The conundrums of efficiency and convenience versus people and lifestyle are not new, but Skellett wants to know who is asking these questions and finding the solutions. The problem, he believes, is that efficiency and shareholder returns drive business decisions.

“Companies say people are assets, but they don’t treat them like assets they treat them like liabilities,” he says.

The problem might be considered economic one or about business models, and Skellett could be heard as an anti-capitalist, in spite of his entrepreneurial past with tech company Allied Worldwide.

But he says: “A social enterprise isn’t necessarily just about going off and doing good; a social enterprise business is one where there’s no shareholder return. So basically what the social enterprise is about is supporting the people and the communities.”

He believes a trend in social enterprises is coming, especially if it’s true that consumers are becoming more aware of the threats of money-driven, efficiency-driven shareholder business models that will turn to technology ahead of protecting employees and their right to work for a livelihood.

He predicts an ethical component to our consumer choices that will affect companies in the future because we will have to choose between companies that value people or buy from the technology solution.

“You have to use your moral compass,” he says. His moral compass has guided him to choose not to use Amazon, as an individual and within his businesses. Convenience might be high up in one person’s value system, but he chooses to use the shops and pay a little more, in the interests of people.

Problems around the relationship between tech and people cross into politics too. Skellett talks about the gap there would be between a digital tax, that’s been suggested, and income tax losses when robots and automation replace people.

The purpose of Skellett’s Digital Anthropology enterprise, then, is to say to corporate organisations that work in tech: take responsibility for the questions around displacement or augmentation of people that they are creating.

“I want to get to the source of the solutions, i.e. looking at the AI and robotics companies and say, hey this is about the people. Because generally being in the world, it’s about the impact and the differences we make with people.

“There’s a social impact piece that’s not being understood at the moment and Digital Anthropology wants to bridge that gap.”

To be clear, Skellett believes in progress and in technology. But he has seen his part-time jobs at the age of 13 be replaced by tech.

“I want to fight to have those jobs existing or have the choice of them not existing. The choice isn’t there now because they’ve been displaced by tech,” he adds.

“I think we ought to have a situation where there’s an option for an organisation and the individual to decide: do we want tech or do we want people, and understand the consequences and costs and make a conscious decision.”