The Human Factor in the Digital Future – A Conversation with Andreas Ekström

We are recording this session from UITP, global Public Transport Summit, taking place here in Hamburg, and I have a special guest, Andreas Ekstrom, with us. Andreas is an author and digital futurist. This time we are not. Coming to you with an expert or a voice from the transport sector.

But we will listen the perspective of someone, a digital futurist, about the future of our life, our cities, how we move, and different things that can have an impact on the future, the way that we will live in our cities. Andreas, welcome and thanks for joining me this morning. Oh, thank you. Great pleasure to be here.

Thank you. Thank you, Andreas. Andreas, I mean. it was a great already morning that we had together, with you, that you were talking at the, Modaxo breakfast, session that was being organized at the UITP Public Transport Summit. And, I think that we are recording this as well just to share your opinion with a broader public transport community, mobility community.

And you talk about organic intelligence, the yes, irreplaceable power of human judgment. How can leaders. In tech heavy fields keep that

key strengths and weaknesses among your staff members. None of that can be done today, even remotely by an ai. So the training and the cultivation of a human being is still going to be such a majorly important thing for anybody who's in a leadership position. How do you create a team where it's okay to fail?

How do you create a team where initiative is appreciated? How do you create a team where human judgment will look at the results of an AI and say, you know what? This was a great tool. It did 80% of the work, but here are the things I'm gonna change to make it even better. Understanding which is key that AI is not a miracle.

But it will help us with some of the boring, heavy lifting, the first set of analysis before you actually apply human expertise on top. Some feedback.

It does. It's a good way of putting it.

what changes do you think are quite reshaping how we live and move today?

Now. What we learned from that was that we are social beings. We love to hang out. It's way more fun to be here with you in Hamburg today actually meeting you, standing next to you to talk about these things. We could have done this from your studio and mine. Yeah, you are right. but the feeling and the energy of two people getting together that.

Key for who we are. That's irreplaceable. Huh? It's irreplaceable. That's irreplaceable. So, so I was thinking that post pandemic, I would stop traveling all around the world to educate and keynote and do workshops and all the stuff that I do. I thought I'll be in my home studio and that's gonna be all great.

I'm gonna get to see my kids more. But it turned out that the social factor was stronger than I or anybody else anticipated. I do very little digital remote work today. I do, every so often. And there will be somebody who says, can you do a 30 minute keynote from your studio with share with, beautiful images and sound?

Yes, I can do that for you. But the general feel is that, no, we wanna get together, so we're gonna have to continue just like we did before the pandemic.

Making these solutions more affordable, more efficient, I do think that transportation, and then this is me speaking from the, from a, just from a citizen perspective, I'm not an expert in your field, but I do think that market solutions will never completely cover the need of a nation.

And why do we do it for political reasons? Because we believe that's a service to the citizens no matter where the citizens live. That's not a business decision, that's a political decision, and it's costs money. So we have. To rally around that idea. As people, we have to say, you know what? This is a good idea.

Let's do it. We can't everybody drive a car everywhere. That's just not gonna work. It's a

and, letting a company loose to just build whatever it finds to be profitable is great for getting stuff done sometimes, but covering the world in transportation and in an affordable and sustainable and reasonable and efficient manner. It has to be a hybrid. It has to be politics and companies together.

That's not how that works. You're gonna have an expertise. Now expertise is 98% good. 'cause 98 expertise will make you know your stuff. You have the experience, you know the terminology, you know how to explain things. Now the 2% that aren't good is that you will have a difficult time the longer you work to see things with fresh eyes.

So when you then are an expert and you design an algorithm, I know. For a fact that most commuters travel between 6:30 and 8:30. So I'm gonna What? But then wait. I come from the outside? I don't know that already. I can assume it, but I don't know it. I will say, I think the future is gonna be about the flexibility of work.

I think you need to design the system for what it's gonna potentially be in five years, not from what you, from your 20 years experience, already know that it is, that's a bias and that's not. In the algorithm, but it's in the person writing the algorithm, of course. And there are so many examples of this, in every, I dunno, you're right-handed or left-handed.

You're right-handed, right? You're right-handed. So am I. We are a privileged Majority now just get a pair of scissors. Many scissors are unusable for somebody who's left-handed. Sometimes they have. Thought of making those, the holders equal. So you can just use them like right or left, but many scissors are unusable.

For somebody who's a lefty, that's bias, that's technical bias. That's a limitation. That's an opinion in the algorithm of the scissors that only right handed people should be using it. And if you look closely. There are stuff like that almost everywhere and we need to gradually try to do away with it.

It's difficult 'cause it's in us.

Thank you. And there's one thing in the mobility industry that, I think that people can learn, from you in terms of the storytelling, when they are communicating withwith the people, public, what advice would you give to transport leaders trying to explain complex transformation to the public, like moving on demand models, changing different decisions. So what could be your advice to them? How to better use the storytelling on this one?

Let's, I'm from the newspaper industry originally used to be a full-time news reporter. We would use fictional characters in our mind, who is a typical. Reader,let's say it's a woman, she's 38, she's got two kids, and then what will she need? And we would try to go around that persona of a person and then we would make a story for ourselves about this person.

What might she need to be able to imagine what kind of journalism she would be using and what would be. How could we be of service to her? That is a pretty good idea to do the analytical work of for anybody. So I think the transport section should do that too. Go out there, work journalistically and find your real travelers in the community where you are active.

Go out there and recruit families, commuters, regular people to be on your social media channels. Allow them to be frustrated, have them make jokes, have them be real and humanistic to explain the reality of the end user less. About technological or political or infrastructural differences and more about the people.

Whenever I go on the Swedish,rail system, Statens Järnvägar, SJ, and I do have an annual train pass, so I travel a lot because of my work and I'm a fan whenever something doesn't work. Yeah, sometimes the train company will say, it's because of the other company that maintains the tracks. Now, this might be true, but I didn't buy the ticket from the people maintaining the tracks.

I don't care. I bought a ticket from the guys running the train. They need to do deal with that and take the full responsibility, and then they can yell behind closed curtains at the infrastructure if they want to. But all I want to hear is that we've got you, the train are running, but we're gonna get you a bus, or we're putting you in a taxi or whatever we need to do.

but they are the only company involved in this that should be customer centric. So I want it to be human, That's what I'm all I'm saying.

if you were designing a future city, oh, so not the tech, maybe you first thinking about the tech now, but.

If not the tech but the values behind it. Yeah. what would be your starting point in terms of the values of the future of the city?

but it's difficult today in many towns to just walk out on the street and get a new screwdriver or get a frying pan or even get some particular clothes. Only very big cities can maintain that. the biggest value of the future city is that it's social ' cause we're building.

We are building away with contact between people. You go into a grocery store, you go beep yourself. You know when you have the cashier, you go, how are you today? I'm all good. How are you? Thank you very much. That's 4.50. All right, have a good day. That's good for us. That's good for human beings to have that, lot of lonely people, lot of single person household. That's the human interaction. That's what public transport makes a lot as well. Every day. That's what pub exactly. Every day

Don't take speaker phone calls. Don't listen to a clip on the bus. That makes me a grumpy old man. And I think every. Transportation company in the world as they do the welcoming. they say there's no smoke on board. Welcome today. Today's shuttle is gonna take you to Munich also, please always use a headset when you use your phone.

Just make that a part of it. Just change that culture 'cause it's getting crazy

You're a junior, you pay less, you're a senior, you pay less. All that stuff. I love that differentiated system of talent. Just to mention one of many things that comes to mind.

Is there anything else you would like to add before we go?

Well, I mean,

It's a part of today's service. shoot me a line on, on. That's great. LinkedIn and I'll talk to you there.

that's great. Please, our listeners, you can always reach to Andreas. Please on the LinkedIn and you can ask your questions to Andreas directly, thank you so much for joining us.

Thank you for today at Mobility Redefined. Thank you. Thank you, Andreas.