It's only a matter of time before you see headlines like this for virtually every product category - digital and physical - User-Generated Content Is Top Threat to Media and Entertainment Industry, Accenture Survey Finds
What is a database but a resting place, however temporary, for bytes (being an arbitrary unit of measure) of data waiting to be consumed by some application. It is useless otherwise. But in essence, isn't the real world just a database? Everywhere is information waiting for consumption. Our senses are applications that consume data. Our bodies themselves consume data (all living things do). Evolution itself could be seen as versions of applications responding to changes in the Earth's database. What I'm trying to say is, there must be some interesting way to make use of this fact.
There is data everywhere. We are all applications. Why don't we build better bridges between ourselves so that we can better share our data? Right now, as I sit here, the application known as Peter is consuming data. Is this info of interest to anybody else? Depending on one's knowledge, care and/or use for me personally you could probably draw concentric rings eminating from me that demonstrate levels of interest. But that interest quickly tails off. My data becomes interesting only insofar as it describes environmental or other sensory inputs (this may not be strictly true - my editorial input may have value - e.g. The temp is 70 but that's unusual for this time of year). What's the barometric pressure at my lat/lon, etc. Do I see the Golden Gate bridge from where I stand? Is there a line at the Starbucks where I am sitting? If I go out of my way to post this data, would someone be interested in it (Flickr is a great data point)? If everyone posted random bits of data what would that truly provide? Useful information or meaningless noise?
Perhaps the Long Tail concept applies. It rapidly becomes a problem of search and categorization to make sense of it all, but maybe Google could help. Maybe it's self organizing. People are drawn to the info they're interested in and post the same. Who would take the time to make inputs? It's a social networking question but my bet is there could be a healthy quid pro quo. At least from a core initial group.
There are probably good existing analogs. Spies, for instance, make it their job to constantly input data. The unbelievably prescient book Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson imagined individuals called Gargoyles whose business it was to ceasely collect any/all information in their immediate vicinity. The latest incarnation is justin.tv. If the value to the greater good could be easily demonstrated, who knows? There may even be an economic model that could support it. I become a data source, a streamer, that people can rely on, subscribe to (RSS). I could be a specialist on parking spots at 76 and Amsterdam.
Perhaps even more interesting is what if I have hyper sensory inputs from other devices that I can assimilate into the Peter app? For example, maybe I have a geiger counter with me that I can use to stream radioactive data.
In this model, every person becomes a node in a vast, distributed application running off the database known as real life. And like other distributed apps, all nodes become more powerful and resilient as their connectivity increases. Through sharing, the community grows, its resources increase, its efficiency improves. Pretty cool.
It's ok, they hate me too. I can tell that marketers hate us because they are constantly attempting to distill whatever demographic we belong to into simple slogans, product lines, and ad campaigns. To them we are merely consumers: giant wallets with tiny brains and no free will; sheep, to be herded into groups and manipulated en masse.
Case in point is Calvin Klein's new fragrance for hip twenty-year-olds called CK in2u, which I read about in the New York Times last week. CK in2u is the successor to the wildly successful CK-1 which was popular in the mid 90's. Calvin Klein is courting a demographic they call the technosexual. It's a self-serving label. Sex is easy to wrap up and sell. Calvin Klein has access to beautiful models and can capitalize on the implicit promise that if you use CK in2u, you'll get some. According to the New York Times, "A typical line from the press materials for CK in2u goes like this: 'She likes how he blogs, her texts turn him on. It’s intense. For right now.'" This is fantasy and the DIY generation, the "technosexuals", won't buy it.
Technically savvy twenty-somethings are just too well informed for such an obvious and insulting ad campaign. They can learn about Neil Postman with a quick search of Wikipedia and corporate viral ad campaigns are old news. They will not have their consent manufactured by ads featuring gaunt teenage models. They want to think, not to be thought for.
Mostly, though, they want control--control over the product, the style, and the message. This is something that we will talk a lot about in this blog. The technically savvy are all about control. It's not about group or demographic ownership, but personal ownership. They blog because they want to get their voice out there. They think they are unique. Their community participation is bottom-up whereas ad campaigns like that of CK in2u are top-down.
How you open up a fragrance line, I don't know. I write software and in software it's easy (open source and public API's for example). However, one way to get started in both product categories is to be less hostile towards the purchaser. Treat them more like producers than consumers. Don't distill their motivations into sex and only sex. Let them create their own real groups instead of joining some make-believe idealized club. Finally, don't hate the people who you want buying your products. They know all the tricks and they can smell the hatred a mile away.
In the February 19, 1996 issue of Newsweek Steve Wozniak is quoted as saying:
" Our first computers were born not out of greed or ego but in the revolutionary spirit of helping common people rise above the most powerful institutions"
Great stuff. And who were those "most powerful institutions"? They were the mainframe and mini-computers vendors of the day - IBM, HP, Digital, Prime, Wang, Data General, Control Data, etc. Most people don't remember those days too well because the micro-computer (or PC as it came to be known) has insinuated itself into just about every part of our lives. And in the same way, it's hard to imagine a world bereft of all the innovation the PC-revolution sparked. For example, can you really remember a world without spreadsheet applications or the browser? All of which points to something I think about all the time. Ten years from now, what will we look back on and say "how on Earth could we have lived without...[fill in appropriate invention here]"? Revolutionary possibilities are all around us. There are many "powerful institutions" that are holding up innovation. The key is finding those most vulnerable and then doing something about it. I think the spirit Wozniak describes is alive and well and there are plenty more revolutions to be had.
Umair Haque writes for an awesome blog called Bubblegeneration. I am a huge believer in bottom-up thinking/acting and am in violent agreement with Umair's line of reasoning. In essence, he believes that in order to compete effectively in today's markets, you need to capture and leverage all the activity that's happening with your product/service out on the edges, in the field, where users really make it their own. Top down approaches where the uber-corporation knows best are obsolete and suffer, as a result, from what he calls "strategy decay" and he lists many examples. Here's a quote from a recent post called " Core vs Edge, Pt 18849" (no permalink available - come'on Umair!) that captures what I'm talking about.
What happens at the intersection of global hypercompetition, maturity, and shifting consumer needs?
If you're pursuing a core strategy, you consolidate.
Of course, this is a strategy which is utterly out of sync with exactly the economic pressures listed above in the first place. It's a strategy which dominates the industrial economics of scale and scope in mass production.
What Detroit needs are edge strategies, focused around deconstructing value chains, achieving hyperefficiency (vs simple cost-sharing), and shifting control to customers.
Think how the most simple shift to decentralization - kaizen - revolutionized autos in the 80s/90s.
Eric von Hippel also has a web site that provides great analysis on how individual consumers can (and do) radically change the basis of competition and turn upside down our normal thinking on how products can/should come to market. You'll never equate DIY with home improvement and handymen ever again.
I highly recommend reading everything these guys write if you're at all interested in how and why market power is moving inexorably into the hands of the customer.
I got my ham radio license a few years ago (KC2JZR) and was surprised to find myself joining a network of over 3 million people worldwide (700,000 in the U.S. alone). I got my license because I am a geek. But what really piqued my interest was the organization that supported me - the ARRL. The American Radio Relay League is the voice of Amateur Radio (or ham radio operators, "hams"). This not-for-profit group represents a fascinating hybrid of DIY energy and enthusiasm working effectively with big government, in this case the FCC. Here's a snip from their website:
Today ARRL, with approximately 152,000 members, is the largest
organization of radio amateurs in the United States. The ARRL is a
not-for-profit organization that:
• promotes interest in Amateur Radio communications and experimentation
• represents US radio amateurs in legislative matters, and
• maintains fraternalism and a high standard of conduct among Amateur Radio operators.
And this isn't some little outfit running on a shoestring budget:
At ARRL headquarters in the Hartford suburb of Newington, a staff of 120 helps serve the needs of members. ARRL is also International Secretariat for the International Amateur Radio Union, which is made up of similar societies in 150 countries around the world.
If you visit the FCC's website and look up Amateur Radio you find a
whole section on it. The hams of the world get serious respect. This is
from the FCC web site regarding the role of Amateur Radio:
• Promotion and enhancement of the Amateur Radio Service as a voluntary noncommercial public communications service.
• Continual advancement of the art of radio communication.
• Expansion of the reservoir of trained radio operators and electronic experts.
• Enhancement of international goodwill at the grass roots level.
This is a stunning example of not just the power of these "amateurs"
but how the U.S. government has encouraged, accommodated and cooperated
with the public in ways that most people don't appreciate or even know
about. But it's easy to find out more. Just check this out. I can't think of any other national, volunteer organization that has such systematic impact on things so important.
There is a critical issue facing us today, especially in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks and the Katrina disaster in NOLA. How much are we going to rely on government to take care of us and how much are we going to do ourselves? Thomas Paine said in "Common Sense" that "Society is produced by our wants, and government by wickedness", and all too often over the past few days I've been feeling that distinction. My confidence in government to do the "right thing" is at an all time low. I know I'm not alone. The digitally enabled masses are speaking up via blogs, SMS, forums, etc. and big media is paying attention, alerting the public at large of the discussion. All this is a good start. But it's only that.
One of my themes on this blog is the power of DIY, not just as a way to build things, but as a way to view the world, as a way to live. In a way, if you had to categorize it, it's sort of libertarian. But it's really more about control - over your life, over your world. In ceding all control over our safety to the government we are, in effect, forfeiting a huge chunk of our freedom. We expose ourselves to all sorts of potential problems - big ones. So what do we do? I find the existence of the ARRL enormously encouraging. Clearly, the public at large can not just shoulder the burden of public safety, but I do think that technology, designed creatively, distributed economically, and used cooperatively with government can, and absolutely should, play a key role in helping all of us sleep better at night. The ARRL is a perfect example of this. I anticipate much more discussion in the coming months and years as we try to deconstruct what happened in NOLA. I'm hoping the ARRL gets the credit they deserve but more importantly, I hope that it inspires our leaders to issue a call to arms. All of us need to take more responsibility for our own, as well as our communities' safety. And I strongly believe technology can play a crucial role.
