The end of corporatism. How net heads will help society on creating smart and easy to use tools for managing your personal data. An end for the corporate having the upper hand of controlling and planning our customer journey and a beginning for the individual to show their intention.
You may be confused on the difference between net heads and net bells. It is very straightforward. Net-heads enables us on becoming more productive members of society. Instead of making a profit from a product, they created free useful products so everyone could add more value than without. Net-bells, in contrast, are dogs wagging their tails hoping their master will give them a treat. Net-hands, on the other hand, care about their integrity and providing services without gimmicks. It is the net-heads that provided the Linux environment system and the Internet protocols that we use today. We take for granted on the flexibility of the systems we use and how we connect with each other. Most of the systems that operate today run under Linux and open source software. There is a huge negligence from the community and are seriously underfunded for its contribution value. Quoting from the report "Roads And Bridges: The Unseen Labor Behind Our Digital Infrastructure", after the Heartbleed bug, Marquess took to the Internet to make an impassioned public plea for funding stating
These guys don’t work on OpenSSL for money. They don’t do it for fame. They do it out of pride in craftsmanship and the responsibility for something they believe in. There should be at least a half-dozen full-time OpenSSL team members, not just one, able to concentrate on the care and feeding of OpenSSL without having to hustle commercial work.
This giving is the same giving as a couple bringing offsprings to our world. They do this act of goodness without expecting something back as a reward. Similarly, it is no wonder Steve Jobs named one of his computer projects as Lisa, which was the name of her real daughter. These projects are like their own little babies and a deep care is taken for them in order for them to become valuable and useful assets through our society. It is thanks to those pioneers and builders that we were able to horizontally spread so everyone is able to enjoy a better customer experience. With big companies like Google and Facebook, we have:
- The Android, an open operating system for mobile devices.
- Several open source development tools that were used internally from those companies.
A lot of innovation related to customer experience that is fairly new comes at a great cost. The time of research, designing, gathering the resources, is not an easy task. Take, for instance, Apple, which tries to provide revolutionary forms of customer experience vertically through innovative products that only a few and the rich can afford. Nevertheless, we should try to optimize existing processes that in today's world are perceived as costly. However, we should not cling on those processes once they are efficient enough. Optimizing existing innovations is like working with a kettle. When the water boils enough, there is a whistle that says enough is enough and we need to move on improving the next existing innovations that are not affordable. In other words, we have to be every so often vertical as well.
We have to be Steve Jobs and say we can do better and even better than what our customer experience could be. This community so far created a set of builders that manifested the world where each of us had a better customer experience. However, let us admit one thing for sure: A need for better customer experience is overestimated. A need for a society with more customers showing their intentions is underestimated. We need a new Steve Jobs that focuses on better customer intent instead of a better customer experience. We need leaders that drive the car instead of builders that build a car. We need to incorporate righteousness not only by providing better customer experience, but to keep everyone have a conscious voice that they are able not only to speak it but to navigate it and reach it. Where instead all of the planning is done by corporations, individuals play not only an influential role but are the ones that initiate the pivots for where corporations have to head next. This in part requires us to change our mindset from ones that focus on providing only a better customer experience to a one that takes accountability that all of us can a have a more meaningful role than what we take part of today. This dance has been one where corporations that was forced and never apologized when they stepped over our shoes and it has to be changed to a one where each dance has the respect of the sensitivities of our partners.
Society today is plagued with customers that do not have intent. Instead of customers with intent, we have passive consumers. In the online Recode article "The Rise of Data Natives", there is a trend where Data Natives (the next generation of society after the "Digital Natives") on a Store of Starbucks not only want to use the Starbucks app but also "want" the app to "know" their favorite drinks — and when to suggest a new one. It seems our next generation want an application that is customer-centric instead of customer-driven. We are further away than original before for the average individual bringing up their own intent explicitly. If we do not provide the tools that enable a two-way road where also the average individual can express their own intent (CRM, I am talking to you), the more corporations will do all the planning for us. In order for setting the other sideline of the road, we need to allow each individual to have its own personal data store that is very responsive through API on taking and accepting requests. That initiative is called VRM. In a world where we live with the internet of things and more mobile technologies, this is starting to become an infrastructure that is more enabling than ever before. The book discusses the many initiatives that have gone through on providing this system of thought where the customer can be reached instead of being captivated. With machine learning tools that are handed to the few that derive biases of our own intentions, to little to no liabilities when our personal data is misused and breached, to providing inaccurate information of our self and limiting the choices of our preferences to only the most popular ones, there is more a need than ever for the individual to step in and have a side version of their own demands. With how current online agreements are a contract of adhesion, there is no much the individual can do to this day.
This has to be flipped one day and humbly speaking, there are four pillars if done properly can make the individual exponentially a more trusting entity than a corporation. The author says that there is a lot of MLOTT (Money Left On The Table) where people can give to others without a second thought whenever they appreciate a specific service. But I begged to differ, as I know for the fact that most do not have a lot of money left on the table because of the following reasons:
- Make Sure People Are Healthy: We need to make the commitment where people prioritize their health issues and keep their bodies straight and fit to prevent the inevitable. After all, an ounce of prevention is a pound of cure. I think people will not have clear intents when their bodies preoccupy them (painkillers are not the ultimate solution).
- Make Sure People Are Merited By Value: We live today in disrupting times where Artificial Intelligence is removing those mundane jobs that can be replaced with computers. In the online HBR cover story "Inside Facebook's AI workshop", Artificial intelligence is not used anymore only by experts of the field, but your average Joe employee, by making the user interface of those AI solutions simple. For this reason, we have to keep people ahead of the curve on bringing value to society before they fall in a deep hole. For people who have families and others to take care of, this weight is even further for them to take themselves back on their own two feet. If people can barely pay their next bills, not due to extravagant lifestyle choices, then how can we assume what they can offer when they can't keep up with themselves?
- Make Sure They Do Micro Accounting: A lot of the stuff that we use and buy as a service we seem worthy may not be worthy of the actual value. I think being accountable on investing in products and services that will add value to the long-term is a step that people should already start making it as a habit. It will eventually be a cornerstone habit for people actually putting money on the table at the right place.
- Make Sure They Have a Growth Mindset and a deep care how our brain works: If the physical constraints are lifted from the above three, then according to Maslow's Pyramid, they have the ability to self-actualize. But it's best we self-actualize in a way where we all live in harmony instead of stepping others in order to reach the top. In that sense, we won't be any different than what corporations do these days. Education focuses a lot on giving us a foundation on how to be able to survive with a technical field of our choice in our society instead of how to be a morally ethical good being with the rest of the members of our community. This was part optional for the education system to teach because we so far lived a life where we most were responsible to follow the status quo and be passive. In the intention economy, this will not be an option, it will be mandatory for everyone to have some form of good intent, or otherwise, without good intent, the wheels won't keep rolling.
Please read the book The Intention Economy by Doc Searls, as this is only one out of the few authors that go beyond the Advertimania we have today for improving our own customer experience and unearthing our customer intent in order to keep the books between demand and supply on balance. The only reason I gave it four stars is because this book is very open-ended that needs you to take the time to look at the many references the author goes through in order to have a more better clear picture. Other than that, it is very well organized and provides as much historical background to understand how we ended up in this current situation mess besides all the good intentions the founders of the internet envisioned.
My last parting words are that there are supporting movements for individuals that have lost their time spent by the influences of corporations. Tristan Harris, behind the movement "Time Well Spent", discusses in of his 2017 Ted Talks "How a handful of tech companies control billions of minds every day" on the different tactics companies use on taking most of the attention from you. Taking away of our attention may not be harmful, but it is definitely psychological. If the person submits their time to others than spending something more purposeful, we are decreasing the value of what each individual is worth, stagnating the economy on the long term. So if you care about the world where people can take their own small ships and traverse their own adventures rather others letting them do the handling for them, let's make the Intention Economy a reality in order to have a more accurate model of the supply and demand market.
The internet is free
But our data is not free
It is not a "chance"
It is "guaranteed"
One day, we will definitely flip
That card with the words engraved:
"Get Out Of Jail, Free"
To use or not to use the card?
Time to make the switch