I'm calling it now: productivity is my anti-word of the year.1
See, I've been thinking about productivity a lot lately. Not because I want to - trust me. But because every report coming out in Australia these days seems obsessed with it.
AI will boost our productivity!
We need to close the productivity gap!
Our productivity has been stagnant for decades!
Which has me sitting here thinking... improving productivity for whom, exactly? Definitely not me.
And while everyone's fixated on productivity, these tech companies are not so quietly hoovering up all our data. They're getting rich, and ordinary Australians are getting what? More data breaches?
I’ve been hit by four data breaches in the past three years. Four.
I'm deeply sceptical of any company pushing to access more of my data when they can't even properly safeguard the data they already possess. Make it make sense.
And it's not like this is some underground operation. The Productivity Commission just launched an interim report with a recommendation to loosen our privacy laws to make this data extraction easier. And OpenAIxMandala popped up with their report stating that AI is the answer to Australia’s productivity problem.
I've had it up to here with being told that reducing privacy protections is somehow good for me. That it's okay for companies to mine my data for their economic growth. That I should hand over even more data to help these businesses become more productive.
As a consumer and citizen, why can't I dictate how much (or little) data I share to access goods and services? If you can’t even keep my personal information secure, why should I trust you to act in my best interests?
And these productivity conversations seem to ignore the very real and harmful impacts of lax privacy laws on vulnerable and marginalised groups. These communities will be left to fend for themselves, yet again. Trickle down productivity does not exist (see exhibit A: trickle down economics).
This whole thing is a byproduct of something I've been noticing over the last few years, but has really accelerated since January.
I'm coining it techacity.
Techacity (noun): The audacious, entitled behaviour exhibited by tech companies and industry leaders, characterised by presumptuous attitudes toward regulation, users, and society at large. Often marked by a belief that technological innovation alone justifies bypassing ethical norms, public accountability, and democratic oversight.
Etymology: A portmanteau of ‘tech’ and ‘audacity’, following the pattern of ‘caucasity’.
[Sidenote: please cite me if you’re using this term. See this piece on crediting Black women for their work. #citeblackwomen]
And I think we’re about to hit peak techacity. We’ve got tech bros telling us that if we just let them download our entire life history; why, our whole lives will be optimised to a T. Black Mirror was a TV show guys, not a how-to-life manual 🙄
I'm done pretending this productivity theatre is anything other than the most audacious information harvest in history - fuelled by techacity.
The solution starts with us questioning this relentless push for productivity and demanding more accountability from tech companies and regulators.
If you have spotted techacity in the wild, please share in the comments.
I recently came across this brilliant article on anti-words of the year - words that have been so overused they've lost all meaning.