Quality of Life

Sašo TomažičUniversity of Ljubljana

MotivationQoL and Informatics?

This presentation is meant to be• provocative (to keep you awake),• surprising (to give you more information) and• challenging.

If you stay awake to get the information you may even accept this challenge at the end.

R&D & QoL• QoL research is becoming one of major research topics.• The main purpose of developing new technologies is (or at

least should be) to make life easier, more pleasant - to increase QoL.

• The same holds for information and telecommunication technologies (ICT).

In spite of all that• we still have to work at least 8 hours/day to sustain our lives

and much more to be successful in what we are doing,• life is becoming more and more stressful, and• in general, we are not much more content than our

ancestors were.

Stone age

In the stone age a man needed about 2 hours/day to sustain his life (hunting) the rest was used for entertainment and rest.

Koala

Koala needs only 1 hour/day to sustain its life (finding food), the rest is used for pleasure (3 hours/day) and sleep (20 hours/day).

• R&D are governed by economy and politics. • Politics are governed by economy.• Economy is governed by profit.

What has gone wrong?

Conclusion:

Everything is governed by profit.

So what?

Problems:

• Profit based economy requires exponential growth.

• Positive feedback is built-in.• We assume (incorrectly) that more profit will by

itself yield better QoL.

Exponential growth

timenow breakpoint

• The production should grow some N% per year for economy to be stable (exponential growth).

• It is limited by– energy consumption,– natural resources,– pollution,– garbage,– …..

limit

Positive feedback• More production requires more consumption.• More consumption requires more production.

Systems with positive feedback are unstable.

positive feedback

now

production

negative feedbacklimit

breakpoint

Example: US great depression in thirties, Roosevelt, New Deal

Law of QoL factorsMore is not always better

QoL is non-monotonic functions of QoL factors. Increasing one factor over certain limit necessary causes the decrease of QoL.

QoL

factor factor

Examples of factors: oxygen, food, sun, water, medicaments, rules, laws…., and even freedom of choice (Barry Schwartz, Tyranny of Choice, Scientific American, April 2004)

increase decrease increase decreaseno significant change

QoL

• We R&D what we are paid for.• We have no time to think about QoL.• Often, we even have no time to care about

quality of our own life1,2.

And what do we do?

1

2 Participants of this symposium obviously do not fit into this category

Some search resultsto make my point

Search term: “quality of life”

Source No. of matchesGoogle 59,000,000

ISI Web of Science 56,972*

Science Direct 11,140*

IEEEXplore - all periodicals since 1951 2**

Informatics an computer science 0

* Most of them from Health Care and Medicine**Both in IEEE Engineering in medicine and biology magazine

And what could we do?

1. Awareness2. Responsibility3. Challenge4. Focus5. Knowledge

QoL & ICT

• We are used to talk about QoSproviding a set of pre-agreed system parameters that would satisfy customer*

• Lately we also talk about QoEproviding a set of pre-agreed subjective quality of service experience.

• What we should begin to talk about is QoLproviding services that will improve quality of life

* New definition from my PhD student

QoL index• To be able to increase QoL we first need to have

some measure of QoL.

• I recently recommended logarithmic QoL index

• Much simpler QoL index also exists, which is …

a smile on a face,

or the a number of smiling faces.

A new business model• Models based on profit forces more production and

greater efficiency (exponential growth).• It is not anymore hard to produce something, it is hard to

sell it.• More and more people move from production to

marketing. • They still have to work hard to make their living.• If they cannot sell anything, they cannot buy anything. • Due to positive feedback it leads to crisis.

A new business model, not based (solely) on profit is thus required.

No business modelHow can it work?

• Although there is no need for increasing efficiency, motivation (if this is not profit) is still needed.

• It is in our very nature, that we like to make others happy. We usually limit this to our family, our friends, and our pets.

• It is also in our nature to seek recognition.• A smile of gratitude can sometime be the greatest

recognition and can be much more rewarding than a payment.

• Unfortunately, it is also in our nature, that we like to make others angry and envious. We do not want this to be

Is it utopia?• No. The no business model is already emerging in IT.

• IT is ideal for testing it. – Developing software requires very little resources beside human

effort. It is thus affordable not to be based only on profit.

• Examples– Freeware– Postcardware– Open source– Crackers– Hackers

• Different motives, but all non profit based.

Advantages of freeware and open source

• If you work for free (from enthusiasm, for recognition, to help, …) there is no need:– to release SW incomplete because of time pressure– to intentionally leave something for later releases, – to make it just look fancy even when it does not function

properly,– to make new releases with options that nobody needs,– to intentionally complicate it, so nobody can use it without

special training.• If the source is open

– users can improve it and adopt it for their own need,– all other users can benefit from that,– only some part of SW can be used or reused in another SW.

Back to the aim of my talk

I believe, there are many, many brilliant minds among IT people.

This is a challenge.

If only a tiny portion of their efforts would be consciously focused on improving QoL, imagine what

could happen.

And what about you?

Will you accept the challenge?