborne study predicts mas-sive job losses with the introduction of new digital automation technologies. Were these technologies to be introduced fully, around half of all jobs in the United States today would be in danger. In Germany, where a similar study was conducted using Frey’s and Osborne’s methods, the �gure was 59 percent. �ere it is again – the Frankenstein e�ect, the price of too much progress. As many as 86 percent of all o±ce workers, basic service provid-ers and salespeople won’t be needed any longer. 69 percent of machine operators, who can be replaced by self-learning systems, will lose their jobs. Academics get o� lightly, with only a 12 per-cent casualty rate. New studies predict that business consultants, doctors and lawyers will also face fresh competition through smart machines.

Breathing Space for Better �ingsBut is this really possible? Yes, and it’s not a bad thing. What the researchers measured is the high degree of routine and normalized work that still prevails in our working world. People are always re-peating the same movements and performing the same tasks. In

were the rock stars of Romanticism, but it was eighteen-year-old Mary (who later married Shelley) who made the villa world-famous.

In the evenings, the young artists told ghost stories. Mary Godwin drew inspiration from the spirit of the age. Her tale was about the machine, which many people saw as an arti�cial person – more on this later.

Work was drudgery that demanded energy. Until this point, energy had been supplied mostly by people and animals. �e steam engine and new methods of organizing work changed all this.

Even today, many people secretly believe in the “ghost in the machine.” In 1816, at the beginning of the industrial era, this belief was widespread. Contemporaries described steam locomotives and other machines as “hissing” and “raging,” “snorting” and “unfet-tered” monsters. As arti�cial beings, with a greater or lesser degree of intelligence. Horrifying. Arrogant. And logical.

Since the Enlightenment, more and more people had tak-en their lives into their own hands, no longer content to settle for a fate that was predetermined by a higher power. But now God was no longer the only creative force in the room. �e Cre-ator’s creations became his competition. Humans began to pro-duce arti�cial life, although it wasn’t graceful and lovely, like Adam and Eve. Instead, it was coarse, like a steam engine – or Frankenstein’s monster. Mary Godwin (now Mary Shelley) ex-panded her tale of horror from the summer of 1816, publishing it two years later as the novel “Frankenstein; or, �e Modern Prometheus.”

WORK CREATES WORK.

HUMAN NEEDS ARE ENDLESS.

Bulletin 3 / 2016 — 7


digital information societies, however, value creation doesn’t come from routine tasks or monotonous repetition, but rather from cre-ative problem solving. �is is true for basic services as well as com-plex problems. Human work will increasingly be liberated from mo-notonous activity. We’ll be left with tasks that require creativity, originality and independence.

Is this really so upsetting? �e �rst three industrial revolutions gradually liberated humanity from heavy physical labor. �e fourth wave will free us from monotonous routines, which machines can complete better and more e±ciently than people. We’ll have breath-ing space for better things. Finding good transitional solutions, for example, for those whose routine labor is no longer needed.

�e discussion about Industry 4.0, arti�cial intelligence and the apparent dangers of automation hasn’t encouraged smart robots so much as it has revealed an outmoded culture of work.

Working creatively is still considered sacrilege, even by those who don’t otherwise justify their political motivations through reli-gion. Do we have to earn our bread by the sweat of our brow? Wouldn’t we be better o� leaving the drudgery to machines?

�e emerging information society is becoming our new nor-mal. It’s a chance to re¬ect on ourselves and our work – and on the role that work plays in our lives, in good times and bad.

�e ghost in the machine is our friend. We just have to listen closely. It’s calling us to leave bad work behind, so that we can develop good, humane kinds of work that better correspond to individual needs, wherever possible. Digitization will help us, as long as we approach it calmly and without prejudice. Machines aren’t stealing our jobs. Of course, most 19th-century professions no longer exist – but on balance, there is much more work and prosperity than before.

Work and human activity are like a hydra, the many-headed creature from Greek mythology. If one of its heads is cut o�, two new ones grow back. Sociologists like Manfred Füllsack from the University of Graz sum it up this way: work creates work. Human needs are endless. We’ll always think of something new – without the help of machines.

Robots Don't �ink�ey’re not up to the task, anyhow. Robots can’t think; humans have a monopoly on intelligence, creativity and the ability to think independently. No researcher has been able to crack the code of independent thought, even though we’ve heard the promise many times.

�is means that the machines and systems we create are only as smart as we make them. �e ghost in the machine can’t do any-thing that we can’t – after all, it’s our creation. All of the trendy discussions about arti�cial intelligence are leading us down the wrong path.

Instead of talking about new arti�cial intelligence, it would be smarter for us to emphasize the natural intelligence that already exists. To borrow the words of Immanuel Kant, we ought to have the courage to use our own reason.

�is means not being afraid to tap the full potential of ma-chines, including automation and smart production. �at’s why machines are here. We think and lead. Machines �nish the job. �is is indeed a revolution – not of machines, but of human cre-ativity and self-awareness.

�e information age o�ers more possibilities and a better future for most of us. Does that sound like a tale of horror? Only if we don’t learn how to play the instrument that we’ve created. But if we do it right, it will be music to our ears.

Wolf Lotter is an author and co-founder of the business magazine brand eins.

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Complex human organs, entire houses or just a t-shirt: 3D printing enables nearly any item to be produced almost anywhere. �is will radically transform value chains and business models.By Daniel Ammann and Ulrich Kaiser (article)

Revolution in 3D

MOTORCYCLE Airbus subsidiary APWorks has built an electric motorcycle that only weighs 35 kilograms. The frame of the Light Rider is not made of welded tubes, but consists instead of a billion particles of a special aluminum alloy welded together layer by layer with a laser beam using a 3D printer. This is one of the groundbreaking benefits of the new technology: It allows for complex forms that can only be made using a 3D printer.


10 — Bulletin 3 / 2016


ARCHEOLOGY Only four masked helmets made by the West Germanic Batavi tribe have survived to the present day – and those that have are just fragments. The Museum Het Valkhof in the Dutch city of Nijmegen has now used a scanner and 3D printer to reconstruct a complete helmet for the first time. The technology can be used to save cultural heritage. Thanks to this technology, for example, the triumphal arches in the ancient Syrian city Palmyra were reconstructed after being destroyed by the terrorist Islamic State group.

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PROSTHESES Many people in developing countries do not have access to prostheses and other medical supplies. The reasons for this include long production times, high transport costs and a lack of trained professionals. 3D scanning and printing can solve some of these issues and make what had previously been impossible possible for poor, remote regions. Pictured: Prostheses from 3D PrintAbility, a project of the Canadian non-profit organization Nia Technologies, which is primarily active in Uganda.

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spare car part, can be produced locally al-most anywhere in the world. A printer is all that is needed. �is will save time because it allows for printing on demand.

�is will shorten transport routes signi�cantly because the replacement part will no longer need to be shipped halfway around the world. �is will save transport and warehouse costs. At the same time, it will help preserve the environment.

�ere will be less waste, as only the material that it is actually needed will be used.

Democratization of IndustryIf additive manufacturing continues to gain ground, it will have a signi�cant im-pact on delivery and value-added processes as well as business models. Not only will this method save time and money, but it also has the potential to “democratize” in-dustrial production. In the future, consum-ers may be able to download the model for a tool or object from the Internet as they now do a song or a movie and have it print-ed at a 3D print shop around the corner.

One of the most important bene�ts of the technology is the ability to print even individual parts cheaply, because no expensive tools or prototypes need to be created to do so.

It is still not entirely clear what the global impact of this technology will be. However, some developments are already foreseeable: 1 — As fewer people are directly involved in the production of an item, labor unit costs, i.e., the labor costs per product unit, will fall. �is could lead to a re-industrial-ization in rich countries. It will be very lu-crative for them to print industrial prod-ucts domestically rather than having them manufactured in a low-wage country and transported halfway around the world. Production, which is now mainly out-sourced to low-wage countries, could thus in the foreseeable future move closer to the market where the products are actually sold. 2 — 3D printing could also represent an opportunity for developing countries. Cur-rently, these countries are often cut o� from international supply chains, due not least to high transport costs. In the future,

it may be possible for them to print the necessary parts locally and thus build up their own industry. 3 — �ere are high-tech niches, even in small countries. In Switzerland, for exam-ple, technology company Oerlikon has be-come a leading provider of materials for 3D printing in industrial applications. 4 — 3D printing opens the door to previ-ously unthinkable applications: Organs from a printer could make donors’ organs super¬uous; parts produced in space could provide new momentum for space travel. �e European Space Agency (ESA) is al-ready testing a 3D printer for the construc-tion of a lunar station.

�e market is still limited. Last year, ac-cording to a report by the management consulting �rm Wohlers Associates, just 5.2 billion US dollars was spent on 3D printing and the associated services. Ac-cording to estimates by McKinsey & Co., however, this �gure could be up to 550 bil-lion dollars a year in ten years.

Ulrich Kaiser works in Global Equity and Credit Research at Credit Suisse.

It is a technological innovation that may transform the global economy: 3D printing. Additive manufacturing, as three-dimensional printing technology is known in technical terms, has already be-come established in the automobile and aviation industries, medicine, and mechan-ical engineering and tool making. �is pro-duction technology, writes British maga-zine �e Economist, will lead to a “fourth industrial revolution.”

In order to understand this revolu-tion, you have to know how additive manu-facturing works. With 3D printing, a prod-uct is not ground, cut, drilled or milled as with traditional methods. Instead, a 3D printer adds materials: Plastic, ceramic or metal powder is used as the “ink.” �is ma-terial is applied in thin layers according to digital design data, until the desired three-dimensional object is created.

�is type of production has substan-tial economic advantages over previous in-dustrial production. A product, such as a

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INDUSTRY It looks like a normal thermal spray gun, which has long been used to paint objects such as bridges. But the Metco 16E made by Swiss technology group Oerlikon is a small revolution: Parts of it were printed on a 3D printer. This allows Oerlikon to reduce the complexity, weight and production costs of the device. The 16E is a good example of additive manufacturing: Western companies will find it worthwhile to produce industrial parts in smaller quantities again.

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HOUSE Build a house without masonry noise, machinery, cranes or scaffolding? This is already a reality: Whether in Amsterdam, where a canal house is rising layer by layer, or in Dubai, where a 250-square- meter office building was printed in 17 days, or in China, where the company WinSun has already printed villas and five-story residential buildings. The photo shows the prototype for a single-family house at the WinSun factory in Suzhou, near Shanghai. It cost less than 5,000 Swiss francs to produce.


CLOTHING Dutch fashion designer Iris van Herpen sent the first 3D printed item of clothing down the catwalk in 2010: a white top from her Crystallization collection. Haute couture is not alone in having discovered the technology. Major brands, such as Nike and New Balance, are already working with it as well. It has completely altered supply chains. Bulk products, such as t-shirts or sneakers, will no longer have to be produced in low-wage countries and flown halfway around the world, but can instead be printed locally. 16 — Bulletin 3 / 2016

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ORGAN Researchers at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center in the US have used a 3D printer to create an ear. They used liquid plastics and human cells that they had cultivated as materials. The organ was successfully transplanted onto mice. Researchers are convinced that it will be possible in the long term to create even more complex organs, such as kidneys, from a patient’s cells. This would make the often excruciating wait for a suitable donor organ unnecessary.

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�e End of RoutineUS studies report that middle-income employees face the heaviest pressure from digitalization. Is that true in Switzerland as well?By Sara Carnazzi Weber

For some, it’s fascinating, for others it’s a nightmare. Ambivalence has always marked the relationship between people and machines. �e battle between belief in progress and fear of it goes back at least two hundred years to the era of industrial-ization. Some sought greater e±ciency; others feared that machines would make their work super¬uous. �at did not hap-pen; quite the contrary. By the beginning of the twentieth century, work for many people in Western countries was shaped by machines, and the population’s standard of living was much higher than at the time of industrialization.

Since then, the world has gone digi-tal. Automation and arti�cial intelligence are creating opportunities that were the stu� of yesterday’s science �ction. Once again, anxiety levels rise, and the end of hu-man work is said to be nigh. Technology will decisively shape our lives and our work. To what degree and how rapidly, however, remains to be seen.

�ere are certainly clear conse-quences of this trend evident today. For some time now, technical progress has driven a shift in the demand for labor, with a greater emphasis on highly quali-�ed labor. �e talk is of “quali�ca-tion-driven technological change,” which is increasing the productivity of highly quali�ed professions in particular. Since the 1990s, this trend has coincided with a tendency towards polarization on the la-bor market: demand for occupations with mid-level quali�cations is stagnating or even declining, while it grows for those with both low and high quali�cations. As a result, wages and salaries are rising at both ends of the distribution, while the middle goes without.

When it comes to polarization, it is no longer just about the quali�cations

needed for an occupation. More promi-nent now are the very activities that con-stitute an occupation. �at’s what in¬u-ences an occupation’s susceptibility to automation. �ose positions with a high degree of routine tasks play a central role because code can be written for routines, so computers, robots or algorithms can as-sume those tasks. �e latest advances in arti�cial intelligence are creating new openings. Today they can perform routine mental labor as well because they have the ability to learn.

A Doctor Is Hard to ReplaceA comparison of routine intensity with the quali�cations needed within an occupation shows that high routine intensity is not concentrated in either the highly quali�ed occupations or those at the other end of the spectrum where few quali�cations are re-

quired. Highly quali�ed occupations re-quire not only technical knowledge but also strong analytical and decision-making skills that complement the technology used. Occupations with few quali�cations also frequently entail manual, but not re-petitive, tasks, or interactive tasks that are not easily replaced by digital technology. In contrast, occupations with mid-level quali-�cations often carry with them high rou-tine intensity. �eir tasks are clearly de�ned and are relatively easy to automate. Some examples: In doctor/patient interactions, machines are far from being able to match humans, but are quite good at interpreting blood values or x-ray images. A computer cannot satisfactorily translate a novel or a poem, but could manage the translation of standard business correspondence. Accord-ing to this logic, tasks involved in book-keeping or repetitive services in the �nan-

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�e ability to automate does not mean a replacement will actually be made. �e economic feasibility of such an investment plays a role, along with legal and ethical is-sues. �e relative costs of labor and capital play a crucial role. A company will only re-place workers with machines if it means being able to make production more cost-e�ective. If wages are relatively low and the cost of automation high, replace-ment does not necessarily make sense. Work in general will not be disappearing that soon. Routine jobs, perhaps.

cial sector are under greater threat than the work of a hair stylist.

Slight Polarization in SwitzerlandPolarization in the labor market was �rst observed in the United States and the United Kingdom. Since then, a few conti-nental European countries have begun to show signs of an increasingly polarized employment structure. Is Switzerland among them? Based on data regarding wage structure and employment trends, we have attempted to answer that question. To that end, we have considered employment trends for various industry groups accord-ing to their level of pay. Wages are under-stood as an indication of the underlying quali�cation. In a polarized labor market, one would expect a U-shaped graph: high increase in employment for the low- and high-wage occupational groups, with simul-taneous stagnation and/or reduced wages in the mid-range.

A look at the trend in Switzerland from 1995 to 2015 reveals slight but not clear polarization (Fig. 1). �e clear win-ners in terms of employment trends are those industries with high wage levels such as research and development, pharmaceuti-cals or jobs in the information services area. And in the low wage area, there are cer-tainly industries with high employment growth, such as social services, personnel placement or work such as building main-tenance and security services. On the other side of the coin, industries that o�er mid-level wages are seeing a loss of jobs, such as some industrial sectors, construc-tion or publishing. A comparison of em-ployment growth in those three wage cate-gories between 1995 and 2015 shows a clear lead for industries with higher wage levels, which enjoyed employment growth of 2.1 percent annually. Employment grew on average just 0.5 percent and 0.6 percent annually in those industries with low or mid-level wages.

�e development of real wages in re-lation to the level of quali�cations required for the job also provides indications of slight polarization. Positions with the sec-ond-highest level of requirements – inde-pendent and skilled work – have lost some ground since the end of the 1990s. In con-

trast, real wages for highly demanding work as well as jobs with lower levels of require-ments have de�nitely improved (Fig. 2).

More Income for the Middle Class�ere are indications of polarization in the labor market in Switzerland too, but they are not particularly pronounced. �is is evi-dent in the solidity of the middle class,

which to date has been spared the erosion so obvious in the Anglo-Saxon world. Not only has the income share of the middle class remained fairly stable since the 1970s, it has even been able to increase its income from employment and household income in the last 10 to 15 years. Switzerland has not seen the dramatic untethering of the high-est incomes such as in the United States.

Whether or not this polarization tendency will grow in the future depends on the actual automation of routine tasks.

Sara Carnazzi Weber is head of Fundamental Macro Research at Credit Suisse.

Repetitive activities involved in bookkeeping are under greater threat than the work of a hair stylist.

90

100

110

Fig. 2 Differing Wage Dynamics

Real gross wages according to level of qualifications required for the job, 1998 = 100

2004

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Most demanding work Occupational and technical knowledge required Simple and repetitive activities Independent and qualified work

20 — Bulletin 3 / 2016


Patricia Feubli is part of the Swiss Industry Research team at Credit Suisse.

Credit Suisse SME Survey 2016 �e complete study may be downloaded at: credit-suisse.com/research

Going Digital to Combat Locational DisadvantagesManufacturing in Switzerland is relatively expensive. �is

makes technological development all the more important for companies. Our study of 2,000 Swiss SMEs

reveals that 21.9 percent are already heavily to very heavily digitalized.

By Patricia Feubli

�e discontinuation of the EUR/CHF minimum exchange rate on January 15, 2015, reignited the debate about Switzer-land’s future as a business location. Al-though the SMEs participating in our annual survey of 2,000 Swiss SMEs said that Switzerland as a business center helped to promote success, many of them see themselves threatened by emerging markets. So our survey also asked partici-pants about the disadvantages of Switzer-land as a business location compared with other countries and possible solutions to these disadvantages.

�ere was a clear answer in response to the question about how much of a dis-advantage Switzerland faces as a business location compared to other countries in terms of construction costs, availability of skilled workers and complexity of legal reg-ulations: Switzerland is at a disadvantage

in particular with regard to construction costs. Of the SMEs surveyed, 56.5 percent indicated that other countries have signi�-cant advantages in this area compared to Switzerland. In terms of the availability of skilled employees and the complexity of legal regulations, however, the majority of SMEs surveyed (59.8 percent and 63.0 per-cent, respectively) said foreign companies enjoyed no advantage.

Despite potentially higher production costs, many Swiss SMEs are very success-ful and are able to compete internationally. How do these SMEs deal with Switzer-land’s locational disadvantages? We asked survey participants about the importance of �ve di�erent measures to combat loca-tional disadvantages. SMEs cited the in-troduction of new technologies as the most important, with 41 percent calling it a very important method for combating location-al disadvantages.

�is was followed by the develop-ment of new products or services, invest-ments in sta�, higher imports of inputs, and outsourcing (in descending order of importance).

Digitalization plays a central role in the introduction of new technologies, as 77.5 percent of SMEs believe they can in-crease their international competitiveness signi�cantly through the high utilization of state-of-the-art digital technologies –

such as big data analyses or self-organizing production systems.

�e importance of such technologies is also revealed by the fact that, according to the SMEs surveyed, 21.9 percent al-ready use such technologies “heavily” or “very heavily.” Of course, these applica-tions are most prevalent in the ICT sector (information and communication technol-ogy) and electrical engineering. SMEs in the transportation and shipping industry are also heavily digitalized. In this sector, the e±cient processing of orders has be-come much more complex in recent years and would only be possible to a limited extent without state-of-the-art digital technologies.

In some cases, these technologies re-quire major investments in infrastructure. For example, di�erent types of informa-tion, such as machine data, product names, handwritten notes and customer requests submitted by email must be provided in a standard format so they can be understood by all of the machines, computers and em-ployees involved. It is therefore no surprise that, according to the survey, larger and higher-revenue as well as newer SMEs tend to be more heavily digitalized than the other SMEs. Newer SMEs can imple-ment new digital technologies and their requirements right when they are founded, allowing them to avoid costly modi�ca-tions at a later stage.

Newer SMEs More Heavily Digitalized

Share of responding SMEs that use state- of-the-art digital technologies heavily or very heavily, by year of founding

0

Heavy Very heavy

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In some cases, digital technologies require major infrastructure investments.

18 %

12

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“It should stay like this, even when I’m 70. That’s why I’m already planning now.”No matter what comes your way.credit-suisse.com

11947 CS Anzeige 220x297ra Pensionierung fie V2.indd 3 13.09.16 09:09

22 — Bulletin 3 / 2016


“Technology gives us super-human powers.”

Computers and robots relieve us of repetitive activities, so we can concentrate on

the interesting parts of life and work. �is began with

the invention of the plow and applies even more so in

the age of technology, says Sebastian �run, a prophet

of the digital world.By Daniel Ammann, Simon Brunner (interview),

Mathew Scott (photo) and Bryan Christie Design (illustration)

Bulletin 3 / 2016 — 23


“Technology gives us super-human powers.”

24 — Bulletin 3 / 2016


�e term arti�cial intelligence was coined in 1956, exactly 60 years ago. Expectations have been huge for this new discipline ever since, but with the exception of a handful of Hollywood �lms, it has never ful�lled them. Is that di�erent now?Yes, it is de�nitely di�erent. In the past, we tried to teach a machine rules by programming it with every conceivable situation. �at is of course impossible. Today, we pursue a di�erent method. We let the computer itself learn. We no longer program by prescribing rules to the computer, but by giving it examples. Speci�cally, you show a computer a hundred million websites, and it will extract the rules of good web design itself.

Is that such a big di�erence?Yes, that is a fundamentally di�erent approach. Imagine you had to explain every rule on earth to your child. You’d be at it for a very long time. Computers progress faster when they learn for themselves, just as we do.�is is new. �ere is a whole wave of self-learning systems, such as IBM’s Watson, which taught itself to play Jeopardy, a popular quiz show in the US – and it beat the best players in the world. Watson, AlphaGo from Google and other similar programs draw their own conclusions from very large data sets. �ey can “look at” 100 million MRI images within fractions of a second, for instance, and compare your cruciate ligament with an enormous sample group. No human being can do that.

How will the interaction between humans and machines develop?We are at the very beginning. Look at past achievements, agriculture being a good example. �e plow, the combine and the tractor made us stronger.We could say that the human spirit was paired with the physical strength of the machine. �e same applied later to cars and airplanes. Today we have come to the point where machines no longer simply supplement the muscle power or motor abilities we lack; they can take over almost all of our repetitive activities. Just think of the self-driving car.

Can you give us another example that impresses you?Technology is making great progress in medical diagnosis, for example. Arti�cial intelligence systems can already recognize certain skin diseases better than physicians can. Synthetic biology, which can already be used to create cells, is also very interesting. I believe that we will be able to get a grip on most cancers and circulatory diseases. And we will be able to double our life expectancy in the foreseeable future. �is is only the beginning of world history. Ninety-nine percent of interesting things have not yet been invented. Arti�cial intelligence will relieve us of mentally undemanding activities. In the future, we will be able to concentrate on creative work. On the things that are really interesting.

Many people are afraid that robots are threatening their jobs. Rightly so? Let’s look at the past again. Just 300 years ago, almost everyone in Europe worked in agriculture or in a household. �ey plowed the �elds, milked cows, washed, cleaned and cooked. �at devoured unbelievable amounts of time. �ere was no electric power and there were no engines. Hygiene was miserable and medical care poor. Life expectancy in Europe was not even 30. If someone romanticizes about those times and wants to live back then, I can understand why technological progress raises concerns for that person …

�at sounds ironic.�en seriously: I believe that history supports my optimistic attitude that new technologies will make human beings’ lives simpler. �e balance is positive, even if you include dangerous technologies in the equation. Today, far fewer people die in war than 100 years ago. Fewer people starve and life expectancy is continuously increasing. Naturally, there are still many people who live in poverty or are even enslaved. �at will not change with one stroke. But the Internet gives more people a chance to work on the progress of human-ity – and pro�t from it as well. Five hundred years ago, most people could not even read or write. Today, thanks to the Internet, at

r. �run, a simple question to get started. What makes us human?Of course, you mean that ironically – but the answer is actually surprisingly simple. Human beings are the center of our world. Creativity and value systems are what make us human. And for all of us, our fellow humans are the most important elements of our life.

When we think about digital technologies, such as arti�cial intelligence for instance, are we also thinking about the nature of human beings then?Exactly. With each new technology, we reexamine the human condition, humanity’s existence and our understand-ing of ourselves as human beings.It always revolves around the same thing: giving human beings super-human powers. We could not have talked to each other 150 years ago because our voices alone were not loud enough to be heard from the US to Switzerland. We could not swim across the Atlantic either; we’re simply not built to do it. Today, however, we talk over the Internet – or ¬y from Los Angeles to Zurich in 12 hours.

Sebastian �run, 49, is considered one of the technology pioneers of our time. In 2005 the German citizen became a public �gure when a team under his leadership used a modi�ed VW Touareg to win the most impor - tant prize for self-driving cars in the Mojave Desert. �run was responsible for self-driving cars at Google from 2007 on, his team also invented Google Street View, and he established Google X, the secret development lab that is intended to come up with the next moonshot. �run is a professor at Stanford and has published over 370 scienti�c articles and 11 books. His special area of expertise is theoretical robotics. From 2012 to 2014, �run was on Credit Suisse’s Board of Directors, and today he is a senior advisor at the Credit Suisse Lab in Silicon Valley.

M

Bulletin 3 / 2016 — 25


�ese are people who have already �nished a �rst career and now want to start a second one. We make that possible.

Udacity’s valued at one billion dollars today. In the beginning, you called your own o�ering lousy. Why? We began with free courses, what are called massive open online courses. �e completion rates were very bad, though. Only 5 percent of the participants successfully completed the courses. Today

we have a success rate of 90 percent. We consciously took the path of launch-ing something that was still incomplete. �at meant we could feel the market from the outset and consistently align Udacity to people’s needs.

What did you change?We no longer regard education merely as conveying content but instead as a service, and we even give a guarantee. If the graduate does not �nd a job, we refund the course fee. We generally o�er more than just online courses today. When someone

least half of the population of the world has access to the entire, or to nearly the entire, knowledge of humanity. �e world is in fact becoming ¬atter and ¬atter.

You’ve said your most important mission is to democratize knowledge. What do you mean by that? It bothers my sense of justice that excellent education is very unequally distributed. Very few people have the chance to go to the best universities in the world, which remain closed to almost everyone. Yet there is hardly anything that is as well documented as the e±cacy of education. People who are better educated lead better lives, have more money, fewer diseases, longer life expec-tancy and much more. �at’s why we created an online educational institution with Udacity, where we can give people a chance who had none before by o�ering them high quality education. We see education not in the sense of an expensive Rolex, but in the spirit of Ikea.

We want to educate as many people as possible, as well as possible.

What is your favorite example of that? �ere are so many. If I could only give one, it would be an American mother who had been a housewife for 20 years, taking care of her three children. She completed a programming course with Udacity and afterward was able to start at Google as a programmer. We have a large box of letters from people who thank us for making a positive change in their lives. �ese letters always sound very similar.

comes to Udacity, they learn not only from books and videos, but also through very concrete projects based in practice. It’s about making something oneself, about learning by doing. And our experts then give individual feedback for each project. It is a little like sports. You don’t get into shape if you only watch others play. And you don’t really learn anything if you only watch professors, without becoming actively involved.

Udacity has a social mission, but you nonetheless want to make money in the process – why?It may sound odd, but we realized that it makes things simpler. We don’t waste resources on fundraising, we have to be 100 percent aligned with our customers, and we also keep an eye on costs. We take great pains, however, to keep our o�erings as inexpensive as possible for our customers. We are approximately 50 times cheaper than Stanford.

Udacity is a presence around the world – how do the cultural di�erences among the students �nd expression?In Switzerland and Germany, education is regarded as completely or nearly free of charge, while it’s normal in the US to pay for it. And in Europe, in contrast to the US, it is not yet common to go back to the university in the middle of a career in order to study for another degree. Our o�shoots in China and India are just getting going.What I see there is that demand is unbelievably high. People take personal responsibility for their career and ask

�is is just the beginning of world history. Ninety-nine

percent of interesting things have not been invented yet.

Education in the spirit of Ikea. We want to educate as many people as possible, as well as possible.

26 — Bulletin 3 / 2016


less for government aid. �ey pay for their own advanced education because they – rightly – think that, by doing so, they improve their chances and the investment is well worth it.

Your company assumes that the traditional education pattern “primary school – university – lifelong employment” is passé. Why?In the US, it’s already the case that 26 percent of the workforce moves from job to job, essentially working on demand. �e average employee there stays at a job only four and a half years.People in Switzerland and Germany will have to more thoroughly dispense with the idea that they will have one job for life. Companies are increasingly forced to adapt to changing times.

�at means job losses.Yes. But there is also a positive side. People can always continue their develop-ment; new opportunities open up for them. Education evolves alongside work.

People live longer and will have to continue educating themselves as they grow older.

�e principle behind the university is indeed outmoded. Can it really be the case that the best way to educate people was invented a thousand years ago? But the market for universities and other higher learning institutions is growing because they must focus not only on high school graduates, but on all of

society. It’s exactly the same in other industries: my insurance, my water and electricity company are there for me throughout my life – only my university is not. Although the need to learn is lifelong.

You have an eight-year old son. What is important to you in his education?What we call here in California the growth mindset is very important to me. We view the brain like a muscle that can be trained and grow. It is important that my son has the ability to be curious about the world and to try new things. �is ability and also the willingness to adapt your view of things to constantly changing circumstances are more import-ant than your current knowledge base. �e people of tomorrow will have to learn and improve continuously. �at is a way of thinking, a mentality, that I want to give my son.

Is it working?Jasper goes to a new experimental school that emphasizes projects and learning at

one’s own pace. He loves going to school and can’t stand vacation.

What jobs will be in demand when Jasper is grown up?Pardon my saying so, but that’s the wrong question, it negates development. Twenty years ago, it was not possible to foresee that today, for example, search engine optimizers, mechatronic engineers or data analysts would be very much in demand. And the speed of change is only increas-

In the long run, what concerns me in everything I do is people, empowering and promoting them – emboldening them to be free.

Sebastian Thrun’s Projects

UDACITY

The U stands for university, plus “audacity,” which means boldness or daring. This online education institution wants to make “continuing education available, accessible, affordable, appealing and offering the latest content.” Course topics are aligned with the job market, and there are lectures for Android developers, Ruby on Rails developers and an introduction to iOS development. These courses are offered in co-operation with leading technology companies like Facebook, Amazon and Google, and last six to nine months. The diploma is called a nano degree.

GOOGLE GLASS

At Google, Sebastian Thrun was the “moonshot man,” meaning he was responsible for big inventions like glasses with minicomputers, Street View cars and the Loon project that uses gas-filled balloons to bring the Internet to remote areas.

STANLEY

Under Thrun’s leadership, the Stanford racing team developed a self-driving VW Touareg that won the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge, a 212 kilometer long race in the desert near Las Vegas. The prize money was about two million dollars, which was the highest prize for a robotics competition to date.

PEARL

During his time at Carnegie Mellon University (1998–2003), Thrun developed Pearl, a robotic caregiver for the elderly.

RHINO

As part of his doctoral work at the University of Bonn (1995), Thrun built a robot that gave museum tours, among other tasks.

Bulletin 3 / 2016 — 27


ing. You can say with certainty that creative people will have better opportuni-ties in the future. Technology jobs will play a big role, especially in industries that don’t traditionally have a lot to do with technology. So, for instance, biology has already changed dramatically in the direction of data science. Big data will also change medicine, the law, and perhaps even historical research. Whatever the industry, without an a±nity for technology, a person will have fewer chances on the job market.

So it’s not only the unions that are worried. Digitalization threatens many of today’s work models. Are we moving toward a proletariat far removed from technology and removed from the job market too?It’s pointless to want to stop progress, it’s never worked. It would be much more important for unions to promote continual training for their members so their people are prepared for new technologies. We shouldn’t want to nail down the status quo; instead we should prepare ourselves for ever faster change.

It’s not only fear of job loss that grows with digitalization. �ere’s also the fear of loss of privacy. �at doesn’t worry me a great deal. Look,

it’s not in the interest of any company to deploy knowledge against the will of its customers. Large technology companies are all based on the trust of their custom-ers. If that trust is abused, the customers will soon be gone. I see many of these companies from the inside. My impression is that these companies’ ethics are much more developed than it appears from the outside. In the end, they want to please their customers.

You were on Credit Suisse’s Board of Directors, and you recently became an advisor to Credit Suisse Labs, a �nancial technology workshop in Silicon Valley. What is being developed there?It’s not only about trying out new technologies but, on a much more fundamental level, about strengthening innovative thinking and developing new business models. Credit Suisse has always been a progressive bank. It would like to ensure that it remains a technology leader with these labs.

Can you give us two or three speci�c examples?�e labs are currently under development; it would be just too early for me to reveal too much. But generally speaking, we are working on the big topics, like cyber

“Stanley” in the desert: �run with his team’s prize-winning self-driving car. (2005)

security, mobile banking, new credit models and new databases for �nancial transactions, such as block chain tech-nology. With digital systems, banking can become much more transparent, more economical and faster. Customers will pro�t from all of that too. We want to be able to o�er them better and better products.

Finally, a personal question: You must have enjoyed reading the big science �ction novels as a youngster, such as those by H. G. Wells, Isaac Asimov, Philip K. Dick.�ere you’re mistaken. I preferred Heinrich Böll or Max Frisch. I’ve always been more interested in people than technologies. Technology is just a tool. In the long run, what concerns me in everything I do is people, empowering and promoting them – emboldening them to be free.

Photo: Damian Dovarganes / AP Photo / Keystone

28 — Bulletin 3 / 2016


Clouds, Shadows,

Military Robots�e world is not becoming more complicated ‒ it’s just changing.

Nineteen terms related to the digital future that you should know now.

By Ben Hammersley (text) and QuickHoney (illustrations)

1Moore’s Law In 1965, Gordon Moore, one of the co-founders of micro-processor manufacturer Intel, described the following phenomenon: �e number of components on a chip doubles each year, while the price remains the same. �is trend continued for a decade. In 1975, he revised his forecast from every year to every two years. Computing power has doubled every two years since then. In other words, the same power at half the price. Moore’s Law is the basis for this article and a symbol of the pace of technological progress.

2The Cloud Conceptually speaking, this is where people are when they are online. It is the place where all information, communication and things are located.�ere will probably be a time when people look back and say that the cloud was the start of the 21st century. From a technical point of view, it is somewhat more prosaic. Ultimately, the cloud is a sort of storage system with a su�ciently fast connection to the Internet.

3Community Management For some people, the Internet can be both scary and mundane at the same time. �e dangers of a technology that people use every day but do not truly understand are clear. In such cases, online community managers can help. As moderators, they manage, facilitate or censor online discussions, and are a civilizing force wherever people come together in the digital world, such as in forums.

Bulletin 3 / 2016 — 29


4ShanzhaiCopies of luxury goods are not a new phenomenon. But over the past decade, the market for imitation products, particularly in China, has grown signi�cantly. Shanzhai, or “mountain stronghold” in English, re�ects a kind of Robin Hood self-conception. Expensive luxury products are taken from the wealthy and made available for all. Mobile phones, in particular, are copied, as well as clothing and even architecture.

53D Printers When computers are capable of making physical objects, they will become an essential component of industrial and creative production. 3D printers work by applying materials in layers, a process known as additive manufacturing. �ese printers are currently still quite expensive and unreliable. But the prospects for the future are very interesting. For example, at some point a homeowner will be able to use a 3D printer in the basement to replace a broken window at a moment’s notice. See photo gallery starting on page 8.

6Attention Economy Life was simpler when there was less choice. On a rainy Sunday in a small town in the late 1980s, there were fewer than 50 things to do for entertainment: a couple of TV channels, a movie theater, a few radio stations and books or magazines. Today, the Internet provides us with access to the world. �is means that companies need to �nd new ways to win our sharply divided attention.

9Memes If we live in a world where ideas and information are more important than physical objects, then it’s a good idea to know how ideas really work. �is is not a question of devising a rule for good ideas, but rather of showing how ideas spread, how they travel ‒ from person to person, from company to company and from country to country. Call it education or cultivation, style, gossip, stories or sermons; it is all based on one core principle: memes – ideas that are picked up and spread. Nowadays, this process often takes place on the Internet.

7Tech Nomads Over the past century, the idea has arisen that in the future we will be able to work from home in our pajamas thanks to new communication technologies that free us from the o�ce. In many digitalized professions, it does not matter where people work as long as they have access to data and communi-cation ‒ this is the basis of life for tech nomads who want something more than just freedom: a new simplicity. �ey do not need much more than a laptop.

8 Crowdsourcing Probably the most well-known example of crowdsourcing ‒ in which a larger whole is created quickly and inexpen-sively from small contributions by individuals – is Wikipedia. A remarkably simple idea that has become the Internet authority. It shows how people can and want to work together if it’s fun and provides a greater sense of purpose.

30 — Bulletin 3 / 2016


10 Space Travel for All �e US space agency NASA �ew its last Space Shuttle mission on July 21, 2011. With the shuttle subsequently being taken out of service, you might think that would be the end of manned space travel. Instead, we will see space dominated by private companies over the next few years: Virgin Galactic, SpaceX and Bigelow Aerospace all want to o¬er tourists the experience of weightlessness. And universities and small companies can now order small satellites on the Internet for 8,000 US dollars to get data on demand from the universe.

11 Data Shadows A hundred years ago, the average person left almost no trace behind other than a birth certi�cate and a death certi�cate. �e average person in 2016 provides more data with an afternoon trip to the supermarket than his counterpart in 1916 did in his entire life. No wonder then that many people are concerned about the “surveillance society.” While most of these data shadows are mundane, they do raise a number of questions involving individuals’ rights versus the needs of the general public.

12 The Quantified SelfIn 2008, a group of digital pioneers discovered that they could improve their health by collecting personal physical and mental health data on their smartphones. Using social media, this data was compared with their friends’ data, and it was not long before an entire industry arose with programs and apps to help people measure and improve themselves on an ongoing basis.

13 Information Overload We are bombarded with more information than we could ever hope to process. �is can cause stress and make us unhappy. Yes, the average o�ce worker receives 50 emails a day. And yes, some people are constantly updating on Facebook or sharing their lives with the world every ten minutes via Twitter. But no one is forced to do so. And we are learning how to handle information better ‒ with help from certain software, of course.

Bulletin 3 / 2016 — 31


Ben Hammersley, 40, is a British journalist and author. �e information age expert’s books include: “Now for �en: How to Face the Digital Future without Fear” and “A Smart Guide to Utopia.”

14 Military RobotsFor years, armies have used drones (�ying military robots) for reconnaissance missions in di�cult-to-access areas such as Afghanistan. Today, drones are no longer just reconnaissance tools ‒ they are weapons. But the deper-sonalization of war causes asymmetry and raises pressing ethical questions. Drones are a potent symbol of “Big Brother” in the skies above us.

15 Return to Artisanal Crafts �e Internet is celebrating its 25th anniversary in 2016. �e people who created it and changed our lives are now middle-aged or elderly, and many, such as Tim Berners-Lee, have turned to artisanal activities. Is the problem that digital creativity is not very ful�lling? It’s not so simple. First, the desire for homemade things is probably a response to hyperconsumerism. Second, information about artisanal crafts is now accessible to everyone online, and there are new opportunities thanks, for example, to 3D printers and digital sewing machines.

16 Gamification Even if you have never played a computer game, you are involved in game design as soon as you use the Internet. �e gami�cation of the world turns every human activity into a game. �e reason for this is simple: Many, many people like to play. And these games are designed by a creative industry that has grown into a cultural and economic power.

17 Net Neutrality �e Internet has no central authority. It is built on the basic idea of trial and error and on a simple principle: All data is equal. It does not matter if it is an email or video stream. From this point of view, your email is just as important as an email from President Obama. �is is net neutrality. However, internet providers would like to prioritize certain content so they can charge more for it. �e discussion of this issue is ongoing and it is extremely political.

18 Darknet �e internet is bigger than you think. It is estimated that around 90 percent of content is not visible to search engines. In any case, there are dark corners everywhere that can only be found when using special programs and codes. And very strange things tend to happen in the dark. But as always in the digital world, there are an in�nite number of shades. Many places in the darknet are sites of pure peace with no underground caves, such as scienti�c publications and library content.

19 Anonymous If there is a group that makes us feel outdated, it is the activist and hacker collective Anonymous. It demonstrates why the digital world is so di¬erent from the analog world. Anonymous has no geographical home base and no central structure until it creates one – and then it only does so for a few minutes. �e group does not even have an objective until it de�nes one. But when it believes that someone has violated the laws of the Internet, it immediately becomes a relentless and extremely powerful underground movement.

32 — Bulletin 3 / 2016


Bulletin 3 / 2016 — 33


Trial and Error California’s AltSchool is a start-up dedicated to the learning of the future. Using tablet computers, robots and apps, its students acquire the fundamental skills needed for creative work. By Ste¬an Heuer (text) and David Magnusson (photos)

Left page: Five- to eight-year-old students are working on their �rst robot prototype, a project that teaches them to tackle a problem from various angles.Right page: Technology and personal attention are at the heart of the AltSchool approach.

34 — Bulletin 3 / 2016


t’s almost like stumbling into a start-up business sta¬ed by extremely young employees. Twenty children are ab-sorbed in their projects. �eir goal: to com-plete a fully functional robot prototype by Demo Day. Every morning, they sit down with their two “managers” to discuss task speci�cations, where delays are occurring and who has the necessary expertise to solve a hardware or software problem. �e rest of the day is a time of “creative chaos” as students assemble and test a variety of components: light-emitting diodes, batter-ies, circuits and software modules. If they

I

reach a dead end, students can consult a large whiteboard with the names of experts in various areas – reading and writing, for example, or art or sewing.

�ese robotics experts are between the ages of �ve and eight. At San Francisco’s AltSchool, they are learning what project- oriented, personalized learning will look like in the future. �ey are completing a two-week intensive course designed to teach them what experts have identi�ed as key skills for the 21st century: design thinking, or how to approach a problem; iteration, or a willingness to learn quickly from mistakes and to continue testing new versions over and over again; constant net-working with other people; and making use of all of the other bene�ts the Internet has to o¬er.

“It’s not about being able to present a �nished robot at the end of the process,” says Kristin Uhlemeyer, who teaches the course. “�e goal is to be able and moti-vated to approach a problem from many di¬erent perspectives. �e realization that failure can be positive and bene�cial is ap-plicable to a host of other contexts.”

Schools Have to Be Flexible �is sums up the philosophy of AltSchool, a private school in California. AltSchool is engaged in an ambitious and widely noted experiment that seeks to replace the tradi-tional teacher-centered model of instruc-

01 In a robotics course, students interact with experts – or, as in the photo, with an audio-video robot.

02 Cameras record day-to-day activities at school; teachers can “mark” special moments and retrieve them later on.

tion with ideas, structures and tools bor-rowed from Silicon Valley. Max Ventilla, the school’s founder, raised 130 million US dollars in venture capital to realize his vi-sion of a network of “micro-schools,” each of which includes only one or two classes. A former Google executive, Ventilla has opened eight AltSchool sites over the past three years – mostly in San Francisco, but also in New York and Chicago. At present, 400 students from �rst to eighth grade, called beta testers, are enrolled in

AltSchool. �ey receive intensive support and guidance from nearly 200 teachers, programmers, designers and other experts. �e goal is to determine whether this idea can be expanded into a nationwide business.

Ventilla wants to make this experi-ment into a model that others, including public school systems, will want to copy as they recognize that it leads to more suc-cessful learning and also makes �nancial sense. “Traditional schools are unable to

“Traditional schools are unable to change,

for a number of reasons.”

01 02

Bulletin 3 / 2016 — 35


Max Ventilla, 35, is the founder of AltSchool. A former Google executive, he raised 130 million US dollars in venture capital to open a school that would promote more successful learning while also making a pro�t. Four hundred students from �rst to eighth grade are currently “beta testers” at AltSchool. �ey bene�t from the intensive support and guidance of nearly 200 teachers, programmers, designers and other experts.

change, for a number of reasons. �eir hier-archies stand in the way of innovation and dynamic progress – qualities that are pre-cisely what we need today,” says Ventilla, 35. “�e faster the world changes, the more �exible schools need to be. Changes need to start from the bottom.”

�e gap between �nancially secure educational enterprises boasting the latest technologies, on the one hand, and public schools that are in urgent need of modern-ization, on the other, can be dangerous. In their most recent annual report on the state of the education system, experts from the National Education Policy Center at the University of Colorado in Boulder con-

cluded that schools are “easy prey” for com-panies seeking to market their products to children and adolescents. Software for per-sonalized learning, generally provided free of charge, opens the door to a “surveillance culture” in the classroom – especially be-cause schools are under increasing pressure to digitize their operations. As the re-searchers point out, very few teachers are aware of the consequences of using such programs.

Ventilla exudes the self-con�dence of a technology expert who achieved suc-cess at an early age, and who believes that any problem can be solved through the trial-and-error method if you only collect

enough data. Like so many in Silicon Val-ley, he was motivated by a personal experi-ence that others may relate to – the search for the right elementary school for his daughter. After three years, it is still too soon to say whether or not AltSchool has been successful; California gives new schools �ve years to prove themselves. �ere are too few children, and too few completed grade levels, to allow for a reli-able comparison with other models. It is apparent, however, that students are highly motivated by the school’s combination of a high-tech classroom and abundant per-sonal attention. For parents and teachers, however, there are new anxieties and

36 — Bulletin 3 / 2016


Cameras and microphones are installed in every classroom, so teachers can cap-ture special moments, using an “index button” on the wall, and retrieve the clip later on. Students do not receive grades. Progress is shown on a bar graph, which resembles the business-intelligence tools a company might use to optimize its sales or cash �ow.

Parents use an app called “Stream” to follow what is happening at school – a kind of social network revolving around their child. Will a student arrive late today, or is someone going on vacation outside of reg-ular school breaks? One click lets the teachers know. Did you like the album with photos from the class trip? A single click informs the entire class. Teachers are con-stantly uploading comments and photos, and they often respond to questions even late at night. Families pay an average of 25,000 US dollars per year for this combi-nation of technology and individualized

admit that some don’t work out. But we can make changes in just a few weeks or months,” Bauer says.

AltSchool students use tablets starting at the age of �ve. �ey are later

provided with Chromebooks for working on their “playlists,” or learning plans, which have lessons or “cards” created es-pecially for each student by their teach-ers. �ree children in a given class might be reading three versions of the same book, geared to their existing knowledge.

uncertainties. When every movement or remark in the networked classroom is re-corded or streamed live, they experience the stress of having to process every new piece of information. What’s more, all of the data collected on children from an ear-ly age can be a nightmare for data protec-tion authorities.

Learning Plans Are Called Playlists“We’re still learning how to use all of these wonderful technological tools,” says Annette Bauer. An American with Ger-man roots, Bauer worked at international schools all over the world before accepting a position as head of an AltSchool site. She was intrigued by the school’s emphasis on encouraging a passion for learning. Teach-ers meet regularly with internal software experts for “hackathons” or programming sessions, building precisely the technology that the teachers want in their classrooms. “We try many things, and we’re the �rst to

“We’re still learning how to use all of these wonderful

technological tools.”

01

02 03

Bulletin 3 / 2016 — 37


performance.” In many cases, he says, nothing changes.

�e use of technology and personal-ized learning will only be successful if teachers continue to help children who are struggling as well as those who com-plete their assignments more quickly than their peers. Unless children receive per-sonal attention, even the best iPad pro-grams are useless. And one more thing is extremely important for the Learning 2.0 project, says Willingham. “Schools need to be honest and admit it when something isn’t working, and they need to have an exit strategy.”

4.5 Billion Dollars in Venture CapitalMany technology experts and educational reformers view experiments like AltSchool as a way to restart an educational system that has lost its way. �ey believe that tra-ditional schools have failed to prepare children for the future demands on

knowledge workers. Reach Newschools Capital, an organization that invests in educational startups, includes the follow-ing in its list of the 10 top skills for 2020: critical thinking, emotional intelligence, negotiating skills and cognitive �exibility. Technology companies large and small tell us that the right software will teach these skills to young minds. Ventilla’s company is not the only one to bene�t from the enormous sums of money �ow-ing into the “ed tech” industry.

According to the Boston Consulting Group, last year’s total set a record: approx-imately 4.5 billion dollars. Nearly half of that money went to American compa-nies, followed by investments in China, the UK, India, Germany and Brazil. �e

major high-tech companies, too, want to be present on the screens of �rst-graders. In 2015, public schools in the United States spent 4.9 billion dollars to purchase almost 11 million computers and tablets, running operating systems by Apple, Google or Microsoft. �e software installed on these devices generates even more earnings for companies – nearly twice what they earn on hardware.

So it is not surprising that Amazon plans to create an online marketplace for educational materials, called “Inspire,” that will provide such materials to teachers free of charge – as a way of wooing future cus-tomers. It was headline news when Micro-soft announced its plans to release a school-speci�c version of the bestselling game “Minecraft.” Google is hard at work on several educational services.

�ese programs, most of which are cloud-based and register every keystroke and click, have attracted the attention of data protection authorities. Who owns the data of children and adolescents, and who, other than teachers, will have access to this data when commercial providers �nd their way into schools? Families that send their children to AltSchool

learning, which is not an unusual price for an American private school. One child in �ve receives �nancial aid; this policy is de-signed to allow children from low-income families to attend AltSchool and to keep it from becoming an elite institution reserved for the wealthy.

Hardware and Software Are Not EnoughBut what has the AltSchool experiment actually accomplished – aside from gener-ating a mixture of uneasiness and pride on the part of parents who are able to send their children there? “Both parents and teachers need to be patient. It’s impossible to draw conclusions after only two or three years,” says education researcher Daniel Willingham of the University of Virginia, who studies large public school districts and their use of new technologies. “�e biggest mistake of many experimental models is to assume that acquiring hard-ware and software is enough to improve

01 Students are in the process of building their �rst robots.

02 AltSchool teacher Kristin Uhlemeyer shows a student how a light-emitting diode works.

03 – 05 �e school teaches the key skills workers will need for the 21st century: design thinking, or how to approach a problem; iteration, or the willingness to learn quickly from mistakes and to test new versions over and over again; and constant networking. Students are expected to take advantage of all the bene�ts the Internet has to o¬er.

“Schools need to be honest and admit it when something isn’t working,

and they need to have an exit strategy.”

04

05

38 — Bulletin 3 / 2016


consent to having them photographed, �lmed and recorded, and permit their data to be stored and analyzed inde�nitely – to document the child’s progress and to im-prove the services the school provides to all of its customers. After all, AltSchool is an enterprise that is funded by venture capital and expected to turn a pro�t and produce returns for its roughly two dozen investors – the crème de la crème of Sili-con Valley, including Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and the widow of Steve Jobs. Founder Ventilla has no quarrel with the pro�t motive: “We have to invest heav-ily in the educational system if we want to e¬ect change. �at requires companies

willing to invest the necessary �nancial re-sources and take risks,” he says.

It is by no means clear at this point that personalized learning is superior to traditional approaches to teaching. Simply giving a kid an iPad will not make him a genius. “With all of the investment hype and entrepreneurial frenzy, I worry that some might view personalization as yet an-other silver bullet for education,” says Jen-nifer Carolan, a former teacher who now works for the education technology fund Reach Newschool Capital. If we allow our-selves to be seduced by the false promises of technologists, we may end up simply re-placing the traditional classroom with a

Annette Bauer, head of AltSchool Dogpatch: “Our model is a work in progress aimed at changing our conception of school: Rather than being a straight path from A to B, it should be a �exible route.”

01 �e spirit of Silicon Valley: AltSchool headquarters in San Francisco.

02 �e school of the future will be fully digitized. Absences will be reported with a click of the mouse, and news will be broadcast through the school’s own social network.

03 Teachers, experts and programmers work closely together.

model in which groups of silent children are absorbed in their devices and isolated from their peers, she warns.

Annette Bauer, head of school at AltSchool Dogpatch, agrees that acquir-ing social and emotional intelligence is what really counts – learning how to re-spond to new challenges and how to work with others in a creative process. Technol-ogy, no matter how new, can play only a limited role in this context. Parents face similar issues. It’s not always a good thing to have access to enormous quantities of data about every homework assignment. If you’re suddenly given the opportunity to monitor and assess your child 24 hours a

Bulletin 3 / 2016 — 39


day, it can be tempting to micromanage the child’s activities, which can make life miserable for all concerned. Older chil-dren may feel that they are being spied on; teachers are under constant pressure to de-fend what they are doing.

Adults Are Anxious“Many of these innovations are driven by the concerns of adults. Who knows what jobs our children will have in 30 or 40 years?” asks Julie Lythcott-Haims, who served as dean of freshmen at Stanford University for many years. “We need to allow them the freedom to try things, rather than monitoring them ever more closely out of a misguided desire to help.” She criticizes what she refers to as “snow-plow parenting” – when overinvolved par-ents, anxious about the future, try to elim-inate any obstacles their children may encounter. “�e result is weak, dependent individuals who are incapable of achieving anything on their own,” says Lythcott-

Haims, whose book on this topic is titled “How to Raise an Adult.”

Head of school Annette Bauer says, “Our model is a work in progress aimed at changing our conception of school: Rather

than being a straight path from A to B, it should be a �exible route.” Children will eventually arrive at their destinations, but each child should determine the path to be taken. �is is beyond the capabilities of an ordinary school. “Our school needs the help of teachers, technology and parents. One thing is certain: Freedom is enor-mously important,” says Bauer. “�e free-

dom to try new things and learn from your mistakes – this is an approach children need to internalize.”

She recalls her own childhood in New York. “Every Saturday we would drive out into the country, and I was allowed to wander around in the woods – with a whis-tle around my neck.” And that’s what a school should look like as it prepares chil-dren for an uncertain future. Except that the whistle is now an app.

01

02

03

“Who knows what jobs our children will

have in 30 or 40 years?”

Ste�an Heuer is a technology journalist and a US-based correspondent for the business magazine brand eins. He lives in San Francisco, and his daughter is in the �rst grade at AltSchool.

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42 — Bulletin 3 / 2016


be relieved of repetitive administrative tasks and therefore be able to spend more time with his clients and provide them with better consultation because he has much more precise information at his �n-gertips more quickly. In other words, everyone involved bene�ts.

Describe the day of a client advisor in the future.�ey can do what client advisors around the world do best: foster client relation-ships. Assisting them in doing so are the mobile workplace and greater e�ciency achieved through the support of robots. �ey provide their clients with a fast, computer-aided and highly personalized advisory service.

Can you give speci�c examples?In client meetings, the tablet can use speech recognition to take over the entire task of documentation. �is allows the ad-visor to focus completely on the client and provide a more personal level of service. �e tablet gives the advisor virtual access to experts right in the meeting room who can be digitally brought in to answer any questions. For client telephone calls, auto-mated portfolio analysis reveals opportu-nities and risks to the advisor in real time – an exposed position in the portfolio, for instance. In other words, her own expertise reaches the client much more rapidly. At

Mr. Abele, few industries today operate to such a degree at the juncture between analog and digital as the �nancial sector. On one hand, digitalization has caught up to the banks, while on the other hand, the �nancial business functions through personal relationships, discretion and tailored consultation. How can you resolve this con�ict? �at’s the wrong question, in my view. Digital and analog are not binaries, but are more along the lines of the synergy equa-tion: 1 + 1 = 3. New technologies support bank advisors and provide them with more options. In my opinion, despite digitaliza-tion, the advisor should still be the main-stay of the client relationship. But he can

“1 + 1 = 3”“Digital or analog?” is the wrong question in the �nancial sector. �anks to new advancements in technology, bank advisors have more time for their clients and are able to provide them with better advice, says Marco Abele, Head of Digital Private Banking at Credit Suisse Switzerland.By Simon Brunner (text) and Mathilde Agius (photos)

the end of the working day, analysis robots are already taking over the follow-up work and making preparations for the next day. �is, too, is an area where the advisor will be relieved of her current administrative task load.

And which digital platform is available to clients?�e very same one that is used by the advi-sor, just with fewer functions. �is draws the client and the advisor closer together.

When will these innovations be implemented?�e �rst client advisors started the pilot phase this summer. What is special about it is that we did not roll out a ready-to-use solution but rather one that the client advi-sors themselves can help to design. Ulti-mately, we want the technology to be the perfect support for our advisors.

You would like to provide more support to the client advisors, but at the same time, the industry is discussing how robots can take their place. “Robo-advisors” are �nancial consultants that manage online portfolios – usually with little or no human involvement. What will their role be?Assistance from computers in the invest-ment area is nothing new. Hedge funds have been using computer-based

Accion Venture LabAs part of its Microfinance Capacity Building Initiative, Credit Suisse supports the Accion Venture Lab.The Venture Lab provides start-up capital for innovative start-ups that improve access to financial services for people living in poverty. The Venture Lab has thus far invested nearly 10 million US dollars in 24 start-ups around the world in amounts ranging between 100,000 and 500,000 dollars, and it works closely with the start-ups.

www.accion.org/venturelab www.credit-suisse.com/microfinance

Marco Abele, 47. �e innovation specialist joined Credit Suisse in 2006 and manages the Platform Management & Digitalization unit.

At the end of the working day, analysis robots are taking over the follow-up work and making preparations for the next day.

44 — Bulletin 3 / 2016


has increased seven-fold, reaching around 20 billion US dollars in 2015. But it re-mains to be seen whether these �ntechs will really be able to replace banks.

Why?As yet, none of these companies has man-aged to become a resounding commercial success. �e �ntechs promise simpler, more e�cient and cheaper services tailored to the needs of a new generation of clients armed with smartphones and tablets. Un-like a major bank, however, these digital platforms focus only on part of the entire value chain. Besides that, �nancial institu-tions have already been cooperating with �ntech companies for a while now. �e mutual understanding is that more can be achieved by working together. Because of this, we are one of the backers of Impact Hub Zurich, a place where many start-up companies from this sector are located [editor’s note: this meeting also took place there]. And �nally, the young guns will not be able to replace the many years of experi-ence and expertise of traditional banks overnight.

Young guns: Many start-up companies from the �ntech sector are located at Impact Hub Zurich. In their own terms, the “entrepreneurial community” comprises “more than 500 innovators, start-ups and corporate partners who come together to design the future of business.”

A study predicts that by the year 2020, robo-advisors will manage 450 billion US dollars.I tend to believe that. For that reason, Swiss private banks should not rely on their cur-rent advantages, because sooner rather than later, automated advisors will overcome these limitations we have mentioned here. But here, too, I consider this to be a way for Swiss private banks to integrate rather than replace the client advisor. It will allow them to o¬er a broad sector of the population ac-cess to analysis tools that have previously only been available to wealthy clients.

Pulitzer Prize winning author �omas L. Friedman called it the “democratization of technology”: While a company used to need certain �nancial means and a number of employees in order to manufacture a product, today it seems to need no more than a computer and some venture capital. Especially in the world of �nance, will start-ups replace banks some day?�e �ntechs are no small phenomenon. In the last three years, their global �nancing

models for their investment decisions for years now. Last year, these quant funds made up half of the 25 richest hedge funds. Banks have also made use of automated in-vestment models for years, just behind the scenes. Putting this power directly in the hands of the clients is a logical next step. �is trend is in its very early stages, though. �e independent robo-advisors appearing in the market today only manage 20 billion US dollars worldwide.

Why haven’t robo-advisors really been accepted? For one thing, these things take time. In addition they operate in an extremely lim-ited investment universe. �ey usually use algorithms in order to create portfolios based exclusively on exchange traded funds (ETFs). In many cases, these cannot adequately meet the complex �nancial needs of private banking clients. Besides that, robo-advisors are primarily locally based, many of them in the United States – and transferring wealth to the US is not consistent with the security requirements of most clients.

Bulletin 3 / 2016 — 45

We have to o¬er millennials the best solution or they will go somewhere else.

So, we don’t have to worry about traditional banks?No, that’s not true. Digitalization is changing every industry fundamentally – that includes the �nancial industry. �ere are fewer and fewer clients who go to the bank branches to make payments, who would like printed copies of their bank statements and who choose not to use online banking. Our future clients, the millennials, have little brand loyalty. �e generation of today’s 15- to 35-year-olds seeks out the o¬er that suits them best. Whether that o¬er comes from a 160-year-old bank or a social network is completely irrelevant. We have to o¬er the best solution or they will go some-where else.

Under digitalization, accessibility is a key topic. �anks to new technologies, people with physical or mental disabilities are able to expand their range of movement. Does that apply in the banking sector, too?Yes, that is one of the biggest advantages of the new technologies. A lot of changes will be happening here. �at includes things that we can hardly imagine today. ATMs capable of communicating with blind and visually impaired clients through headsets have been in operation for a few years now. Our range of online banking services was designed to o¬er the highest degree of barrier-free acces-sibility in accordance with national and

international standards. �e visually im-paired can use aids like screen readers, braille or enlargement software to access our services. But today, people with physical, sensory or technical limitations can also conduct their banking transac-tions from anywhere. Next, it will be pos-sible to open an account via video identi-�cation, making the trip into the bank branch unnecessary.

Digitalization has strengthened the international competitiveness of the Swiss �nancial center even more. Will it come under even greater pressure as a result?Maybe, but most of all, it is an unbeliev-able opportunity. In a digital, connected world, the path to the client is much shorter. If we can establish ourselves as a �nancial center with the best digital ser-vices, the banks here can grow much more rapidly than they could have in an analog world. For centuries, our �nancial institutions have proven how safe they are and how well they can protect the private sphere. �ose are the qualities that are attractive in the digital world. Clients want strong data protection and to remain safe from cybercrime.

What distinguishes a modern

client advisor?“I support and advise 300 clients in all ar-eas related to their �nances, and I am their �rst point of contact for all requests.

In recent years, the volume of tasks that a client advisor is responsible for has increased greatly. Most of all, administra-tive topics such as documentation and re-cording client information have taken on greater importance. And the usual tasks have not diminished either: quickly im-plementing investment suggestions, re-newing a mortgage as per client request, planning an annual personal consultation, proactively contacting clients on speci�c occasions.

And yet it is actually possible today to manage a greater administrative e¬ort and still provide better advisory services than 30 years ago. We have become much more productive compared to then thanks to our digital tools.

My tablet is a great help. It used to take over an hour to prepare for a client meeting; it took a lot of time to gather and print client documents, product bro-chures and contract paperwork. Today, all of the documents are accessible online us-ing my tablet. I save about a half an hour per meeting in follow-up. �ese improve-ments are attributable to our “66 % Client Time” initiative. Like the name says, the goal is to have more time for the client. Ultimately, no app and no system can re-place personal, analog support.”

Robin Stadler, 31, is a client advisor at the Credit Suisse Aussersihl branch in Zurich.

Photo (right): Private archive

46 — Bulletin 3 / 2016


�e future of agriculture: sensors control the conditions for growing heads of lettuce in vertical farming.

Clean work: lettuce grown by electronics giant Fujitsu grows in a clean room.

Bulletin 3 / 2016 — 47


Racks of LettuceJapanese electronics companies are searching for new opportunities. A few have turned their attention to agriculture. Digitalization is expected to solve the farmers’ next-generation problem. By Sonja Blaschke

Haruyasu Miyabe was concerned when his boss called him into his o�ce three years ago. Semiconductor manufacturing in the Japanese city of Aizu-Wakamatsu had shrunk from several hundred employees to just a few dozen. �e atmosphere was tense. From a call center to a data center to �sh farming, people had run through many dif-ferent possible solutions in their heads. But Miyabe, an electrical engineer who had su-pervised Fujitsu’s production there, was completely unprepared for what came next. “Starting tomorrow, you will be cultivating lettuce,” his boss told him.

�ey used to monitor computer chips with sensors there, but now they’ll use them to grow lettuce from seeds in a nutri-ent solution on 450 �oor-to-ceiling racks under LED lights in a huge clean room. At the start, neither the 52-year-old Miyabe nor his 23 colleagues in the department had any experience growing vegetables, not to mention growing them on shelves in vertical farming.

But they didn’t need any experience. Why? Because the actual goal of the let-tuce factory was less about growing leafy greens than it was a reality test for selling the company’s own cloud-based Akisai software, says Fujitsu spokesman Rishad Marquardt. �e software is intended to enable people with little experience to get started in smart agriculture with easy-to-understand graphics and tips – and make farm life more appealing. Japan’s farmers are 67 years old on average, and trending older. In many places, there is no next generation to take over. By using in-formation technology in agriculture, Fujit-su wants to reduce the burden on farmers and make cultivation more e�cient, says Marquardt.

Other electronics giants like Panaso-nic, Sharp and Toshiba also came across

While only 79 shops stocked the low- potassium Fujitsu lettuce back in March 2015, the number had risen to 240 just a year later.

Panasonic, in contrast, is investing in a combination of traditional agriculture and new methods. Farmers cultivate the soil in smart greenhouses and sow seeds in the traditional way. While the plants grow, sensors measure the temperature and hu-midity. If it gets too hot in the greenhouse, the Panasonic system automatically closes the curtains to keep out the sun and opens windows to let in the breeze, and vice versa when temperatures drop.

�e companies noticed that many of their new customers were businesses and organizations that previously had nothing to do with cultivating fruits and vegetables. �anks to specialized hardware and soft-ware, they can quickly achieve success with relatively few employees and little expertise – regardless of whether they are growing lettuce, tomatoes or strawberries.

One company that has diversi�ed into agriculture is a waste management company, of all things. Toyama Kankyo Seibi in central Japan processes 300,000 tons of garbage each year and produces pallets from plastic. Other waste is dumped in land�lls or burned.

Only the Pollination Is NaturalOver time, supervisors noticed that they were not making use of all of their resources – for example, the heat and steam produced from waste incineration. Now excess steam is reused in an ingenious system with heat-storing containers and heat exchang-ers in greenhouses. Toyama Kankyo Seibi produces the necessary energy itself, ap-proximately 10 million kWh per year. Cur-rently 85 employees are producing up to 500 tons of tomatoes a year, 1.4 million

lettuce in their search for new product lines and sales channels. In recent years, they be-gan digitizing empty factory buildings or transforming them into plantations.

Computers Take on World Hunger�e United Nations estimates that the global population will increase from 7 to 9.6 billion people by the year 2050. �e middle class, which has a large budget for food, will see strong growth. In order to cover rising demand, people around the world are searching for quick, easy-to-im-plement solutions that are also sustainable.

Future researchers are declaring a tectonic shift from the industrialization of

agriculture 100 years ago to its automa-tion and digitalization today. Digital �elds o¬er a ray of hope. �ey will be able to �ght hunger in Africa and reduce labor costs in industrialized nations. In Japan, they could also replace dwindling num-bers of farmers. �e Nomura Research Institute estimates that by 2035, robots could replace almost half of all jobs in Japan in “non-creative” sectors, such as the service industry, merchandise delivery and agriculture.

�e experiment is showing initial signs of success. According to Fujitsu, since its Akisai software �rst hit the mar-ket in 2012, around 400 companies and organizations are now using the software.

“If it gets too hot in the greenhouse,

the system automatically closes the curtains.”

Photos: Sonja Blaschke

48 — Bulletin 3 / 2016


Sonja Blaschke is an independent East Asian correspondent and television producer for German language media. She has lived in Japan since 2005.

�owers and also strawberries on a smaller scale. �eir sales comprise around one-sev-enth of the company’s total revenue.

Generous funding from the govern-ment may also have provided an incentive for the waste management company, which transitioned to large-scale farming in 2015 after 16 years of running it as a smaller- scale project. Two-thirds of the annual operating costs for the horticulture project are covered by the Ministry for Agricul-ture, Forestry and Fisheries, which pro-motes future-oriented agricultural meth-ods. �e local economy is bene�ting as well. Around 70 percent of employees live in Toyama City, with most coming from the surrounding region.

Although some of the employees have experience in agriculture, it is not a prerequisite. Everything is thought out to the smallest detail in the help of informa-tion and communication technology. Sen-sors on mobile bases in the greenhouse transmit the data regularly to the monitor-ing software. �is ensures stable growing conditions, “even without a farmer’s in-stinct,” says Masafumi Takata, who works in the greenhouse. �e right temperature, the right humidity – everything is moni-tored by software. Takata lifts a vine of to-

matoes and shows that the plants are not growing directly in the earth, but rather on special �lms. �ese simulate a lack of water, which stimulates the plant to produce par-ticularly sweet tomatoes. Sensors test the sugar content. Only pollination of the plants is left to nature: 200 bees buzz around in each greenhouse.

Meanwhile, this is opening up new perspectives for Japan’s agricultural indus-try, which is su¬ering from a shortage of labor and a dwindling next generation. By mid-2017, the �rst robotic factory produc-ing lettuce will open in a 4,400-square- meter facility in Kameoka, near Kyoto. People will only sow the seeds, and indus-trial robots will take care of the rest. With-in �ve years, up to half a million pesti-cide-free heads of lettuce will sprout on the shelves every day. LED lights were in-stalled to save costs and resources; 98 per-cent of the water will be reused. “Our new farm could be a model for other farms, but our aim is not to replace human farmers, but to develop a system where humans and machines work together,” said JJ Price, Spread’s global marketing manager, to the British newspaper, �e Guardian.

Over the short term, digital farming will lead directly to the replacement of hu-

man workers who are having problems with the growing complexity of “precision agriculture.” But before it comes to that, the companies need to solve a few prob-lems such as high energy consumption. Miyabe, the electrical engineer turned let-tuce grower, would prefer not to disclose how high Fujitsu’s annual electricity bill is for the smart lettuce factory.

Haiti’s economy has yet to recover from the 2010 earthquake. A lack of access to banking services is a major problem for many people who are trying to become �nancially independent – including farmer August Jean Soliny (photo). Up to now, he has always had to pay his children’s school fees in

person, which has meant spending a great deal of time traveling. Financing and purchasing seeds and machinery has also required considerable time and e¬ort.

�e global micro�nance institution Finca deploys tools like mobile banking and semi-auto-mated credit assessments to give farmers the access they need to �nancial resources and loans, allowing them to shape their own economic future.www.�nca.org

167 Dollars for Silkworms and Mushrooms�e number of people su¬ering from hunger in Uganda has more than doubled since the 1990s. �e availability of traditional �nancial services is essential for promoting economic development in the country’s rural areas. In 2012, Aidah Nahunkuma received a microcredit of 167 US dollars from Opportunity International. She used that money to start a now-�ourishing business raising silkworms and mushrooms. �e proceeds

cover not only the living expenses of her family of eight, but also the costs of the children’s education.

Opportunity International is making it possible for people to take advantage of banking services with the help of modern technologies. Aidah Nahunkuma is now able to use a smartphone to conduct mobile payment transac-tions, so she can make deposits and with- drawals without having to walk for hours to the nearest bank.www.opportunity.org

Credit Suisse provides support for Finca Interna-tional and Opportunity International as part of its Micro�nance Capacity Building Initiative.www.credit-suisse.com/micro�nance

Haiti and Uganda: Little �ings �at Have a Big Impact

Photo: Private archive

Investing in individuals.Improving our world. www.accion.org

This advert was made possible with the generous support of Credit Suisse.

50 — Bulletin 3 / 2016


A Formula for Love

Online dating sites promise to �nd your ideal partner with the help of computer programs. Can algorithms really predict who will fall in love?By Christian Heinrich

Photo: Karen Rosetzsky, from the book “Young Love,” published in 201550 — Bulletin 3 / 2016


age of 5 centimeters taller and 20 percent wealthier than the population as a whole.

Psychologist Eli Finkel of North-western University published a study that caused something of a stir when it con-cluded that algorithms are ine¬ective in matching singles with compatible part-ners. �e authors found “no compelling evidence” that matching algorithms pro-duce noticeably better results than ran-dom encounters. �is is not only because of the often mediocre quality of the algo-rithms, but also because even the most carefully designed programs are simply incapable of predicting compatibility. �ree main factors play a central role in a long-term relationship:

First, the individual characteristics of the partners – including intelligence and past experience with relationships.

Second, the quality of the interac-tions between the partners – the ways couples communicate and behave with one another.

�ird, the circumstances surrounding the couple – such as health and �nancial status. �e complexity and diversity that result from these three factors cannot be captured by questions like “Do you like horror movies?” or “Is neatness important to you?” or “Do you cook more often than once every other day?” Most dating services con�ne themselves to gathering informa-tion about personality traits. Lacking the necessary input, algorithms are incapable of yielding high-quality results.

A Wider Range of Choices?All the same, there are good reasons for us-ing computers to �nd a mate. As Finkel notes in his study, online dating “o¬ers un-precedented (and remarkably convenient) levels of access to potential partners, which is especially helpful for singles who might otherwise lack such access.” Approaching a stranger face-to-face takes courage, espe-cially if you don’t even know whether that person is interested in meeting someone. Online dating gives you access to an enor-mous pool of like-minded individuals. It’s trite, but true: You certainly won’t fall in love if you don’t get to know anyone. Your chances increase as opportunities to meet people become more numerous.

But more is not necessarily better. Having too many choices can be a disad-vantage, as it can make it di�cult to reach a decision. In the past, people would meet and then get to know each other. With

dating sites, people are �rst presented with a list of the characteristics of a potential partner, and only then does the user decide whether or not to meet that person. “Pro-viding access to potential partners via pro-�les arti�cially transforms three-dimen-sional people into two-dimensional displays of information,” as Finkel writes in his study. Access to large numbers of potential partners and opportunities to compare them may make users less willing to commit to any one individual.

It’s no wonder that we are seeing signs of a countertrend. Once, a French app, uses a team of real human matchmak-ers rather than an algorithm. “Users re-ceive one potential match per day, with 24 hours to think about it,” says Once found-er Jean Meyer. “You have time to decide whether you’re interested.” �e next rec-ommendation comes a day later. If both parties “like” each other, they can connect and start chatting. Only a few months ago, Once was also launched in Germany and Switzerland. “�is approach helps to pre-vent choice overload, and that’s a good thing,” says researcher Hassebrauck, who also provides advice to dating services. But he believes that it would be a mistake to avoid using computers altogether. Studies in the 1990s showed that the choices peo-ple make for themselves are no more suc-cessful than a random selection. “High-quality algorithms are at least somewhat more likely to produce a suc-cessful match,” says Hassebrauck.

Despite the many shortcomings of online dating, nearly all researchers agree on one thing: �ese services make it much easier to meet new people. And that as-pect functions extraordinarily well. Ac-cording to an independent survey con-ducted by the Pew Research Center, one in six relationships in the United States now begins online.

A Formula for Love

The story of humankind is the story of love. Without love there would be no literature or Hollywood as we know them

today, and of course no propagation of the species. According to sociologists, much of human progress can be traced back to someone’s desire to impress a potential mate. How much easier it would be if there were a formula for love – and what a market that would open up!

�is is the promise of online and mobile dating services. You register on one of these sites, provide some personal infor-mation, and the next thing you know, you’ve received a list of people who have the potential to be the love of your life. Is this possible?

Judging from the number of people who participate in online dating, it is clear that many singles are hoping so. �e matchmaking site Parship.ch has nearly 500,000 members in Switzerland, and the dating app Tinder has 25 million members all over the world. Every day, 9.6 million Tinder users log on, swiping right (“Let’s meet”) or left (“Sorry, no”) in response to the photographs of potential partners that appear on the screens of their cell phones.

�e key to successful matchmaking, according to these services, is a mathemat-ical algorithm – a formula used to calculate the likelihood that two people will be a good match.

Two Neurotics Aren’t a Good Fit“Matchmaking sites refuse to reveal the details of their algorithms. We have gained some insight into them, however, and the unfortunate truth is that most algorithms have very little scienti�c basis,” says Man-fred Hassebrauck, a professor of social psychology at the University of Wuppertal and an expert on online dating. In many cases, the information they gather focuses on personality traits. “But it has long been clear that similar personalities are not a predictor of a successful relationship; two neurotics won’t necessarily be a happy cou-ple,” says Hassebrauck. What’s more, there is a tendency to present ourselves in an overly positive light. After analyzing its customer data, an American dating site discovered that its members were an aver-

Christian Heinrich is a freelance journalist in Germany. He met his wife o¼ine – at a conference for media professionals.

CommentsBulletin “Gottardo”, 2/2016

What a Joy to ReadAs a resident of Hildesheim, I was overjoyed to read the essay “�e Saint and the Devil,” featuring Hildesheim’s own St. Godehard church, in the issue on the opening of the Gotthard base tunnel. �e apse paintings of the church, which was elevated to a basilica by Pope Paul VI, portray Judgment Day from the Book of Matthew, calling on people to be prepared and vigilant. Unfortunately, the photo of the statue of St. Godehard featured in the magazine does not do justice to the e�ect the statue has on visitors. Positioned at the transept of the church, it draws the eye of visitors as they exit the building.Manfred Glombik, Hildesheim, Germany

I Couldn’t Put it DownCongratulations on a marvelous issue. Everything’s perfect: articles, photos, graphics, layout. I even read some articles more than once, so that I’d be sure to remember everything in them.Leo �ums, Kleinandel�ngen

One Topic from Various AnglesI’ve found your approach of looking at a single topic from a variety of perspectives to be exciting, educational and enlightening. Hans Christen, Reichenburg

Forty Years�ank you for the “Gotthard” issue. I’ve been reading Bulletin for over 40 years, and I look forward to every new issue.Dr. Peter Bratzel, Stutensee, Germany

An Oldie AND a Goodie!Your publication is not only the oldest banking magazine in the world; it is in my opinion also the best (and I receive quite a few). My partner, a graphic designer, also enjoys the magazine for the excellent graphics and layout. You can be sure that I’ll con-tinue to read Bulletin in the future.Urs Geppert, Zurich

Publishing details: Published by: Credit Suisse AG, project management: Christoph G. Meier, Mandana Razavi, contributors: Jessica Cunti, Schirin Razavi, Yanik Schubiger, Simon Staufer, content design, editing: Ammann, Brunner & Krobath AG (www.abk.ch), design concept, layout, production: Cra�t Kommunikation AG (www.cra�t.ch), photo editing: Studio Andreas Wellnitz, Berlin, pre-press: n c ag (www.ncag.ch), printer: Stämp�i AG, circulation: 110,000

Editorial committee: Oliver Adler, Felix Baumgartner, �omas Beyeler, René Buholzer, Béatrice Fischer, André Helfenstein, Anja Hochberg, Markus Kleeb, Carsten Luther, Jean-Luc Rochat, Manuel Rybach, Robert Wagner

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Bulletin

GottardoFrom Swiss Myth to the Longest Tunnel in the World

52 — Bulletin 3 / 2016


Credit Suisse

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The 2016 Credit Suisse Youth Barometer surveyed some 1,000 young people between the ages of 16 and 25 in the United States, Brazil, Singapore and Switzerland. The gfs.bern research firm conducted the survey online between April and June 2016. The Youth Barometer is commissioned by Credit Suisse and has been compiled annually since 2010. The editorial team (Simon Brunner) analyzed the results for Bulletin; Timo Meyer provided the illustrations.

This dossier contains the survey’s most important and interesting findings, as well as expert analysis.

You can see the complete study at

#youthbarometerwww.credit-suisse.com/youthbarometer

USA (US)

Brazil (BR)

Switzerland (CH)

Singapore (SG)

Generation Stress? – �e world belongs to the young, goes the saying. Looking at the results of the 2016 Credit Suisse Youth Barometer, however, this feeling of freedom doesn’t really emerge. Instead, today’s 16-25-year-olds give the impression of being “Generation Stress.” �e young people surveyed in Switzerland, Brazil, Singapore and the US want to have it all: a career, but with a good work-life balance; to be independent and to work at an international company; to save less, but also own their own home. And no matter what they are doing, they are always online, communicating with each other, gaming and discovering new platforms – Snapchat is this year’s superstar.

We have made the focus of the survey “Politics Online,” ©tting for the politically active times. �e ©rst chapter and the main feature discussion with politicians Flavia Kleiner (Operation Libero) and Lukas Reimann (SVP) and Professor Otfried Jarren (University of Zurich) are dedicated to this topic. US sociologist Sherry Turkle also talks about digital developments. She has concerns about the smartphone generation, which is mired in a state of “attentional disarray.”

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Contents

#1 Politics OnlineThe Internet makes politics more exciting. Concerns about terrorism. Declining confidence. — p. 55

#2 CommunicationDigital is not the same as global: the regional differences. Online bullying is becoming more widespread. — p. 58

#RoundtableHow do e-politics work? A discussion with Flavia Kleiner, Lukas Reimann and Otfried Jarren. — p. 60

#3 Trends and MediaMobile phones and apps are in, drugs and clubs are out. — p. 65

#4 Job, Finances and CareerHome ownership and stocks instead of a savings account. People want independence and a home office. — p. 67

#InterviewProfessor Sherry Turkle warns against too much online and smartphone time. — p.69

55

�e past year has been a time of intense political activity, par-ticularly in the four countries studied. Elections in Singapore (September 2015), elections in Switzerland (October 2015), impeachment proceedings again President Rousse� in Brazil, and the presidential campaigns in the United States.

Despite the wide di�erences in national issues and circum-stances, for the past several years politicians all around the world have had one form of communication in common. More and more, politicians are using the Internet and social media to get their messages across. But are they reaching the youngest mem-bers of the electorate? And are the messages well received? A majority of young people in the countries surveyed welcome the opportunity to discuss and comment on political issues online.

�ey see this as bene©cial to politics in their country. With the exception of Switzerland, there is broad agreement with the statement “Comments on Facebook, Twitter and oth-er social media make politics more relevant and more engaging,

motivating me to become more politically active.”

Survey respondents also indi-cate that the Internet and social me-dia have brought politics and eco-nomics closer to the people: “Because of online posts and com-ments, organizations and compa-nies pay more attention to what people really want.” More than 62 percent of those surveyed in the United States, Brazil and Singapore agree; only the Swiss are less convinced (51 percent). Perhaps the Swiss feel that they have su¯cient opportunities to make their opinions known in their country’s many elections and referendums.

A large majority of respondents worldwide are aware that posts on Facebook, Twitter and the like can be manipulated.

#1Politics Online

The Internet makes politics more personal and more engaging – but information can be manipulated. Worries about terrorism and health care are up. Confidence is somewhat down.

82% of those surveyed in Brazil believe that online posts/comments have been beneficial to politics. US 58 % SG 70 %

CH 50 %

Comments on Facebook, Twitter and other social

media are honest and unadulterated.

US 47 % BR 42 % SG 52 % CH 19 %

# 1.1 Politics Online

Engaging, transparent … except for the trolls!

It is possible that content on Facebook and

Twitter is sometimes manipulated.

US 58 % BR 66 % SG 70 % CH 70 %

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There are trolls who only want to provoke and offend with their online comments and posts.

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Because of online posts and comments, organizations and companies pay more attention to what people really want.

49

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30

Comments on Facebook, Twitter and other social media make politics more relevant and engaging.

1000 Agreement in percent

US BR SG CH

@CreditSuisse #youthbarometer #2016

56

Conversely, only a minority (except in Singapore) believe that these posts are honest and not fraudulent. Here, the Swiss are especially critical. Only 19 percent believe that people present their true selves on social media. Everyone is familiar with trolls who only want to provoke and o�end, rather than to con-tribute honestly to online conversation (more on the relation-ship between politics and the Internet in the roundtable dis-cussion on page 60).

�e Internet aside, what do young people see as their country’s greatest problems? Particularly in Brazil, there is a range of problems that have raised concern for years. In 2016, more than two-thirds of 16- to 25-year-olds identify corrup-tion and unemployment as major problems. No other country

demonstrates such consensus.Unemployment is a major

problem in all the countries, rank-ing among the top ©ve problems in three countries; in Switzerland, 21 percent identify it as the biggest problem. Among all adults surveyed by the Credit Suisse Worry Barom-eter, unemployment has been a high-ranking issue for years (see

www.credit-suisse.com/worrybarometer). Young people in Switzerland are also concerned about the question of coexis-

tence regarding the acceptance and integration of foreigners. In the ©rst Youth Barometer (2010), 22 percent of those surveyed identi©ed the refugee issue as a problem; today, it is 46 percent. (�e biggest problems for Swiss young people in 2010 and to-day can be found on page 62.) Unsurprisingly, terrorism has risen in importance, holding ©rst place in Singapore, second place in the United States and sixth place in Switzerland on the list of concerns. In 2010, 13 percent of Swiss identi©ed terrorism as a problem; today, it is 23 percent.

In the United States, Brazil and Singapore there are growing concerns about health care, particularly about health insurance premiums. In Switzerland, this issue does not even crack the top 10. For years, a di�erent social bene©t has been a source of concern: the AHV system of state retirement provi-sion, currently in third place.

Despite all of these concerns, young people are con©dent about the future – if somewhat less so than in years past. It isn’t surprising that Swiss young people are the most optimistic (59 percent), but even a majority of young Brazilians (54 per-cent) continue to believe that their future is bright. In 2010, however, 67 percent of young Brazilians responded a¯rmative-ly. In the United States, a narrow majority have consistently agreed with this sentiment. In Singapore, just under half of the young people surveyed agree.

In 2010, 13 % believed terrorism

was a problem in Switzerland. Today, it is

23%.

# 1.2 The Biggest Problems

What concerns young people

“This list contains some topics that have recently received a great deal of attention. Please look at the whole list, then select the five issues that you personally see as the biggest problems in your country.”, in percent

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# 1.3 Attitudes About the Future

Confidence edges downward

“What do you think your future will look like?” Response “reasonably confident,” in percent

2010 2016

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In 2012, the situation in Brazil was

perceived as less dire: corruption 50 %,

unemployment 43 %.

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Dissatisfaction is high in Brazil. Pictured: protests against President Rousseff on Copacabana beach in Rio de Janeiro (April 2016).

Young people in the United States are concerned about unemployment, terrorism and health care.

Pictured: participants at a rally for presidential candidate Donald Trump in Iowa in January 2016.


58

If you want to learn about young people, you have to look at how they communicate. Not surprisingly, only one-quarter of young people in Switzerland and nearly one-©fth in the US, Brazil and Singapore consider it socially acceptable to be o²ine and actually “log o� ” for a while.

One reason may be that young people have traditionally always been afraid of missing out on something interesting, now referred to colloquially as FOMO (fear of missing out) by young people.

A deeper reason might be that the young people sur-veyed don’t even distinguish between online and o²ine. �e generation born after 1990 doesn’t know a world without the internet. As a result, for them the real world and the digital world are one. An example is the mobile app game Pokémon Go (photo below). Capturing virtual characters in the real world only seems strange to parents.

#2Communication

Smartphones dominate the lives of our survey participants. Pictured: Young people playing Pokémon Go on Casinoplatz Square in Bern, Switzerland (June 2016).

Few people like to be offline. Digital doesn’t necessarily mean global – significant regional differences. Snapchat Superstar. Many young people have experienced cyberbullying.

25% Few young people consider being offline “in” and actually go offline: US 18 %, BR 19 %, SG 19 %, CH 25 %.

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US

Brazil

Singapore

Switzerland

Across the board, the Youth Barometer shows that there are huge di�erences between the countries surveyed, although the digital world knows no borders and the term is often used in-terchangeably with global. �is is especially clear with respect to communication. While text messaging (SMS) continues to gain popularity in the US and Singapore, only a minority of people text in Brazil and Switzerland. �at is due in part to the fact that WhatsApp (interestingly, an American app), never really took o� in the US because texting has almost always been free. WhatsApp is the go-to app in Switzerland and Brazil, on the other hand.

Facebook plays a growing number of roles in young peo-ple’s lives. Facebook Messenger is among the top communica-tion platforms in all of the countries surveyed (fourth in Singa-pore). �e social network is also used for news and has been considered “in” for years (see chapter 3 for details). WhatsApp is also part of the Facebook group, which reports the following user numbers: Facebook: 1.6 billion active members per month, WhatsApp: 900 million, Messenger: 800 million.

But when it comes to digital technology, young people do not have much brand loyalty. According to their statements, Facebook and WhatsApp could soon come under pressure from the new favorite among young people: Los Angeles-based Snapchat, which was launched in 2011. Snapchat focuses more on photos and videos than WhatsApp and o�ers more privacy (messages are deleted after a certain amount of time, and users

# 2.2 Trends

Snapchat Superstar# 2.1 Contacting Friends

Texting Popular Only in the US

are informed whenever a recipient archives something). In Switzerland, 52 percent of survey participants use Snapchat, with more and more young people using Snapchat in all four survey countries. According to Bloomberg, Snapchat is already worth 18 billion US dollars. �e to-tal number of Snapchat users has not been released.

In closing, some less pleasant news: Many young people have had negative experiences while commu-nicating online. A troubling number of respondents in the US (40 per-cent), Brazil (25 percent), Singapore (33 percent) and Switzerland (39 percent) indicated that they had been harassed or outright bullied on Facebook. �e num-ber has increased dramatically in Switzerland, up from only 11 percent reporting such experiences in 2010. �is could be one reason why other social media networks (WhatsApp, Snapchat, Facebook Messenger) have gained in popularity in recent years, as users have more control over who can read what and reply compared to Facebook’s timeline.

39% Bullying on Facebook is widespread: US 40 %, BR 25 %, SG 33 %, CH 39 %.

“What do you use to communicate with your friends?” Combined share of “most important” and “second-most important” media, in percent

“How long do you use the following media on an average day for personal purposes?” Percentage responding “at least 1–2 hours”

WhatsApp

Facebook

Mobile phone

75

WhatsApp

Mobile phone

88

52

Facebook 13

WhatsApp/chat service

SMS/texting

Mobile phone

78

43

31

53

41

SMS/texting

Mobile phone

Facebook

79

43

37

0 100

Snapchat is a mobile messaging and image- sharing app from the US that focuses on photos

and videos, which self-destruct shortly after they’ve been viewed (and can’t be saved).

Previous year

US Brazil

SingaporeSwitzerland

45

2 5

108

6 12

US BR SG CH


60

“Social media is like a playground”

Two politicians and a journalism professor discuss the Youth Barometer’s findings on the role of social media

in the political process, e-voting and the US election.By Simon Brunner and Michael Krobath

Politics is fascinating. Pictured: The traditional youth session in the National Council Chamber in Bern, on Saturday, August 29, 2015.

#Roundtable

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Do the Internet and social media already play a relevant role in Swiss politics today?FLAVIA KLEINER (FK) Yes, I would say their relevance is growing all the time. But there is still plenty of room for improvement.LUKAS REIMANN (LR) You’re right about that, but these days social media is already reaching di�erent and signi©-cantly more people than traditional word of mouth. Moreover, unlike communica-tion via traditional media, it allows a much more intensive dialogue with the public. And it enables the direct mobilization of voters. You can make a targeted address to supporters on a speci©c topic. �at is much more direct than a newspaper interview.OTFRIED JARREN (OJ) I think that social media can in�uence and shape public opinion, especially when it comes to setting the agenda and with its rapid response to events.

To what extent does an e-campaign differ from a traditional campaign? LR �ere are fewer direct debates between political opponents. �e campaign concentrates too much on mobilizing and activating its own sympathizers. �is means candidates are preaching to the converted. FK �e communication and speed are di�erent, and content must be ported more trenchantly. Political campaigns on social media are a 24/7 opportunity. But anyone who thinks they can do this just a little bit on the side between stops at the podium and hanging up posters would be better o� leaving it alone.

Only 19 percent of young people in Switzerland believe that Facebook, Twitter and online blogs are honest. 70 percent believe these channels can be manipulated. What does this low level of credibility mean for politics and politicians? OJ Social media’s potential for manipulation and low level of credibility in the area of political information are making politicians aware of the major importance of the traditional mass media, especially the SRG channels, as well as the press. Another area of the Youth Barometer shows that young people trust Swiss radio and TV, NZZ

“Like in real life, there are plenty of

strong interest groups online, too.”

Otfried Jarren

pay attention to them, as unpleasant as it may be – especially for politicians.

Only 35 percent of young Swiss people believe that Facebook, Twitter or online comments help uncover conspiracies in powerful companies, the government or the military. That number is much higher in the US, Brazil and Singapore. Why?OJ It’s an interesting phenomenon. Presumably, social media users are becoming increasingly aware that common goals cannot be pursued over the long term there either – only the goals of certain groups, at best. As in real life, there are plenty of strong interest groups online, too! FK Although social media is global, it always needs to be seen in a local context as well. It is used in some other countries far more intensively – and more politically – than here in Switzerland. In South America this may be the most appropriate place to express your opinion: Politics there is becoming an online happening and an online statement. For example, people in Venezuela posted pictures of their ink-covered thumbs to show that they had voted. �e political and media work on social media is lagging some-what behind in Switzerland. LR At the same time, the diversity of opinions has certainly become more developed via the Internet in the US, Brazil and Singapore than in Switzerland. Here we already had a wide variety of citizen initiatives before the Internet age thanks to the direct democracy and popular initiatives, and small groups were also able to have a large impact.

A growing number of young people report bullying on Facebook. In 2011 it was 11 percent, with that number growing to 39 percent by 2016. Does the government need to play a bigger role here? FK Social media is just as real a place as a playground, and any bullying here needs to be judged accordingly. �e government can shed light on it and judge punishable actions. But I also think that the community needs to play an important role here – just like in real life. Public pressure,

and Tages-Anzeiger (Swiss publications) the most. Independence and journalistic professionalism are important features for social communication and di�erenti-ate it from personal or group communi-cation.LR As a politician, it puts my mind at ease that young people are so skeptical. It is much easier to manipulate people online than in other political arenas, for example by purchasing likes or pro- viding anonymous comments. It’s a positive thing that young people have recognized this …FK … And it reminds us that true credibility is a problem everywhere in life. We should all ©ght this problem online by expressing ourselves with authenticity.

88 percent of those surveyed believe there are many trolls online who only want to be provocative and have a negative impact. How do we manage to have an objective and civil discussion in spite of this? FK Anyone who lets trolls control the ©eld has already lost. �ere are two things that help against trolls, and only in combination: facts and follower power. We deployed people from Operation Libero – sympathizers with our movement – to search through social

media and give fact-based answers to trolls, counter their false statements, speak in clear language, but never turn impolite. LR �e trolls’ complete lack of restraint is at times extremely ©erce due to their presumed anonymity. On the other hand, you can’t ignore them completely: �ey’re also a barometer for the real public mood and people’s innermost convictions. For that reason, you have to


62

Refugees/asylum seekers

Foreigners/immigration

AHV/state retirement provision

Environmental protection

Racism

Terrorism

Unemployment *

Youth unemployment *

Social security

EU/bilateral agreements

friends and NGOs need to reprimand troublemakers and demand civility. LR �at’s similar to how I see it. �e government should not become the Internet police and issue ©nes for Facebook posts. But shedding light on the subject is important.And criminally relevant posts should be reported, of course. OJ I assume that social rules and norms will establish themselves through the interventions of users and by the market, because providers want “satis-©ed” users, after all. However, there is a massive con�ict of norms, for example, when providers are liable in American culture and are active in European markets. Forms of co-regulation make sense, meaning the cooperation of independent regulatory agencies in developing the rules and norms as well as their implementation. �ere also needs to be a legal framework. Private companies do not want to submit to any public entities, but there is a lack of entities for self-regulation. In this sense, the government needs to act.

understand while explaining things in a neutral and factual way – making voting easier for young people. OJ In my opinion, there is a wide variety of reasons for participating or not participating in elections and voting, and all of them have to do with the media. �e political institution system with its intermediaries has to be present in everyday politics. But this is rapidly changing. Swiss parties in particular are clearly having problems with acceptance.

Is social media truly so important in the US election, or is it just media hype?LR Selling Obama as a social media star was a clever aspect of his presiden-tial campaign. But the billions in support were not donated online. Candidates who were not previously well known – like Ron Paul – were able to heavily expand their in�uence thanks to social media.

Should e-voting be introduced? LR Only for Swiss nationals abroad!�e opportunities for manipulation are too great, and the system is not yet mature. Time and again there are serious problems in other countries, which could destroy people’s trust in democracy. FK I’m following the e�orts in Estonia and some communities in Switzerland with great interest, but I haven’t made up my mind yet. OJ E-voting requires institutional trust. Political institutions also live from their visibility, from collective records, and act through their immediacy. �ey are in no way anonymous. �is is the hallmark of a democratic system.

Is the Internet producing a new, louder, more simplistic type of politician?OJ Hardly. But there have always been personalities who have tried and continue to try to de©ne the political issues. However, setting the agenda in no way means in�uencing how political decisions are being made. Moreover, the diversity of channels is once again reducing the visibility of individual statements.LR It’s true that there have always been politicians in the analog world, too, who were louder than everyone else. But Internet-savvy politicians often

“The government should not become the Internet police

and issue fines for Facebook posts.”

Lukas Reimann

CH: Top Problems

Developments that cause the greatest concern

0 50

“This list contains some topics that have recently received a great deal of attention. Please look at the whole list, then select from the list the five points that you personally see as the five biggest problems in Switzerland.”, in percent * Up to and including 2014, unemployment and youth unemployment were surveyed together. Accordingly, the older value for youth unemployment (12 %) dates from 2015.

Can the Internet bring a younger electorate back to the ballot box? FK Absolutely. Part of young people’s lives now plays out in social media. �erefore, we need to collect these potential voters right at that point of contact, pursue new communication channels and prepare content that is suitable for social media. Furthermore, we need to be aware that interaction is what counts in social media. �ere is no one-way communication as is often the case with political work. LR And you need to speak young people’s language to reach them. �e Easyvote app is a good example. It simpli©es politics and makes it easy to

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LUKAS REIMANN (LR), 33, is an attorney, Member of the National Council (Swiss People’s Party), Member of the National Council Legal Committee and President of the

Campaign for an Independent and Neutral Switzerland (AUNS). In addition, he works at a law firm in Wil, Canton of St. Gallen.

OTFRIED JARREN (OJ), 62, is a journalism professor and head of the Media & Politics department at the University of Zurich and President of the Swiss Media

Commission. Jarren has published several books and essays on journalism and the media.

FLAVIA KLEINER (FK), 25, is a history student at the University of Fribourg and Co-Presi-dent of the Operation Libero Association, which pursues liberal social and economic

objectives. The association gained recognition through the NGO campaign against the Durchsetzungsinitiative (Enforcement Initiative).

I’m convinced that you can also attract attention with good political communi-cation that is brief, catchy and honest.

Since 2010, the Credit Suisse Youth Barometer has worked to determine the top ten problems in Switzerland as

young people see them (see graphic, left). What stands out for you? LR Immigration, a lack of integration and foreign in©ltration are ongoing issues for young people – and rightfully so – and they are in the spotlight even more now. Young people experience these problems close up and personal: in school, in public transportation, when they go out or search for an apprentice-ship. Many young people don’t under-stand why the majority of government doesn’t respond with a more restrictive policy on foreigners and immigrants. OJ �e concerns vary in accordance with the major themes on the political agenda. �e shifts reveal that the political climate and current a�airs are being recognized. At the same time, there are topics that remain on the problem agenda. People respond rather pragmatically to some of the heated “problem” topics in the political system, like the EU, refugees, immigration and foreigners. FK I’ve noticed that people continue to regard retirement provision as a major problem, and the medium and long-term

©nancing of our state retirement provision is in fact at risk. It’s obvious that we need to develop reasonable proposals quickly. Aside from that, I have noticed that European issues are no longer central – perhaps because young people have grown up with the bene©ts of living in Switzerland in the midst of Europe and are not fully aware of the current threat to this achievement. “There is no one-

way communication with social media

as is often the case with political work.”

Flavia Kleiner

recognize people’s real problems faster and more precisely than those who discount the importance of the Internet. If they make something of that, it can give them a decisive advantage. FK Clearly social media rewards those users who attract attention. However,

0–1 — 1–2

Communication split

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Nothing is more “in” than mobile phones. Pictured: A girl poses at the “Future World” art exhibit in Singapore in March 2016. Ph

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Young people have always de©ned themselves through what is in and out – by being involved or not. And the Internet has strengthened this dichotomy even further: Like or thumbs up if you like it. Withhold the Like or thumbs down if you don’t. �e Youth Barometer examines these trends. Anything to do with smartphones is in. �is even takes ©rst place in Singapore and

the US, and second place in Switzerland. WhatsApp, Facebook and YouTube are often cited – all platforms that can or must be used as smartphone apps.

YouTube has edged out TV – ex-cept in the US – and young people only like three non-digital things: “Going to the movies” (Brazil), “vacationing abroad” (Switzerland), “getting together with friends” (Brazil and Switzerland). A quick look back shows how short-lived

these trends are. Switzerland’s in ranking looked very di�erent back in 2010: 1. texting, 2. Italian food, 3. email, 4. vacationing abroad and 5. being yourself.

Nowadays mobile phones without Internet service and landlines are out – these are both obvious. But drugs, smoking and performance-enhancing substances are also out. Parents should be happy about that. However, various social associa-tions like youth organizations and political parties are often un-popular, especially in Singapore and Switzerland.

�e declining importance of traditional religion is ex-pressed directly in the question: “Which religion do you belong to?” Between 22 percent and 34 percent of the young people in the four countries being surveyed describe themselves now as agnostic/atheist/una¯liated with any religion. Just two years ago it was between 5 percent and 13 percent.

�e media behavior of young people is more di�erentiat-ed than one would generally assume. Take Switzerland as an

#3Trends and Media

Mobile phones and apps are in, drugs and clubs are out. Radio is becoming less important. SRF, NZZ, Tages-Anzeiger news sources are more trusted than social media.

This is what the “in” ranking list

looked like for Switzerland in 2010:

1. Texting 2. Italian food

3. Email 4. Vacationing abroad

5. Being yourself

# 3.1 Trends

Digital is in, joining clubs and drugs are out

“We have compiled a list of very different things in life. Please tell us whether these things are in or out for you and your friends, and also whether you use them.”, in percent

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Young people only like three non-digital things:

“Going to the movies” (Brazil), “vacationing

abroad” (Switzerland), “getting together

with friends” (Brazil and Switzerland).

82

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example. Free newspapers are still the most important medium for news consumption for 62 percent of young people aged 16 to 25. But 75 percent chose this answer in 2010. Competition from online news sites and news apps is becoming ©ercer. In the case of “20 Minuten” and “Blick am Abend” (news sites), it is just a matter of switching media: Instead of reading a print newspaper, people read the articles online.

Not surprisingly, television has lost popularity over the last six years. What’s interesting, though, is that radio’s popu-larity has also declined for the ©rst time. For years, around half of those surveyed in Switzerland answered that they listened to radio. Now only 42 percent answer yes. One explanation could be the rise of streaming services that allow people to put to-gether their own music channel. �is trend was not seen in the other countries, but radio never had the same importance in those countries as in Switzerland. Facebook is increasingly be-coming a news channel: In 2010 only 35 percent of young peo-ple used it as such. Now that ©gure has risen to 47 percent.

Readily available media products like free newspapers are popular among those surveyed. �is does not mean, however, that they are not quality conscious. When asked which media sources they trust, SRF, “NZZ” and “Tages-Anzeiger” (Swiss newspapers) top the list. Digital-only channels are at the bot-tom of the ranking list: YouTube, Facebook and Twitter.

# 3.2 CH: Information About Current Events

Facebook is becoming a news channel# 3.3 CH: Trust in the Media

Conscious of tradition

US BR SG CH

34% Many describe themselves as agnostic/atheist/ unaffiliated with any religion: US 34 %, BR 28 %, SG 29 %, CH 22 %.

“How much do you trust the following information sources?”, first and last three, in percent“How do you find out about current events?”, in percent

SRF 88

“NZZ” 69

“Tages-Anzeiger” 67

YouTube 27

Facebook 14

Twitter 9

2010 2016

Free newspapers

Internet: News sites/newspaper sites

Television

News apps

Facebook

Radio

Paid daily newspapers

62

54494742

17

7570

5149

35

30

22


67

0

in USD/BRL/SGD/CHF

#4Jobs, Finances and Careers

Home ownership and stocks instead of a savings account. Career: People want independence and a home office. Home ownership is important, especially for women.

US BR SG CH

94 % would like to own their

own home in Brazil US 89 % SG 91 % CH 83 %

�e tough economic environment in recent years has left its mark. In every country, home ownership is people’s greatest desire when it comes to ©nancial matters. �is could have to do with a growing need for ©nancial security and/or low inter-est rates. Mortgages are “cheap,” and investing money pro©t-ably elsewhere has become more di¯cult.

Another result supports this theory as well. When 16- to 25-year-olds were asked what they would do if they were given 10,000 units of their national currency, they replied that they would put far less of it in their savings account than in 2015. In the US it was 1,338 USD less; in Singapore, 1,536 SGD less; in Brazil, 1,483 BRL less; and 98 CHF less in Switzerland. In every country, the largest portion of the mon-ey would still go into savings, but other things have become more important: Saving for a house (US, SG), buying stocks and investments (US, BR, SG), going on vacation (BR, SG, CH) and investing in the family (US, BR, SG).

�e debt level in Switzerland shows another major change. More young people state that they are behind on payments to a mobile network provider. Last year it was 3 percent, rising to 7 percent this year. �at number has more than doubled, but it is still small in comparison to other countries: US 20 per-cent, BR 28 percent, SG 19 percent. However, this type of debt has increased more in Switzerland than in any other country, while at the same time 33 percent of those surveyed stated that their ©nancial obligations were a major or very major burden (12 percentage points more than 2013).

When it comes to ideas about professions and dream jobs, the success stories of Mark Zuckerberg and other start-up millionaires and billionaires seem to have heavily in�uenced young people. When asked who their ideal employer would be, many say they would like to be self-employed – except in Swit-zerland. Perhaps that’s because Switzerland (currently) has a lack of these role models, or they stay out of the public eye.

# 4.2 CH: Financial Obligations

Debt is a growing burden

“Are financial obligations a burden in your life?”, combined answers “large” and “very large burden”, in percent

“Do you personally have financial liabilities to mobile phone service providers?”, in percent

2013 2016

# 4.1 Finances

Put less in their savings account

“Let’s say someone gives you 10,000 units of your currency. How would you allocate the money?” Answer “put it in my savings account”

Financial burden Liabilities

Mobile phone debt


Comparison 20152311 2417

21672468

33

7

21

5


68

In Switzerland the dream employer is Google, the Califor-nia-based internet company, which opened its largest develop-ment site outside of North America in Zurich in 2004. Next is the SBB (Swiss Federal Railways), perhaps because it got

lots of positive press during the survey timeframe due to the opening of the Gotthard Base Tunnel. �ree major internation-al Swiss companies took places 3 through 5: Novartis, Roche and Credit Suisse.

Demand is growing for op-portunities to work from home: US +6 percentage points (pp) since 2010,

Brazil +15 pp, Switzerland +14 pp. Only in Singapore has demand remained constant, but it was already at the high-est level of all countries surveyed. Interestingly, there is little di�erence here between the genders. If we consider the results on jobs and employers, we could conclude that young people are on the search for a �exible, modern, international job.

When asked what they aim to achieve in life, young people give a long list of goals – some of which are not easily

# 4.4 All Countries: Life Goals

We want it all! # 4.3 CH: Employment Preference

The job hit parade

compatible. �e following items score 50 percent or higher in all of the countries: maintaining a good work-life balance, fol-lowing their own dreams, home ownership, making use of their talents, trying out and discovering many di�erent things, pursuing a career, having a family with children, getting to know many countries and cultures. If we look at these goals di�erentiated by gender, two facts leap out at us: In all of the countries, home ownership is more important to women than men. By contrast, men in all of those countries more often list “being a VIP” as a goal.

�e young people of 2016 are not better or worse than any of the previous generations. �e biggest di�erence from other generations is likely that those surveyed grew up after the digital revolution. �ey have never experienced life with-out the internet or smartphones. But what we all need to ©g-ure out is: What is the best way to deal with these new tech-nologies? Sociologist Sherry Turkle takes a more critical view here (see the accompanying interview). She calls for people to set aside their mobile phones and talk to each other. She doesn’t just mean our children.

#1 “Self-employed” takes

first or second place for “Dream employer”

in the US, Brazil and Singapore.

“Off the top of your head, which Swiss company would you like to work for the most?”

1 Google2 SBB3 Novartis4 Roche5 Credit Suisse6 Apple7 Migros8 Schools9 UBS

10 Federal government11 Nestlé12 Hospitals

“When you think about your life goals, what do you want to achieve?” Combined responses “definitely want to achieve” and “probably want to achieve,” in percent

Maintaining a good work-life balance

Following their dreams

Home ownership

Making use of their talents

Trying out and discovering many different things

Pursuing a career

Having a family with children

Getting to know many countries and cultures

0 100

>50% More than half of those surveyed in all of the countries are pursuing these life goals.

81

82

79

72

72

70

65

59

US BR SG CH


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ud / K

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“We are in attentional disarray”

Although we are continually connected online, we have lost the ability to talk to one another, says sociologist Sherry Turkle. She was one

of the first researchers to study digital culture. Today, she takes a critical view of the impact of increasing connectedness.

by Helene Laube

#Interview

Ms. Turkle, according to the Youth Barometer, 54 percent of 16- to 25-year-olds in the US feel closer to their online community than to US society (49 percent) or to a religious community (40 percent). What do you make of this finding?�is result is a natural outgrowth of the positive side of being able to stay in touch via social media if other forms of connection are allowed to atrophy. �e challenge, I think, is to increasingly focus on using social media to enhance the ties of face-to-face encounters in our communities, to make that a priority.

Why?We assume that encounters on social media do the emotional and social work that face-to-face encounters can do. But we make this assumption at our risk. We do not feel the same sense of commitment and responsibility for people we know only online. You can feel a¯liated or close to a group, that is, you share their beliefs and are proud to associate with them, but do not feel responsible for the other members.

In all of the countries surveyed, except Brazil, respondents said they were responsible for their own online security and safety. Does that mean they have a greater sense of responsibility than we give them credit for?Young people know that they are responsible because nobody else is

Young people should turn off their phones once in a while and share real-life experiences, says Professor Turkle. Pictured: Festivalgoers at Paléo in Nyon, Switzerland, in July 2015.


70

46 CH

52 SG

69 BR

58 US

Internet use

Surf, surf, repeat

“On a typical day, do you spend more than two hours on the Internet for personal reasons?”, in percent

Online more than two hours

each day for personal

reasons

paying attention or assuming respon-sibility. But that does not mean that they are acting responsibly. We know they are often not. For example, drivers can say they shouldn’t text while driving, that is, that car manufacturers are not responsible for automatically disabling the phones of the person driving the car. But that doesn’t mean drivers actually behave responsibly and don’t text and drive.

You were an early and influential advocate of computer-mediated communication. You’ve become more skeptical in recent years.What happened?One development, in particular, was central to the evolution in my thinking. In the early days we had to go to our computers when we wanted to pursue our online lives for a certain amount of time. Now we have our phones – they are always on and they are always on us. We are essentially always online. We are always dividing our attention between the people we can reach on our phones and the people we are with in person. We are in attentional disarray.

What effects of this attentional disarray concern you most?

of steady “feed,” a �ow of information, text messages, emails, chat, photos, videos, Facebook posts, Tweets and Instagrams. We have become increasingly intolerant of solitude. Indeed, recent research shows that people are uncom-fortable if left alone with their thoughts for as little as six minutes. In one recent experiment, college students were asked to sit alone without their phones for ©fteen minutes. �e study partici-pants were asked, before the study began, if they ever considered giving themselves an electroshock to break the boredom. �ey said absolutely not. �ey would even pay to avoid a shock. But in a period of ©fteen minutes alone without a device, 67 percent of men and 25 percent of women who said they would never shock themselves had begun to do just that, rather than spend those minutes with their own thoughts.

Did the results of the experiment surprise you?Not really. We all see that when people are alone in the checkout line at the supermarket or at a red light – they almost panic and reach for a device. And here is where the problem starts: When we struggle to pay attention to ourselves, we struggle to pay attention to each other.

Data Protection

Who is responsible? I am.

Where to begin? Our phones constantly interrupt us and interfere with our capacity for solitude. But we need to be alone every now and then. In solitude, we ©nd ourselves, we prepare ourselves to come to conversations ready to hear who other people really are, not just who we would like or need them to be.

Most respondents in the Youth Barometer study said that – outside of school or work – they spend at least two hours a day online. They don’t want to be alone.�e capacity for solitude is a necessary step on the path to empathy. We have to be content with ourselves in order be able to hear what other people have to say. Solitude is also a necessary virtue because it is on the path to self-re�ection. When we learn to listen to other people, it teaches us to listen to ourselves. Our conversations with others advance self-re�ection, the “conversations with ourselves” that are the cornerstone for development but that continue throughout life.

And this development is disrupted by our mobile devices?Absolutely. We are at a point where we have come to think of life as a kind


1Everyone for themselves

1Providers of

Internet-based services



2Providers of


2Internet

providers

2Providers of


2Schools / training facilities

3 Internet

providers

3Companies

3Internet

providers

3State /

politics

“How important do you consider the role of the following institutions in protecting individuals and their personal data?”, in percent


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SHERRY TURKLE, 68, is a professor for Social Studies of Science and Technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). She has published a number of best-sellers, including her latest book, Reclaiming

Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age. Her research focuses on the psychology of people’s relationship with technology, particularly computers.

Is this particularly pronounced in adolescents, since they’ve grown up with digital devices?�e toll that digital devices are taking on adolescents is not di�erent from the toll it is taking on all of us. �e crisis of attention has led to a crisis in empathy.

But don’t adolescents have a different relationship with digital devices?Adolescents are perhaps a special category, because they have grown up with this technology. �ey have never known a world without it. But everybody is distracted, regardless of age. Students text during classes, parents text at dinner with their families or when they’re with their children at the park. Meanwhile children, too, text each other rather than talk to each other or, for that matter, look at the sky, allowing themselves to daydream. We want to be with each other, but at the same time we want to be connected to other people and places with our phones. �e thing we now value most is control over where we put our attention.

What fundamentally new behaviors develop from this?One example: Even the presence of a phone changes the atmosphere. It is alarming that new research shows that even the presence of a phone on the table changes what we talk about – even a phone that is turned o�. We keep the conversation light and we form less of an empathic connection with each other. So it is not surprising that in the past 30 years we’ve seen a 40 percent decline in the markers for empathy among college students. �e researchers link this drop to the new presence of digital communications.

How do devices manage to have such fundamental effects?Our phones make us three promises. Firstly, that we can put our attention wherever we want it to be. Secondly, that we will never have to be alone. And thirdly, that we will always be heard. But as I said before, when we can put our attention anywhere, we take our attention o� each other. �e ability to be alone is important in the development of the

capacity both of self-re�ection and of empathy. We are so focused on being heard that we have more di¯culty listening to others.

How do you teach children solitude?By being “alone with” them. Traditionally you would take a child for a quiet walk in nature. And then the child learns to feel comfortable being alone in nature. But now, when a parent walks with a child, a phone often comes along and children don’t have the experience of being alone with a parent, let alone of being alone with a silent parent who is teaching a respect for quiet re�ection. I interview so many

children who say that they have never, literally never, had the experience of taking a walk to a local store with a parent without a phone coming along that interrupted conversations along the way.

What are the rules in your home? What rules did you have for your daughter? �e same rules I would ask everyone to follow. No smartphone use in the kitchen or in the dining room. In short, no smartphones during meals. Or in the car. �ese should be spaces that you reserve for conversation.

Are there other rules? On average, children in the US are getting their first smartphones around age ten.Children under thirteen should never go to their bedrooms at night with their phones. �ere is a great temptation to text when you wake up in the middle of the night. And then it is hard to go back to sleep.Indeed, the greatest favor you can do your family is give everyone an old-fashioned alarm clock.

Should we stop using smartphones?I’m not suggesting that we run away from our devices. I advocate that we have a more self-aware relationship with them. I’m optimistic because we are resilient. After only a few days without screens, children begin to relearn the ability to identify the feelings of others, to have empathy.

So you haven’t gone from technology optimist to technology pessimist?I am not anti-technology, I am pro- conversation. Conversation is the most human and humanizing thing that we do. So look up, look at each other, and start a conversation.

No smartphones in the kitchen

or dining room.


72

Facebook, Twitter and online comments make politics more interesting and more grounded in the real world, according to 64 percent of young people in Singapore.

#youthbarometer www.credit-suisse.com/youthbarometer

If they were given 10,000 dollars, US citizens would put 1,338 less in a savings account compared to last year. The responses that have increased include “save for a house” and “invest in stocks/funds.”

75 percent of Brazilians are worried because of the corruption in their country. Four years ago, the figure was only 50 percent.

Despite all the worries, young people look to the future with optimism. 59 percent of young Swiss people think that things will turn out well.


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