Technology

An App Store and Service to Completely Change the World

/ futuristpaul (Paul Higgins) / 3 Comments

We are standing in the middle of one of the major turning points in technology history.

We will only know whether that statement is true in retrospect in a few years time but I believe that the developments around the Watson computing model are creating a new wave of innovation possibilities.

ZDNET has reported on IBM setting up a Watson division with $1 billion dollars in funding and 2,000 employees to leverage the investment that has gone into developing the Watson cognitive computing model:

IBM forms Watson Business Group: Will commercialization follow?

Including:

The Watson Business Group will break down into four groups:

  • One focused on research and development on cognitive computing.
  • Another aimed at applying Watson to new industries to “disrupt and transform how business is done.”
  • An implementation group to ensure Watson has services support to keep customers satisfied. 
  • An engagement team to sell and market Watson.

and

Specifically, IBM is launching the following Watson cloud services:

  • IBM Watson Discovery Advisor is aimed at pharmaceutical, publishing and education research. The promise here is that Watson will wade through search results to deliver data and context faster for researchers.
  • IBM Watson Analytics Advisor is designed to be used by enterprises to send questions and raw data sets to Watson and allow the system to deliver insight.

and:

Big Blue said it will invest $1 billion into the Watson division including $100 million to fund startups developing cognitive apps

This follows a story in The Verge in the middle of November announcing that Watson was being opened up to developers through an API that would allow people to build applications on top of its platform:

IBM’s more powerful Watson supercomputer is opening up for public use

The combination of natural language/cognitive computing capability, with the system operating as a platform that others can build new applications on is analogous to the levels of innovation that we have seen in smartphone and tablet application markets in the last few years. The major difference is that the focus will be almost purely on applications that can disrupt whole systems and industries deliberately.

The value in the app development market has been twofold:

  1. The possibilities envisaged by tens of thousands of developers all around the world adds hugely to the perspectives and possible ideas that can be generated compared to keeping things in house.
  2. The fact that all those people are prepared to risk their money and time to try stuff has bypassed the normal “MBA spreadsheet” assessment of ideas and funding so that lots more stuff has been tried. Trying more stuff means more stuff gets to prove it can work.

This has led to a huge flowering of applications, many of them trivial but some of them have been fantastic and world changing.

This can lead to big bang disruption as described by Steve Denning in his review of the book of the same name : Big Business’s Worst Nightmare

If IBM and Watson and the developers involved can get this right then I expect much higher levels of big bang disruption over the next few years. This means that the levels of change experienced by people and business over the next decade might pale into insignificance over the next decade.

As my friend Stowe Boyd would say: “welcome to the post normal!”

Paul Higgins

More Than 300 Sharks In Australia Are Now On Twitter – Is it Bad Public Policy?

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Over at NPR there is a story:

More Than 300 Sharks In Australia Are Now On Twitter

(seen via Estelle Mayer)

A shark warning is displayed near Gracetown, Western Australia, in November. An Australian man was killed by a shark near the area that month, sparking a catch-and-kill order.

It commences:

“Sharks in Western Australia are now tweeting out where they are — in a way.

Government researchers have tagged 338 sharks with acoustic transmitters that monitor where the animals are. When a tagged shark is about half a mile away from a beach, it triggers a computer alert, which tweets out a message on the Surf Life Saving Western Australia Twitter feed. The tweet notes the shark’s size, breed and approximate location.

Since 2011, Australia has had more fatal shark attacks than any other country; there have been six over the past two years — the most recent in November.

The tagging system alerts beach goers far quicker than traditional warnings, says Chris Peck, operations manager of Surf Life Saving Western Australia. “Now it’s instant information,” he tells Sky News, “and really people don’t have an excuse to say we’re not getting the information. It’s about whether you are searching for it and finding it.”

This is sort of an interesting use of technology but is it good public policy and use of resources? The article quotes that 6 people have died here in Australia from shark attacks since 2011 and certainly when they occur they are tragedies for the families involved and get a lot of public coverage.

However to put this in context almost 4,000 people died on our roads from 2011 to 2013 (statistics from BITRE and the ABC). With the beach crazy culture we have I would therefore think that the risk of driving to the beach is higher than being attacked by sharks by multiple factors.

There is something primal about the the thought of being attacked by a shark and I have certainly had those feelings while surfing or ocean swimming for triathlon training. There is also something about the thought that when we get behind the wheel that we are in control as compared to sitting in a plane or being attacked in the water.

The reality is that when we enter the domain of the shark we hand ourselves over to the elements and we live in a modern controlled world where that is unusual for billions of people in cities. However we shouldn’t allow those factors to skew our view of where money should be spent to reduce loss or suffering. If we want to limit public spending by reducing tax takes and minimising our own payments as much as possible we need resources spent in the best possible way, not driven by our emotional biases.

The story of our road toll here in Australia is a great one of steady reductions with a 29% reduction from 2003 to 2012 when looked at from a fatalities/100,000 population basis. I am not an expert on these issues but I find it hard to believe that funds spent on furthering this progress would be less well spent than tagging sharks and getting them to tweet. It may be that the notification part is a small amount of a project for other reasons and therefore the spend is justified but the debate should be had.

Far too much of our public policy is driven by emotion rather than careful analysis. A case in point is climate change policy. I am a strong believer in climate change and man’s contribution to it. That also means we have to marshal our resources and spend them wisely. However there have been some crazy policies here in Australia that have been middle class welfare rather than effective climate change policies (the Productivity Commission has detailed some of these).

The effective use of foresight requires the careful analysis of policies and their possible effects in the real world and then making the hard choices. That does not mean that it is all about logic and analysis because human beings and communities do not live by logic. It does mean that logic and critical thought has to play a central part.

I will be scared of sharks when I enter the ocean, I just don’t want significant amounts of public money spent on reducing the risk or my fears. We have greater challenges.

Paul Higgins

My job advice to my nephews and nieces for 2025

/ futuristpaul (Paul Higgins) / 6 Comments

I spent a few days over the Christmas break down at my parents house near the beach on the Mornington Peninsula and hung out with my brothers, sisters in law, and my nephews and nieces.

During one of our later night discussions which are always willing but friendly one of my sisters in law posed the question of what my view was on what they should be advising their children on their future work prospects and directions. We had a bit of a discussion on that but then I sat down and collated a few thoughts for them and some things I think they should read. This is the gist of that advice:

Bottom line is that I believe that we are at the edge of a technological revolution in robotics and artificial intelligence.

Advances in robotics that include cheaper and better sensors and intelligence capacity will move them beyond manufacturing and into cooperative manufacturing, and assisting and replacing humans in all sorts of physical tasks.

Advances in artificial intelligence due to massive increases in computing power and moves towards much better natural language computers/semantic knowledge/deep machine learning will move computer intelligence out of just replacement of easily routinised jobs due to data crunching capacity, and into many more areas of human work – e.g. computer assisted journalism

There are really two scenarios here – that we will see more changes than we can imagine as in the industrial revolution, and more and more jobs will be created, or large slabs of jobs will disappear for ever and not be replaced, and that will cause significant disruption and competition for work unless we move to a new way of having an economy. Now you can take the Luddite view or you can take an optimistic view but the key to thinking about the future is to create a strategy that deals with multiple possible futures as well as you can, whilst understanding that most of the futures you can think up will probably not go close to mapping what the world will look like.

Just to put this in context my youngest niece will probably not enter the workforce until at least 2025, and more probably 2030 and will then have a working life which is likely to extend to 2080 so we are talking about long time frames here.

So what advice would I give to a parent of a 5-15 year old at the moment.

The key is involvement in :

  • Jobs that are not easily routinised – my brother mentioned plumbing and other trades and he was right– the capacity to carry out a complicated task that is different every time and interact with people will still be highly human centered.
  • Jobs with high levels of manual dexterity – robotics still find that hard to master although some systems of surgery are better than people already.
  • Jobs that require high levels of empathy and capacity to interact with people – e.g. aged care, teaching, although stuff like retail is likely to become more data and network facilitated than through an individual shopping experience.
  • Jobs that require the capacity to coach and facilitate networks to perform rather than the current emphasis on managers and hierarchies – requires empathy as well.
  • Jobs centred around the ability to find insight in data – assisted by AI but value added by people.
  • Jobs that are highly creative and require visions and connection.
  • Jobs that cross the boundaries of the jobs types I have listed above.
  • Jobs centered around the ability to code

In terms of thinking about this more I would recommend looking at the following

Better Than Human: Why Robots Will — And Must — Take Our Jobs – by the fantastic Kevin Kelly

Algorithms, Robots and the Future of Management – a previous post by me with a great addition from my friend and colleague Stowe Boyd

I also recommend you read Stowe’s :Beneath the chatter about the Future Of Work lies a discontinuity which I think is more about the near future than the long future.

The IFTF report on future work skills – details drivers and skills

In the end we can give all the clinical and logical advice we like but the most important thing for them to do is to pursue what they are passionate about with a weather eye out to the fact that you need passion, skills and a market to make a living and:

  • If you have passion and skills but not market you have a hobby
  • If you have skills and a market but no passion you will be mediocre or burnout
  • If you have a market and passion but no skills you will fail in an increasingly competitive world

The great thing about the modern world is that skills are easier and easier to gain, and markets can span the globe for an individual or a small organisation. So passion is the cornerstone.

Paul Higgins

Some readers have requested some further links and reading on these issues. Here are  a a few from our scanning database:
Robots Can’t End Amazon’s Labor Woes Because They Don’t Have Hands

This was written by RACTER, a computer program that can generate original English language prose and poetry at random

SWARM Quadrotors (Aerial Robots): Coordinated Flight of Small Quadcoptors Interacting with Humans

A Mind-Controlled Exoskeleton Will Kick Off the 2014 World Cup

Brainlike Computers, Learning From Experience

Music Industry Whinges or Music Industry Whinges?

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An interesting article at the New York Times entitled As Music Streaming Grows, Royalties Slow to a Trickle talks about streaming services and their income payments to artists including:

“Late last year, Zoe Keating (pictured) , an independent musician from Northern California, provided an unusually detailed case in point. In voluminous spreadsheets posted to her Tumblr blog, she revealed the royalties she gets from various services, down to the ten-thousandth of a cent.

Even for an under-the-radar artist like Ms. Keating, who describes her style as “avant cello,” the numbers painted a stark picture of what it is like to be a working musician these days. After her songs had been played more than 1.5 million times on Pandora over six months, she earned $1,652.74. On Spotify, 131,000 plays last year netted just $547.71, or an average of 0.42 cent a play.”

The article raises a number of important issues but also seems to speak from a sense of the music companies protecting their turf and musicians being entitled to a living.

One of the constant themes in my conference presentations and my talk to University students on the disruptive effects of web technologies has been the removal of the gatekeeper. I commonly describe this gatekeeper as a bunch of middle aged white men making decisions about what the consumer will get to listen to or get to see.

I see this removal of the gatekeeper as one of the great things of the 21st century and the ability of the any creator of “stuff” being able to connect to anyone in the planet as a fantastic development. There is a lot of hand wringing in the music industry about these issues but I see them as mainly a self protection mechanism rather than any real concern about the musicians.

I think that we are likely to see the following:

  • More and more musicians connecting to their fans in a number of ways including streaming services.
  • Streaming services beating the ownership model in most cases.
  • An increase in the total spend on music as more and more people are connected.
  • The average income per musician/band falling because people will be exposed to far more music than the gatekeepers let people listen to. Total number of bands and musicians available will grow faster than total income.
  • Breakout bands and hits still commanding good money.
  • Innovative approaches and musicians finding ways to make all this work – a la Amanda Palmer on Kickstarter.

I am confident that market mechanisms will sort out the issues and that if streaming services try to pay little in the long term then other services will spring up to take the space.

I would like to end with the Hunter S Thompson quote on the music industry:

“The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There’s also a negative side.”

The new way has to be better than that

Paul Higgins

Ruminations on Web Technologies from New York

/ futuristpaul (Paul Higgins) / 2 Comments

I’m sitting here after a day and a half in New York ruminating on a presentation I have to give on the future of web technologies when I return. In between long bouts of walking around the city tracing the notes of my favourite venture capitalist bloggers from New York I have been inhaling William Gibson’s “Distrust That Particular Flavour”. A particularly apt writer to be digesting when afflicted by jet lag from a 24 hr trip and a 14 hour time difference.

The challenge of the presentation is that I need to give it to a bunch of first year university students all of which will have not lived without the web. Two things have resonated with me from Gibson’s writing. The first is the concept of the book as a technology and the requisite learning requirements needed to enable the technology. One cannot imagine a new technology being adopted that requires years of learning in order to operate. Our modern web technologies are characterised by intuitive ease-of-use which both facilitate adoption and dispersion through the culture but also contribute to a shallowness in design and innovation. The second is the concept that changes in culture are technologically driven but that we cannot know the culture we live in by its very nature. The students to whom I’ll be talking are immersed in a web technology culture that they cannot truly know or comprehend because they live it. So the value that I can provide is one of providing a long-term contextual discussion of web technologies inside a concept of change and disruption. From that I intend to facilitate a discussion from the students to create something new rather than just lecture to them.

The core of what I currently intend is to stretch back over a longer period of time to look at the nature of disruption and change via technological change through the ages. Then I will challenge the group as to what this might mean for the future of web technologies. I am a long term believer in the concept that in order to understand something you should have to teach it to someone else. Along with that belief is another strong view that the group is way smarter than the individual. Having said that I am both excited and terrified (and those emotions are closely aligned) to be giving the talk.  The excitement is linked to what sort of possibilities might emerge, the terror is linked to that falling flat in a performance sense.

The subject matter is inextricably linked to a presentation that that I also have to prepare for the Department of Premier and Cabinet on future public policy challenges. From the concept of cultural change driven by technological change then the disruptive effects of web technologies have to be a large part of that vision of suggested possibilities. At their core web technologies are changing the nature of the power relationships between people and the organisations they deal with. That is a challenge for public policy.

If anyone has any suggestions on what I should present in either case then please feel free to comment here or email me at paul@emergentfutures.com

Paul Higgins

My Favourite Applications

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I was asked yesterday to do some guest lectures on the influence and future of web technologies to Digital Media, Education and Creative Arts university students. In some ways I  find that a bit daunting because they will have grown up with the web. It got me thinking about what to talk about and I guess a perspective from an old fogey who has lived through the changes is worthwhile. One of the things I get asked a lot after keynotes and workshops is what applications do I use and why?  I am getting a new laptop delivered today (maybe my last one ever because of tablet developments) and it got me focused on what were the first applications I would load on to it to get me going and to coordinate with my other devices and work colleagues. So here are my top web based cross platform technologies (after of course basics like a Chrome Web Browser)- in order of importance.

1/ Evernote

If I had to pick one application it would be Evernote as it has become the core of what I do.

We use it to store all of our environmental scanning material which then feeds into client work, keynote presentation preparation. For example we generally have a 3-6 month lead time for presentations so on top of our core scanning notebook I collect  cross links to the notes in our system under specific presentation titles to go back to once we start to put together a narrative

I use it to track project notes because I can record it on my desktop, my iPad and my android phone.

I use it for check-lists for travel for the same reason

The web clipper allows me to clip interesting articles and reports for about 30 minutes in the morning which then syncs effortlessly so I can read them on my iPad when travelling

I photograph workshop worksheets and maps and share those with clients afterwards.

The system allows export of all the data so we can keep offline back ups and get our stuff out any time that we want to.

Bets of all it is free although we pay for the premium version

Image

I pray every day that they stay as a stand alone business and do not get taken over by Microsoft especially.

2/ Drop Box

For those not familiar with it Drop Box allows you to place a folder on your hard drive and anything that is saved in there is synchronised to the cloud and then synchronised to any device you have the application loaded on to.

I use drop box to:

Share a folder with my farm manager so I can see his reports and back up database files any time that I want to from wherever I am

Share a folder with Kim our office manager so I can see all our scanned documents (which is most things) at any time

Keep all the images that we use for presentations so I can access them from any device for preparation.

Save a copy of keynotes before I travel to present (I am paranoid about not having a presentation work so I save one on the hard drive, one on a USB stick, a separate portable version on a different USB stick which I put in a separate bag, upload one to Prezi (see below), and download one from Prezi to my iPad)

Share client documents for workshops and project work

Image

3/ Kindle 

I no longer buy any non fiction books it printed version (I still like a printed book for fiction reading in bed and on planes and one of the people that prompted this post told me the other day he buys eBooks and prints them!!!)

The convenience of being able to carry so many books with me that I have notes in and being able to access that on desktop, iPad and smartphone is fantastic for me ( I mainly use the iPad). The convenience of having a book delivered to me 1 minute after making a  decision to buy it, and to have access to a much wider range of publications than I ever could locally is great.

Image

4/ ABC iView

This is more an entertainment one and local to Australia than a work one but we use it a lot. I rarely watch TV when it is on these days, preferring to time shift my viewing habits. iView works seamlessly and we use it a lot on the iPad either stand alone or plugged into the TV. It allows you to create a watch list and to watch programs and remembers where you were if you only watch part of a show. That is useful because I am often up well before Jo and Miles and watch a bit on my iPad while having breakfast.Image

5/ TweetDeck

I use TweetDeck more on my computer than I do on my iPad because I am not that keen on the iPad app and find it hard to integrate my overall workflow with it on the iPad.

I use Tweetdeck to organise my Twitter stuff and have several columns set up inside it than I find useful:

A Follow column which is for all the people I follow. This is too large a group to look at all the time but I try and dip into “the stream” 2-3 times a day for serendipity.

A mentions column to track where I am being mentioned and re-tweeted

A direct message column which is set up with a pop up notice so I can respond to people

A “my perspectives list” which is a core group of people I follow assiduously on a daily basis for scanning and information purposes If you want to see this – it is a public list at https://twitter.com/#!/futuristpaul/my-perspectives-list)

A scheduled updates list because we tend to queue tweets to get a spread over different parts of peopel’s day in different parts of the world and to manage workflow on our side.

Image

6/ Skype

Which we use all the time for internal communication and for travel, both on the laptop and on the iPadImage

7/ Prezi and Prezi Viewer

We use Prezi for all our presentations and I love using the Prezi Viewer application on my iPad because I present without notes and like to do multiple run through and rehearse presentations. Having it in a format the looks just like my presentation on my iPad allows me to rehearse multiple times on planes and taxis and hotel rooms and get the flow down pat. I usually give it one more run through just before going on.Image

8/ Carbonite

Carbonite is an on-line back up system. Like most people I am variable when it comes to making back ups and also wanted an offsite solution so that if we had a fire or a burglary we would be able to recover all our important data. It is a set and forget system that works in the background and backs up all the files that you designate and can be accessed from other devices. Image

9/ Got to Meeting

We use Go to meeting all the time for on-line internal collaboration meetings, for practice run through of presentations and for draft presentation checks with clients that want them prior to workshops or keynotes

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So there you go and it certainly demonstrates how integrated web services are to how we work these days.

I would be interested in any suggestions from others on their favourite applications that I should try.

Paul Higgins

Car Sharing about to Explode?

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I wrote a post back in May on

The Mental Shift in the Collaboration Economy and Why it Matters to Everyone

The post is about how collaboration and sharing is taking off and specifically mentioned car sharing as a key example.

On Tuesday GigaOm had a notice up that GM was partnering with Relay Rides to allow users of OnStar to rent their cars out via a mobile app:

GM opens up OnStar with peer-to-peer car sharing service

This is the implementation of an announcement from back in October.

This is a big deal because it is about building services on top of existing installed technologies rather than people having to pay for new technologies.

It is also a big deal because OnStar has an installed user base of 6 million people which immediately gives the idea scale.

Our cars are one of our most expensive capital and operating budget items. In a time of financial uncertainty and risk a method which safely allows us to offset that cost by lending our car to a trusted social network may take off in a big way.

If that is the case then car makers better look out because they can throw out all their projections on future car sales.

Internet and Reading

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Over at Tumblr I re-blogged Alex Madrigal’s article from the Atlantic showing a chart of the percentage of Americans reading books over time:

http://emergentfutures.tumblr.com/post/21017030486/the-next-time-someone-says-the-internet-killed

The original article (which is linked to in the re-blog) shows the following:

 

 

The reason that I am putting this up here is that the re-blog had a very high number of responses – likes, re-blogs and comments. I put up the post on Friday 13th April at 7.20pm and by this morning (Sunday 15th at 9am) there have been 1057 responses which is the highest for any of our posts in such a short time.

 

This had me wondering why. If you set aside some of the comments on the gap in the data between 1957 and 1990, which way the graph should run, and issues of cause versus correlation I think there are some very interesting things here:

 

  • Scrolling through the comments (which I acknowledge are a skewed subset of blog readers and online enthusiasts) you get a real sense of outrage that the modern generations are being accused of reading less and that some older time was a “golden age”
  • There is a real debate about what constitutes literature versus just reading. It is my view that as long as people are reading books the fact that they are not “high literature” is irrelevant because it is sparking the interest in reading that it important.
  • There is a strong aspect of critical thinking and critical review which a lot of people worry has been lost by modern pop culture and reductions in attention spans. It is certainly my experience of interacting with younger people (and again my sample if probably very skewed) that they are very strong in their thinking and assessments of arguments.

 

From the large number of responses where there was no comment, just a like or re-blog it is obvious that this article immediately touched people and they wanted to share what it was saying. I think that this is an area which is of critical importance for our future and it is my view that the sharing and availability of books via the internet is a positive thing which will only be enhanced as our tools around “social reading improve”

From my own personal point of view I find my experience going in the opposite direction. I was a complete outlier in terms of book reading, reading 2 or 3 a week and having 8-10 on the go at any one time. I have certainly found that our work and need to maintain scanning of up to date ideas on disruption and change has reduced that significantly as the influence of the internet has grown. Although I  am sure that I am still on the heavy side of the general population. I think that overall my reading experience has been enriched by information access that the internet has provided but I find myself having to work harder and harder to find the space to read longer form material, including books. 

This is more true of non fiction material that it is of fiction because despite the fact that most of my non fiction reading has now transferred to the Kindle app on my iPad I am still a dinosaur when it comes to reading novels. This is largely because my novel reading tends to be a habit that is now largely confined to reading before going to sleep, especially when travelling for work and I cannot make myself move to do that on an iPad.

 

I would be interested in knowing what other people’s experiences and thoughts are.

 

Paul Higgins

The Key Driver of Change for the Future

/ futuristpaul (Paul Higgins) / 3 Comments
Key Drivers of Change


As a futurist I am often asked what the future will look like. Apart from the fact that there are many possible futures, presenting one view of the future limits people’s thinking.

I would much rather talk about multiple futures and the major drivers that will shape those futures. This is because the audience I am talking to can then take away that information, critically review it and how it applies to their own circumstances as things change. This provides far more value.

One of the frameworks that we use to look at what might happen is the Three Tees – Technology, Trust, and Transparency. These three are shaping change but they are also interacting with each and changing each other as we move into the future. This is how I think about them:

Technology

Despite the fact that people love to get their hands on new technology I see technology as secondary in the processes that are driving change. If we look at the IT and telecommunications (ITC) area of technology as an example, we have moved from single function devices to technology platforms. A smartphone is essentially a portable mini-computer and people are building different applications and using those applications in different ways every day. This means that the technology is the ticket to play in the game, not the main game itself. It is what is built on top of the technology that counts.

However the ITC technology is fundamentally changing the world in other ways as well. The technology is driving connections all over the world that mean anything that can be digitised can be moved around cheaply and easily and processed in the most effective place. It is also allowing mobility of communications, work and play that are altering how and where we use the technology.

Trust

What is really driving change is the social application of technology. Kevin Kelly, the author of What Technology Wants says social use of technology is making prediction of what might happen very difficult. You might produce a piece of technology or an application to be used on that technology and have a view about how that might be used. Once that technology or application is in the hands of 5 million people they will all have different thoughts on how it might be used and they will innovate in ways you never thought of.

So social use of technology is increasing levels of innovation and change and how that is shaped is largely being driven by trust. If someone I trust recommends that I try an application on my iPad I am likely to do it. In order to populate that iPad with useful applications when I first played with it I reached out to people that I know and trust through email, through Twitter, and via Tumblr the micro-blogging site that we use. That behaviour is being replicated all over the world through social networks, cafe rating sites, hotel complaint sites, etc. If someone I know and trust, or someone who is connected to someone I know and trust tells me something is great I am far more likely to try it. If they give the same business or product a bad rating I am likely to avoid it. Humans have done this for thousands of years; the technology is just amplifying the behaviour and widening the network of people who can take notice. This brings us to transparency.


Transparency

The combination of social networks and the technology that is enabling them is rapidly increasing the level of transparency occurring in all aspects of our lives. Here are just a few examples:
  • You can now use your mobile phone to read bar codes and product labels and get information on that product before you buy it. There are services available that will also give you a price comparison on the same product for shops in your area based on your location being recorded by GPS on your phone.
  • Just recently Real Time Farms has been started by an engineer from Google who describes the service as: 

“Real Time Farms is a crowd-sourced, online food guide, and we’re all about connecting you to fresh sources of food — items you can trust, whether eating in or out,” he explains. “We aim to be the IMDB of food transparency.”

This is opening up where food comes from and displaying it in easy ways for people to find out and also share information with people in that network.

  • Another start up in the transparency area is www.Gri.pe where people can post up their complaints about products and services and seek to have them addressed. The key to this site is that it shows those complaints to all the connections that people have. I recently looked at a complaint that a consultant I know put on their site and it reports the complaint was influencing 487,000 people. Now I am sure that the real number that is influenced is lower than that but it is still a substantial number.


So the technology is enabling connections and forming a platform to build applications on. The social use of that technology is changing how the technology and applications are being used. One of the prime outcomes from this is a rapid change in the transparency we all face and a lot of that change is being driven by the levels of trust we feel for people , products, or organisations. So why is that important.

What Does This Mean and What Should You Do?

I think that these changes are primarily for the good. What they will do is provide greater reward for good behaviour, great service and great products. They will punish bad behaviour and bad products at a much higher level than in the past. They will also mean that branding and marketing will have to change significantly because trusted information and real experiences will become far more important than marketing messages and hype.

This will apply to small business, large business, not for profit organisations, and government alike. Just think of the example of a not for profit organisation that is not telling the whole truth of what they do, or where only a small proportion of donated money goes to the actual cause. That organisation is at much greater risk of being found out and then that message getting out to a much larger number of people. If this makes people and organisations more likely to behave in an ethical manner then I am all for it.

When I talk to people about these changes their first response is they do not have the time to jump in and be involved in these social networks, monitoring what is being said about them and responding. That they are too busy just getting their day to day jobs done. While I can sympathise with that view my response is:

  • First and foremost concentrate primarily on providing a great product, a great service, or great customer service. This is more important than ever and its importance will only grow. These social networks and connections will amplify good signals and bad signals alike. You cannot manage them by being on the networks and influencing the conversation. You primarily manage them by delighting your customers.
  • The conversation about you or your product will happen whether you get involved or not, so not getting involved is not going avoid the issue.
  • Have a good look at using these sorts of technologies and networks to improve your marketing or reduce the costs of your marketing. I recently attended a presentation from the banana industry. They described how they have managed their marketing in the face of significant reductions of marketing dollars due to the crop damage the industry has faced. Innovative use of social media enabled them to gain more marketing exposure than they had when they had much more money. Necessity is the mother of invention and they freely admit they were forced into an action they should have done earlier and voluntarily.


In this article I have not even touched on the increased competition that technology is bringing to our worlds through global connections and the destruction of business models. More on that later