Why Skype And Zoom Will Never Replace Business Travel
Source: Medium, Edward Slingerland
Photo: Marcela Palma/Flickr
In 1889, Jules Verne predicted that the “phonotelephote” — essentially a dedicated videoconferencing device that he imagined would become commonplace by the year 2889 (!) — would make business travel obsolete. We didn’t have to wait a thousand years. Videoconferencing became a real technology in 1968 with AT&T’s “Picturephone.” The advent of Skype and other videoconferencing technologies in the mid-2000s brought phonotelephotes into every home that had access to a decent internet connection.
Each new advance in remote teleconferencing capacity is accompanied by renewed predictions of the demise of business travel. Yet the fact is that, at least until the global Covid-19 pandemic hit in 2020, business travel has done nothing but steadily increase. Given the expense, hassle, and physiological toll of traveling, especially between very different time zones, this is genuinely puzzling. Why fly from New York to Shanghai to meet a potential business partner when you could just call or Zoom?
The puzzle of business travel is fundamentally related to another basic puzzle about humans: why we like to get drunk. Enduring 13 hours in a stuffy, uncomfortable metal tube hurtling through the air is, from an evolutionary perspective, is an odd thing for a primate to do. Perhaps even stranger is the activity humans typically launch themselves into once this tube sets down at its destination: gradually but steadily impairing their brains with repeated rounds of liquid neurotoxins. A physical tour of the factory or hands-on inspection of merchandise is often an important goal of a business trip. But perhaps even more crucial is the booze-soaked dinner that almost invariably follows the day’s activities.
This is because both in-person meetings and social drinking are responses to basic cooperation problems that humans face. For simple and low-stakes long-distance transactions, like purchasing a book or sweater online, I am happy to rely on whatever enforcement mechanisms are at the disposal of eBay or Amazon should my counterparty prove untrustworthy. On the other hand, if I am entering into a long-term, complex venture with company in Shanghai, where the impact of screwups or corner-cutting or backstabbing or simple fraud are multiplied a thousandfold, I need to know that the people I’m dealing with are fundamentally trustworthy. An inspection of the factory might help. And, yes, we will both sign a contract. But the loosely woven lattice of even the most comprehensive explicit agreement still allows multiple degrees of freedom. For anything more complicated than a one-off purchase of buttons or zippers, I am going to want to know who, really, I am getting into bed with.
One of the most effective mechanisms human beings have invented for assessing the trustworthiness of a new potential cooperator is the drunken banquet. From ancient China to ancient Greece to Oceania, no negotiation was ever concluded, no treaty ever signed, without copious quantities of chemical intoxicants. In the modern world, with all of the remote communication technologies at our disposal, it should genuinely surprise us how often we need a good, old-fashioned, in-person drinking session before we feel comfortable about signing our name on the dotted line.
This is not a foolish desire. One of the main effects of alcohol is to depress the functioning of the prefrontal cortex (PFC). The PFC is a very important part of the brain. It is the locus of our ability to control emotions and impulses, remain task-focused, delay gratification, and engage in abstract reasoning. It is also key to our ability to deceive others. Concealing our true motives or maintaining a fiction during extended interaction with others requires intense concentration and self-control — precisely the functions the PFC is designed to support. Depressing PFC function therefore makes it harder for a person to lie.
Perhaps surprisingly, we would expect it to actually have the opposite effect on lie detection. It’s actually more difficult for us to accurately evaluate the truthfulness of a statement when we are focused consciously on doing so, guided by our PFC. We do a better job detecting lies when we are distracted by other stimuli — for instance, trying to get the bartender’s attention or savoring an appetizer — and then asked later if the person we were speaking with was being honest. Our unconscious selves are better lie detectors than “we” are, and they are at their best when our conscious mind is temporarily sent to its room.
The ancient intuition that alcohol reveals the “true self” is also more than just folk wisdom. Reduction of cognitive control results in disinhibition, a state where dominant tendencies that might otherwise be reined in by the PFC are set loose. In the absence of strong situational cues, for instance, people become more aggressive when drunk only if they are predisposed to aggression in general. You may seem like a nice person on the phone, but before I really trust that judgment I would be well-advised to reevaluate you, in person, after a second glass of Chablis.
This is why, as vaccine passports make international travel possible again, we should expect to see business travel bounce back to something like pre-pandemic levels. Humans evolved to forge relationships and strike deals with a handshake and a few rounds of toasts. As an investor, it might be time to start shorting Zoom stock and take another look at the airline industry.
Partially excerpted from Drunk: How We Sipped, Danced, and Stumbled Our Way to Civilization (Little, Brown Spark, June 2021)