TFGL2021 - S3 - Ep 7 - Misused Tech

Welcome to this episode of the Tech For Good Live podcast.

Host Jonny Rae-Evans is joined by pod regular Greg Ashton. 

Our special guest this week is Dave Fardoe. He’s the chairman of Accordant Solutions, a tech company specialising in social value measurement. 

Transcript

Jonny: Hello victims and welcome to yet another episode of the Tech for Good Live podcast. Yeah, we're still going and I don't really understand why or how either. If this is your first time listening to the podcast, well, it's not too late to stop. It's a podcast all about using technology to have a positive impact on the world. On today's episode, we'll be talking about the highest ever fine for breaching GDPR. We'll be discussing a heartwarming update to the ongoing RNLI story. We've got some new stats around volunteering in the charity sector that we'll be getting to grips with. And we'll be talking about how the health sector only works on white people continuously being a thing. All that coming right up. Joining me on today's misadventure, we have Greg Ashton. Greg, hello. Greg. I've got a question for you. It's Olympic season. That's what's happening right now. Do you have a favorite Olympic sport and if so, which one and why? 

Greg: Uh, breaking.

Jonny: Breaking?

Greg: Yeah. They changed the name of break dancing to breaking, which is now an Olympic sport. Um, particularly, I like it because if you look at the little, so if you go on the Olympic website, it's got like little icons for each of the sports and breaking is probably one of the more humorous ones. 

Jonny: Okay. That's a good answer. And me, I'm Jonny Rae-Evans. I'm a last-minute host replacement because Bex isn't well. Yeah, my favorite Olympic sport, they're the weird ones too. Like you see too much football and tennis and stuff elsewhere. I'm not interested in that. So either synchronized swimming or racewalking because they're both weird to look at but also, good to watch. I would've chosen tug of war but it's not a thing anymore, which I was disappointed to find out. It's not been a thing since like the twenties, I don't think. So bring it back you cowards. 

Greg: [laughs] 

Jonny: We have a guest with us today. We are joined by Dave Fardoe. Dave is a chairman of Accordant Solutions, a tech company specialising in social value measurement. Dave. Hello. Thanks for joining us. Do you have a favorite Olympic sport? 

Dave: Yeah, thanks for having me on. It's great to be here. Um, yeah, I think my current favorite Olympic sport would be the kayaking and that's probably from my student days when I used to have weekends throwing myself into ridiculously crazy rivers and pulling myself out of the far end, wondering where the kayak had actually gone. 

Jonny: Good answer. I think kayaking works as well. It's not one of those sports you see every day. None of us picked that weird one; dressage. I think that's the only Olympic sport I think that would have brought shame upon us but yeah. So Dave tell us a little bit about yourself. 

Dave: Hi. Sure. I'm Dave Fardoe as you said. I'm one of the founders of Accordant Solutions along with a good friend and colleague John Cook. And as you say, we're a tech consultancy company. We help organizations with their digital transformations. Typically this will be things like cloud adoption, cybersecurity, data protection, and compliance, and the deployment of new technologies and applications. We like to stylise ourselves as a tech consultancy with a social heart and since 2013, when we formed, we've been helping clients, public sector, private and third sector to deliver transformation programs. Not just for the financial benefits, such as ROI and payback that you typically would see, yet mindful of the wider social and environmental values that those choices bring. So it's no longer just about what does this transformation program mean for the company? It's about what does this mean for the wider community. To our wider people and our upstream and downstream supply chains and to their people. What extra benefits can this bring and how does it affect us overall and our environmental. Both our carbon footprint and our climate impact. Sometimes these things can be shown to be potentially negative. And when they are, we work with clients to mitigate or modify what they’re doing, so that overall those programs result in a positive change across all three of those dimensions. So that's us, that's what we do. 

Greg: Do you think that change, that shift to a more of that social view, you know, you see a lot of organizations now thinking and doing a lot more around climate. Do you think that's made people a little bit more interested in kind of the services that you offer or has it actually given some people a bit of a boot up the backside to start doing some of this stuff? 

Dave: Yeah. I think that that's true to a certain extent, but I think if you break the three things apart, the financial background has always been very well understood and very mature. And to an extent that the climate side has also been emerging over the last few years and people have got a good handle on that. But the social value aspect, what it means for people, wellbeing, mental health, that's kind of emerging at the moment and it's come under this banner of ES., You'll see that often around in lots of places and with the UK government bringing in legislation for the social value act and things like that, public sector bodies are now compelled to do it. So they're investing heavily in what is it, how do we calculate it, how do we discover the data, where is it, what does it look like? So it's massively increasing in terms of visibility and awareness as we go forward spending over the last couple of years. 

Jonny: So I think we, I don't have a segue but let's move into stat of the week. So, Greg, what is this week’s stat. 

Greg: Before we get onto that, my dog is being a nightmare in the background. So he's just found the noisiest toy he can find. Normally his mum is looking after him, but she's out at the minute. So if you [laughs] have any loud noises from the background, that's what it is.

Jonny: Is it a novelty-shaped top that squeaks? What sort of toy is it?

Greg: It was a crackly packet of French fries. 

Jonny: Okay. 

Greg: Yeah. 

Dave: They like French fries. That's great. 

Greg: They like plasticy crunchy sounds. So it's like one of his favorite size and obviously is extremely annoying.

Jonny: Ok, stat of the week. Take it away Greg. 

Greg: Yeah. So stat of the week is back to our friends at Amazon who have just had the highest ever privacy fine from the EU at 746 million euros. This was done by the CMPD, the Luxembourg Data Protection Authority, and this was part of a decision from July 16. Amazon have responded and basically said that they don't agree is without merit. Of course they have. And they've responded saying there has been no data breach and no customer data has been exposed to every third party. But the reason this fine happened was because of a French privacy group, La Quadrature du Nett. Now Amazon said there was no data breach, the annoying thing was it had nothing to do with a data breach. They've basically said that Amazon is manipulating customers for commercial means by choosing what advertising and information they receive. So yeah, absolutely nothing to do with a data breach but Amazon apparently haven't even read the information about this fine. 

Jonny: And it's, what’s the amount, 746 million euros, which is quite significant. But we did wonder, I remember was talking when GDPR law first launched. And the question was, you know, would we actually ever see any big fines, particularly big fines against big tech. And it's encouraging I guess, they're not just waiting for like a breach. If you're handling data in such a way that contravenes GDPR, they gonna crack down on you. I'm not sure...

Dave: Yeah, it's an interesting one isn’t it, cause when you, as far as I understand it, they haven't actually released the transcript of the judgment yet., so they're kind of levied this fine and said to people, okay, this is a huge chunk of change that we're going to find this company. But they haven't really said why they've kind of applied it to around the use of information and possibly vocal assistants and things like that, but they haven't put out the whole transcript. So you kind of got the situation where an organisation has been fined a large sum of money, yet the world hasn’t been told why, so how can we actually avoid that or change behaviors if we just see the fine has happened, but we don't really know exactly or specifically what it's for. But I guess that will come out in the passage of time really and we'll find out what the details actually are. 

Jonny: Yeah. I know. It's an interesting one as well, in terms of like, from like a punitive point of view. For companies like this, is there even a lot of money that you could fine them that would hurt them as well? Like, just the value of the fine is absolutely staggering but still kind of pales in significance to the amount of money that these companies make as well. And like you said Dave, without knowing as well, what it is that has actually really happened as well, trying to work out, is that really a big fine or is it like an overkill? It’s hard to say.

Dave: I guess when the GDPR, they have a 2% and a 4% kind of fine sort of levies don’t they? So those numbers are significant, but the size of the organization is going to sort of swallow that one really. But I think what's interestin, from our point of view where we've worked with people in the past, it's around, you know, what is it that they've actually done and how could they put things in place to not do it again? And how could other organisations avoid the same situation? Because punishing someone is great, but the idea is it’s a deterrent, isn't it? It's to stop other people doing the same sort of thing and without knowing how can that work? Seems a bit strange. 

Jonny: Indeedy.  I think before we move on, the biggest takeaway from the stat of the week is that Greg, your pronunciation of the French term was perfect, I think. I thought for a moment, ah, Greg’s been replaced by a frenchman.

Greg: [laughs] 

Jonny:  A last note. Ok. Charity news of the week. So on the podcast, was it a couple of weeks ago? We talked about the abuse that the RNLI received but you've got a heartwarming up right? It's not often that we get heartwarming stuff on the podcast, so I really want you to take a moment back and really relish in this opportunity.

Greg: Yeah. I mean, it's frustrating in a way, cause I think this happened straight after we'd talked about it on the pod, so it's like, oh great thanks guys for doing this development. 

Jonny: I think people wait because we’ve got such a huge audience base. So obviously the whole world listens to this podcast. You know, people deliberately hold back major news just to screw with us. That's my takeaway. 

Greg: [laughs] Undoubtedly, undoubtedly. Yeah, so we have that negative story about volunteers being verbally assaulted and what, how people have responded is to increase donations to the RNLI by 30 times. So on a normal day, they would get about six, 7,000 pounds worth of donations. And on one day they got over 200,000. And during the same period, They saw an increase in people looking at volunteering opportunities on their website by 270%. So, you know, that assault on their volunteers really kind of brought home their need for support and people rallied round, which is a nice reminder that there are a lot more nice people out there than assholes. 

Jonny: Yeah. And that last point I think is really important I think cause it can, you know, it's been such a tough year anyway, right? But it's been a tough few years, I suppose, in terms of feeling that as a society, are we kind of going backwards in terms of, are we getting a little bit worse? There seems to be like lots of wins for hatred and not so many wins for, you know, actual compassion and care and doing the right thing. So again, really encouraging to see that, you know, with the criticism that they faced there wasn't like a backpedal in terms of, oh, we'll soften our comms. They really doubled down. I know this is why we do what we do. We're about saving people about doing the right thing and that then the public has rallied around by stumping up cash. Yeah, it was really lovely to read. 

Dave: It’s a great story isn’t it and it goes to show that the values that we hold as a society to say, you know, we're going to help people in need and it's not about any other agenda other than that. And that really reached out to people and connected with them and the result, you know, it's what we saw there. 

Jonny: Yeah, absolutely. And I suppose we're talking now about donations increasing, which is good. In terms of volunteering, Greg, you've got, you've got a story here about one type of volunteering being high one. There's a type of volunteering going down. What's all that about?

Greg: So the Community Life Survey, I think, has been going since about 2013/2014. It’s an annual survey of over 10,000 people in England about a range of subjects relating to community activity. So they have informal, but volunteering and formal volunteering. So informal would be, well, pharma would be anything related to, uh, an organisation or a club. And informal is something that's, you know, not related to, uh, an established organisation. And they found that, um, 33% of respondents to the survey have been involved in informal volunteering at least once a month in 2020/2021. So really that kind of community action that we saw during COVID, you know, things like people, getting shopping for their neighbors, who were isolating and stuff like that. On the flip side of that because of lockdowns and things, preventing people from, from Mick thing, it's meant that formal volunteering has dropped. So that dropped to a record low of 17% to be expected, rarely given, given the kind of lockdowns. The other flip side of that as well, is that only 63% said they'd made a charitable donation in the four weeks before they were polled. It kind of held steady at 75% for the four years previous. And the highest was the first year that they did the survey of 82%.

Um, so a bit of a bummer to see that dropping but the average donation level has increased to £27 where it was previously £24. So kind of a mixed bag there. But, yeah, kind of expected, I think. 

Jonny: Yeah. It's going to be one of those things when you look back over time, there's going to be lots of graphs, just completely fucked because of COVID like so many anonymous right? I guess, I suppose the formal volunteering isn't the shocker. What I would be interested in is around, you know, people doing that informal volunteering, which is wonderful. Do we actually see that continue? Obviously, whilst the types of support that people might need when we come out of lockdown might be less, but the idea of people actually wanting to engage your people and support people, will that continue? In which case, if that does, and then informal volunteering increases, would be good. And I guess in terms of their donations being lower, is that linked in a sense that people tightened their belts because of, you know, the impacts of furlough or losing jobs and that people may be dialled back some of their regular giving, do you think? Or is it unclear? 

Greg: I think obviously when you're doing any kind of survey, it's always difficult to kind of be clear, particularly, um, in regards to donations and because they were only looking at the four weeks previous to the survey, you know, there's a lot of different things that could have happened. Timings. You know, if this was done very recently and you're looking at lockdown easing, I imagine a lot of people would’ve had finances wrapped up in kind of, you know, doing things out of lockdown now. Um, you know, there is the other aspects of it as well. So limitations on fundraising and that kind of stuff. So, whereas people would normally have seen some kind of fundraising activity that they maybe haven't because they've not been out and about. So yeah, I think there's probably a lot of factors in play there. 

Dave: Sorry. I was going to say, I think it was another factor as well. As people went into the lockdown, again, you said when the survey was taken, you know, people didn't know how long this was going to last or what it would look like. So they probably tightened their belts for that reason, but what we’ve found locally, uh, where I live and I don't know if you guys saw the same sort of thing, it was kind of a different economy beginning to emerge and it was using some of that, you know, social media. So things like Facebook Marketplace. People were actually clearing out their houses here in lockdown. And instead of selling things on marketplace, they were giving them away or they were giving them in exchange for other things. And on one of our local carriers here, the food banks were actually seeing people sort of offering goods and in exchange for that, people were saying, don't give me any money, just go and give a donation to the food bank or go and do some volunteer work. So a whole different series or types of transactions started to take place. And I don't know whether that will continue, but it's certainly lifted the whole community and the feel-good factor. So when we talk about social value, you know, there's a social value that happened sort of organically, if you like. 

Greg: Yeah, I think you're spot on there. Yeah, definitely. I think that, particularly if you look at the increase and inform or volunteering as well. I think, you know, people don't separate the two. It’s, you know, a way of giving back to the community. So they're probably, you know, that's their way of giving back and they've not thought about that. The donations as well on top of that, I guess the question will be, does that informal volunteering translate into more formal things? Oor do people like that, you know, the proximity of doing something for somebody nearby. But also, yeah. That, you know, often we hear with, with volunteering that the kind of requirements, the level of requirements, you know, there's too much of a structure almost to it. People just want to turn up and do some good. And when they've got a bit of free time, so yeah. Be interested to see if it translates.

Dave: Yeah, absolutely. It'd be interesting to see if the powers that be, if you like see that they either remove with some, that red tape and bureaucracy, increase all of that inclusivity. And if they say, if you don't want, let's strip away the unnecessary bureaucracy here and build on that. 

Jonny: Yeah. Yeah. And again, it's another story where, again, there are some encouraging signs coming out that, you know, hearing about the increase in volunteering again shows, you know, a value of community and people rallying around and hopefully we’ll see a positive impact of that continuing as we move forward. There's no way to kind of sugarcoat it. This next story is less positive. That would be right, wouldn't it Greg? So this is some issue with NHS health tech. Is that right? 

Greg: Yeah. Yeah. So we've got the real positive news that Amazon has been fined again. The positive news that people are not as horrible as we all think they are. And then, you know, of course as soon as we get to the tech news, it all goes downhill. So there's a report that's come out. There was a rapid review, done by the NHS Race and Health Observatory, which looked at all Sox diameters. So these are like little clip-on devices that go onto your finger. And they've been using them a lot more recently for people with COVID who have been sent home as a way of monitoring their oxygen levels within the blood. And what they found through this rapid review is they don't work as well with people who are black or brown skin. They tend to overestimate the amount of oxygen that patients have. So it's, you know, it could lead to some serious incidents. The NHS kind of response is, yeah, they don't work as well, but you should still use them. The important thing is to check your blood levels and see if your levels are going down. So they’re kind of focused more on the trend rather than the natural level. But yeah, I was talking about this with a few people and it really kind of brought to mind a number of other cases of the hand dryers, where they wouldn't work with people with black or brown skin and very similar kind of technology that kind of infrared. So yeah, it started me thinking, you know, is this, is this a case of where someone's built that technology it's been implemented in lots of different devices and so we're going to see other cases of this or is it that each of those devices has been built separately but they’ve all kind of incorporated the same bias and not tested with different groups and different communities. 

Jonny: Yeah. Neither of those options are good, right, and the fact that these things have been used for a while and we're just finding out that they've not worked as well, shows that have not been to the rigorous testing, that you would hope that yeah, like you said, again, it's not just this one thing. This is over and over and over it. Tech not working for some groups of people and those groups of people tend to be, well, tend to not look like us. 

Greg: Yeah. I mean, Dave, when I saw this and knew that we were going to be speaking today, you know, my first thought was, you know, going back to what you were saying at the start, that the idea of, uh, improving your organisation based on the impact it has on society. And this is, you know, this would be a red, big red mark against their name. Wouldn't it?

Dave: Yeah, it absolutely would. And I think you got to be making the details. It's not a piece of technology that I'm totally offay with, but it certainly strikes me that there's been a lack of testing across a broad enough range of people to establish whether the technology works properly or even works the same way. And then you've got to factor in that if it doesn't work the same way, can you do something with it to amend it? Can you change the algorithm perhaps inside the device, so that if it’s on a different skin type, then it will adjust accordingly. I don't know whether that's something that's possible or not, but certainly, if you did a wide enough testing, you would certainly come up with the problems and then it's a case of working through those problems to come up with the appropriate solutions. So I don't think it's beyond the weight of man to fix it. It's just a taste of what do we need to do to fix it. But yeah, from an organisation point of view, it's not a green tick is it? It’s definitely a bit of a red mark there.

Greg: Yeah. Yeah, definitely. It makes me think, you know, I wonder if there was a conversation where they completely disassociated it from people and they were like, you know, there's a chance that it won't work with 2.8% of people in an inappropriate way. And they're like, oh, that's a fine margin of error. And you're like, yeah but when you put that on millions of people, that's quite a big number. So yeah. I just wonder if that's the kind of way to discuss that. 

Dave: Yeah. I mean the argument runs a little bit cold, isn't it? Because if you say it doesn't work with 2.8% and you're one of that 2.8%, then the failure rate is 100%, isn't it? So it’s a bit of a thin argument really.

Jonny: And it’s a shit ton of people cause there's a lot of people in the world right? There's lots of things you can do to make sure that you're designing ethical products. But if you're not even at the minimum thinking I've made a product, shall we test if it works on black people, because over and over and over and over again, you find products being made by the tech industry do not do that very lowest of bars. The fact that no one's thought, oh, maybe we should check, it just hasn't been checked because we've just found out now and these things have been used for a while. It’s just the most utter disregard for human life and other people that we’re not testing things properly, you know, it's just not acceptable. I’m  sick of it. How often have we talked about this Greg? We talked about the hand sanitisers. We talked about hairdryers. I mean, and those things are obviously would be unbelievably frustrated that, you know, the way that people with dark skin had to wash their hands is hold a bit of white toilet paper and then quickly move it so they can capture it. That honestly must be really frustrating but then we also talked about algorithms that detect to help judges in the US decide, does this person get parole or not and they're racist. So, you know, like massive, massive repercussions of tech, which is designed just for one group of people and not for others. And I'm just sick of it. Just sick of it. Yeah, I mean, maybe, you know, as we go forward and we mature this whole social value conversation, you find that, you know, you look at the, what is social value? You look at diversity and inclusivity. It's a measurement. It's a metric. It's in there and it's a legal requirement now for organisations to actually show how that golden thread runs through it from the design of a product, to the manufacturer, to the deployment, into the use cases. So how are they going to do that if they're excluding a percentage of the population and not testing it thoroughly. It's going to be such a red flag going forward, that it's hopefully something that won't happen again, and we will certainly begin to see tech being tested across all aspects of the population and people having to demonstrate that they've done that and done it properly. So hopefully we'll start to see those changes.

Greg: I think there's an important part of that, which is, you know, it stops just being about the tech and it's about the people using that tech and building that tech and kind of commissioning that tech and how it's implemented. So some of the other stories that I wanted to talk about this week in regards to tech news was, you know, that implementation, and how it can be done badly and how it can have a really bad impact on people's doors. There were two stories that came out of the US this week. Uh, one about a, um, uh, surveillance system called ShotSpotter, which uses sensors to detect the sound and locations of gunshots, which is being basically misused by a number of different police departments across the US. So you've got a number of different examples. So, one where, a young man was shot in the head and dropped off by a man named Michael Williams. The young man died and then the police arrested Michael Williams and basically took evidence from ShotSpotter and got the team at ShotSpotter to edit the results of the algorithm so that it looked like the shot came from closer to him. And actually it wasn't a shot. It was a firework as had been originally identified. And, you know, that's just one example of a case where they're misusing that technology. And I think, yeah, that social value question is not just about how we build that tech. It’s about how do we implement it and making sure that putting stuff in place to make sure people are implementing this stuff in a way that isn't abused 

Dave: Yeah. And operating it as well. So, you know, the system I believe is based on and I'm familiar with, is that the microphones are in streetlights basically and they can triangulate that the shot signature and therefore get to the, to the point where the shot was fired very, very quickly. Uh, emergency services and police, et cetera. Now that is a, that is a positive social value. You know, that's a definite plus but when you get that human intervention in the operation of a system for a particularly biased way of doing something or a biased outcome, that's beside from the case, that's the flaw in the operating of the system. So the technology itself may work exactly as designed, but the operating principles, policies, and procedures that sit around it are flawed. And that to me is one of the things that needs to be thoroughly investigated particularly in this case to see how is it that you can go in and recategorise something to a different outcome and therefore completely rechange and reinfluence the outcome of a legal trial. It’s from a forensic analysis point of view,  from a forensic science point of view, that's got to be thrown out. It's gotta be so flawed that it’s not gonna accept it. 

Jonny: This is a little depressing. I was like,  as a snapshot of how broken society is that the way that you tackle them, if that you put sensors in street lights to tell, after the fact, where people have been shot from, rather than tackling the fact that everyone's got a gun. 

Dave: Yup. 

Jonny: And you're absolutely right in terms of the implementation of policies. If I'm designing a system to help the police detects gunshots. The very first thing I would think is how would the police in the US use this to stitch someone up, because that's what they do. Like, again, like that should be top of the policy book and implementation guide is how would we make sure that this isn't used for co-ops purposes and fails that test right out. I mean, yeah, this is less heartwarming Greg, than the previous sections [laughs] I’ll be honest. 

Greg: Yeah. It does end there as well. There was another story of a new system that's been implemented in the US for carers who are doing home visits and it's a similar kind of thread. You know, it, it sounds like a good thing to kind of help reduce the kind of burden, the admin burden on these carers who visit homes. So the system’s called the Electronic Visit Verification, and basically it's like a way of doing your timesheets, so you don't have to do your timesheets. And, you know, I've had to do timesheets. I've worked in places where they've had to send round threatening emails every week saying do your timesheets. So it sounds like it'd be a really, really. Things to help people, but what's happened in many areas in America is basically they've rushed through the implementation. So you had one case in Arkansas where one person received notification just a few weeks before it was going to be rolled out. And when they tried to get information about kind of their involvement and what they were supposed to be doing, they basically got a video on YouTube, which didn't relate to their situation at all. And there've been loads of examples of where this timesheet doesn't work, where people are being told that they can't get paid because there's insufficient funds, which is incorrect. Where it's kind of really, really actually making things worse. So one carer said what took a total of 15 seconds to sign a sign sheet and submit, now takes many hours, hours that should be given to the client for care. So. yeah, maybe it works if it was implemented correctly, but this is a real great example of where you've taken this tool, rushed it through to kind of hit a deadline and it's actually creating loads of problems for the people using it. And that value has completely gone out the window. 

Dave: Yeah, totally. I mean, this is something that I've got to agree with you. The implementation here is terrible. In a previous life, I ran an auxiliary home care company for over 16 years. So I know exactly the problem that they're trying to fix here and it's all to do with checking in online. You've gone to a client, you’re gonna do a visit. You're going to deliver some service and they want to check you've turned up where you're meant to be at the time you're meant to be there. Pragmatically that doesn't always happen. It can be traffic delays. It can be more time you have to spend at a previous house. There's all sorts of reasons why you may not be where you're supposed to be at a particular point in time. So you need to take account of that in the system and you can do. It's absolutely easy enough to do that. There's also the situation where, you know, effectively that they're sticking QR codes on the side of somebody’s door and saying when the, when the carer gets there, you know, scan the QR code in and scan the QR code when they come out, so we can check it and do your timesheets. But what happens if that client, for example, wants to go on a shopping trip or I think one of the examples they used was a fishing trip. So there's no QR code and they’ve geo-fenced where that QR code needs to be. And it's designed to stop a particular level of fraud that frankly, in my 16 years, in that industry, was so rare, so easy to detect in other ways, you just do not need to do it to that extent. You can have, you know, check in by press button or press button B. And if you're out at a shopping center or out fishing with a client, you just check in a different way and let the system and the technology sort the details out. So it's a clear example of somebody somewhere has designed this system, thought they had all the answers, but has never gone out and worked on the ground delivering that service in the community; to figure out what is the problem I actually need to solve here and how can I set about solving it? So I gotta be with you on that one Greg. That's a bad implementation. 

Greg: Yeah. It's the same people that were like, well, we can't let anyone work from home because they'll never do any work. And lo and behold, everybody's done loads of work from home. So yeah, I think the same kind of people are probably sitting behind that one thinking, well, if you give them an inch, they'll take a mile.

Dave: Yeah. And it's not true in reality. There's obviously there's the people who will, you know, we'll take them all. But by and large, especially in the social care community, people go into that, not for higher rates of pay or massive rewards because they're just not there they go into it because they want to help people and they want to be part of that community spirit. You know, on the flip side of this, I guess is you look at the social care system in the UK and you think about, there's a huge supply of care stuff on one side of it and a huge demand on the other. I do think that in a few years’ time, there will be technologies that allow us to solve that particular problem and spread that sort of distributional service more evenly across the community. I do think there's a technology aspect to that. So I'm keen to see that when it starts to emerge. 

Jonny: And I think in terms of more positive news though, um, I believe and correct me if I'm wrong Greg, if we listen very carefully with our ears, can we hear wedding bells in the distance? Do we have a fun-filled story, a rare glimpse into the personal life of Greg Ashton?

Greg: Yeah. So we asked Dave at the start, is there anything nice or bad that you'd like to talk about? And his response was, yeah, I've got some nice things to talk about and I'll let him talk about that. But it’s related to some nice news of mine, which is I'm getting finally getting married this week, in two days. Which has been a long road, a very long road, if you factor in my age. Um, so yeah. So finally getting married, which will be nice. 

Jonny: So when people listen to this, you will be married. 

Greg: Yeah, they'll have to call me Mr. Greg Ashton now. 

Jonny: People will still continue to call you by silly names, regardless of your marital status. 

Dave: It’s a short leap from Mr. Greg Ashton, to a few years, when you’re just Greg Ashton.

Greg: [laughs] But Dave you had some nice stories to share about your research. 

Dave: Yeah, I've just got back from a weekend, um, where we, we actually attended if you like to weddings and an engagement party in the one weekend, and that was due to COVID as it happened. So a number of our relatives, I'd like to say friends of ours, but actually it’s friends of our children, which is giving my age away as well. But they got married last year during the COVID restrictions, so they weren't able to have those sort of extended celebrations and parties that they would normally have. So they've rolled them over. So this weekend we've been to one full wedding outside of the restrictions where we had a lot of guests and a party. And then we followed that on with another wedding celebration and then an engagement celebration. I'm sitting here doing this podcast, recovering from drinking quite a lot and probably far too much champagne, but having welcomed a bunch of friends into the institution of marriage, which is great.

Greg: Yeah. It’s great to get back to a little bit of normality. 

Jonny: Yeah. It's wonderful to hear these stories, you know, people who've been locked down for so long. It’s great to start to take those steps towards, you know, kind of meeting people. I saw, this weekend, one of my best friends who I have not obviously seen for two years. We were able to finally see each other. Lots of lateral flow tests and isolation in advance of it. And you think you've had a really boring week, to prepare for a really exciting week. So, yeah, it's great to see these things starting to happen. Warms my soul. 

Greg: Yeah, and we’re doing the lateral flow test as well. Like, I think that’ll be a permanent thing, particularly when I'm seeing you Jonny caue eergghhh.

Jonny: Always best when you have a single outsider. Like in Alien when you walk into the lock and it sprays stuff at you. We we've done that with you for years, haven't we? So, it's best to keep that practice up. And as an finally, I don’t know if I read this correctly. Have Google invented time crystals?

Greg: Maybe. This is a weird and finally, but I didn't know where else to fit it in, but it just feels like we should talk about it. Cause it is mind blowing. So apparently Google invented a thing called time crystals. They didn't come up with the name. Apparently that was theorised in 2012/2013. They are a thing. They are really cool. They've got nothing to do with time travel. It's all to do with quantum computing and lots of energy. It is kind of similar to perpetual motion. So if you imagine you have like a crystal and fallen like a snowflake and that snowflake could change its shape into a different snowflake and back again, without using any energy. That would be amazing. It would mean huge things for quantum computing, uh, and basically is needed in order to make quantum computing possible, but would also open the door to a whole ton of other things. So it's still is still early days. There's still kind of a peer review to happen. But I’m really fricking excited. 

Jonny: I don’t understand any of that but time crystals is a great name and that excited me in and of itself. In my mind though, I’d pitch it, I don't know why, but you know, as crystals in Superman's fortress of solitude. 

Jonny: Videos of Marlon Brando. So if I can have crystals where I can watch videos of someone like Marlon Brandon, that would be cool. But this is cooler than that, is what you’re saying.

Greg: Yeah, it could be. Okay. We'll see what happens. 

Jonny: Cool. I'd also like a fortress of solitude, but this is not related at all to Superman is what I'm hearing.

Greg: [laughs] It's just you, do you want to be alone? 

Jonny: Yeah, so basically I want to be alone. Uh, I mean, I am, but I want to be deliberately alone. Okay. I think on that bombshell, because we are just slightly over time, that is all we have time for. So, thank you everyone for listening. Dave, thank you for joining us. How was that for you and where could people find you online, if you want them to? 

Dave: Yeah, that's great. Thanks very much, guys. That was really enjoyable. Um, yeah, I'm on LinkedIn, Dave dash fardoe. I'm also on Twitter as Dave Fardoe and obviously there is a website which is accordantsolutions.co.uk and you can find me in the rest of the guys there. 

Jonny: Wonderful. Excellent. Listeners, what did you think? We'd love to hear your thoughts. You can get in touch with us on Twitter at tech for good live. Or if you want to email us, for some reason, you can email us. We are hello@techforgood.live. We'd love it if you gave us an iTunes review as well and told your mates all about this podcast and they might not even judge you for that. Thank you to our producers for producing this podcast. Don't forget that this podcast is one that’s is highly run by volunteers and we survive on sponsorships and donations. Right now, one of our primary goals is to make sure all of these episodes are accessible and making sure each one is transcribed. This does cost us some money and we desperately need your help to make this become a reality. So if you've ever tuned into one of our podcasts or attended one of our events, please consider chipping in for the price of a cup of coffee and you can do that via tech for good.live forward slash donate. Thanks to Podcast.co for hosting us, thanks to Greg and Dave for joining us and we will also say a collective goodbye. 

Greg: Goodbye. 

Dave: Bye.