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The Rise of the Human

 

There was a time, not too long ago, when it was feared that computers would win a technological victory over humans and rule with cold, formulaic precision. But humans, being what they are, didn’t let it happen. Humans became creative with the technology—they used it for their own purpose—and that behavior is now reshaping business intelligence and launching a new age.

The Industrial Age is history. The Information Age is not far behind.

Structure is making way for the unstructured. The certainty of 2 + 2 = 4 is giving way to any number of answers. And before artificial intelligence can even be fully realized, human intelligence is trampling it into submission.

If the introduction of the Apple iPad (pictured above) does to media what the iPod did to music—which many predict—human beings are going to win again. It has the potential to make human life more unstructured, less binding, totally media-centric, and fully connected. It’s a tool that will yank people forward away from informational formulas and into the communication crossroads that business simply cannot ignore.

In an article by Brooke Alker titled, “The Next-Generation of Business Intelligence”, he makes the case that structured, internal data can take a business only so far today, and that it must be augmented by evidence from “the most unstructured corners of the Web.” He sees the semantic web filling in the gaps in business intelligence by putting human contribution squarely in the position of helping to forecast the future.

Foresight never comes from what has happened, it springs from what is happening right now, every minute, from every aspect of life.

Business is learning more each day that people are not that easy to control. Formulas, survey data, statistics, predictive calculations—while they all have value, the new business model must allow “life” to have a prominent place in the decision process.

When I refer to “life,” I’m talking about how people direct their lives based on their time, their money, and—most important—their love of what they choose to do. Human desire trumps just about every other aspect of human life as far as dictating behavior, defining human truth, and discovering signposts for the future. If you know peoples’ passions, observe their behavior, and listen to what they’re talking about—you’ll get a peek at what to expect. No 2 + 2 = 4 thinking will ever be as revealing as the human exceptions that prove 2 + 2 = 5.

What the pundits are calling Semantic Intelligence, we call Human Intelligence—the secret to why CultureWaves^® is so distinctly different from other intelligence gathering.

I’m often asked, what makes CultureWaves so different? My simple answer is: it’s because we give people the “WHY.” We go to the busy corners of the web where people are congregating; we listen to their conversations; and we report back on their behavior. We have people tagging this “life” through the use of human need-states, emotional attachments, and their own individual thinking. The results form human truths and human intelligence—factors that make business intelligence smarter because it’s based on what’s happening now, not what has happened. It extracts rich meaning and adds new relevance.

People have pirated technology. Their love of individuality and communication is now taking over business in the same way.

When people started building their own web sites in order to share life—their photos, their videos, and their comments—they didn’t do it to start businesses. They did it to communicate. Now business is following their lead as it enters the world of social media thus creating the dawn of the Communications Age. This dramatic shift is why the “life” aspect of CultureWaves is so valuable. It looks at life and applies it to business instead of the other way around. That “other way” was the way it used to work in the Information Age. Do you see that age disappearing? You should. In many ways…it’s already gone.

That’s it, from the edge of the world,

Bob

Note: “The Next-Generation of Business Intelligence” by Brooke Aker can be found at http://soa.sys-con.com/node/892846. Published December 21, 2009. Copyright © 2009 SYS-CON Media, Inc.

Image: Please click here for the link to the image at Reuters.com.

Ten Million Town Criers

There used to be a town crier in every town. His occupation grew out of the fact that in medieval England people couldn’t read and write. His job was to ring a bell and shout the news, literally, once or sometimes twice a day. Some criers were women. Having a loud voice was more important than your gender.

As people learned to read and write, and as printing presses became both smaller and more available, newspapers rose to prominence. But putting out a newspaper was a big effort, and many times the “news” lagged weeks or even months behind the events that shaped the news.

All of this took a sharp jump forward during the start of the American Revolution when Thomas Paine utilized a powerful new weapon to spread his views. He employed (drum roll) the pamphlet. At that time, his quick-press pronouncements were as immediate as a town crier and were a precursor to today’s blogs. They were self-published and extremely effective. Several of them swiftly changed the course of history.

You may be familiar with these words from The Crisis, published December 23, 1776, at a point when the revolution teetered between success and failure.

“THESE are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.”

And think about these pointed and clearly revolutionary words from Common Sense, a document that is credited with sparking the dissent that spawned the American Revolution.

“Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former promotes our happiness POSITIVELY by uniting our affections, the latter NEGATIVELY by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher.”

I wonder how popular Thomas Paine would be today on a cable network? Or talk radio? Or how many people would follow his blog, or his Twitter page?

Today everyone who has a blog, or a Twitter page, or one of the many other social networking sites, has a “street corner” where he or she can shout out news and views as they see it. So we now have a million, or 10 million, or perhaps 50 million town criers all over the internet. The newspapers and network media are being left behind, just as they were by Paine’s innovative pamphlets.

People are not waiting for our doddering and dusty old media to inform them. They’re doing their own investigative journalism. The young couple who exposed ACORN through their use of a hidden camera are the newest town criers on the scene; and they are doing more than shouting out the news. They are actually releasing hard evidence and plastering it all over YouTube, Twitter, and other social media. They are the Thomas Paines of the day—and their power of persuasion is just beginning to show its face and its force.

When CNN can’t bring us the immediate news in Iran during a scandalous election and the ensuing demonstrations—but Twitter can—you know “news reporting” is experiencing a seismic shift.

Our gathering of evidence and behavior in CultureWaves® through our Neemee™ software reminds me a little of the brave new reporters on YouTube and Twitter. Our collectors of behavior from life don’t expect it to drop in their laps, they’re going out and getting it themselves. And they are sharing it everyday—like 10 million town criers all shouting at once.

It’s something I’m proud to be a part of, and somewhat humbled by. Now if I could only write like Thomas Paine.

That’s it, from the edge of the world,

Bob

To see the ACORN video on YouTube, click here.

 

Image: Town Crier, Provincetown, Massachusetts; from a 1909 postcard published by Provincetown Advocate, Provincetown, Massachusetts. Please click here for the source.

Make your next thought better than your last.

The first thought.

Whether you believe in evolution, or intelligent design, or creation by an uncreated god—think about this.

What was it like to have the first thought? When those synapses crackled for the first time, did somebody, whoever it was, think “me,” “there is a me,” “me cold,” “me hungry,” “me want self-actualization”? Obviously, that last thought came later, and even today doesn’t come that often. But I’ll wager that soon after beings started to think, the ones who developed a capacity to think better, did better.

And that’s all we’re trying to help you do with neemee™. Only instead of being in a jungle, or a garden, or wherever that first thought came, we’re helping you think where you live today—firmly planted in the information age on the brink of an evolutionary revolution some people are calling Web 3.0.

But that is getting ahead of things.

Right now we have Web 1.0 and, for some, Web 2.0. And we have our hands full. Google. Yahoo. Facebook. MySpace. YouTube. 3D. Virtual Reality. Everything is mutating like an out-of-control virus in a Petri dish. The culture is growing wild, and you have to make a choice. Run and hide? Or inoculate yourself by injecting some of that virus right into your veins?

It’s never good to run and hide from technology.

The Boomer Generation comprises about 85% of decision makers in the business population. They understand Web 1.0 as a search device that can direct them to just about anything they want. That is, if they know what they want. (Remember, “me hungry.”) The basic bookmarking tool based on algorithms works for them. It’s like a phone book, or a fancy way of finding anything in the “library” of knowledge. Yet most of the “run and hide” Boomers are overwhelmed by the data, can’t find any real meaning in it, don’t get the social networking thing, see it as a kid toy, and have no idea how to make money with it.

The NetGenners (internet generation) simply don’t know anything else. They’ve either grown up with the web or embraced it as the boat carrying them through a monstrous sea change to an unknown shore. These are the tech-savvy, and they see the web as a magical doorway in a whole new expanding world of delights that come to them wherever they are. (Quite a difference.) One of the most amazing things about this group is that they can be any age. They don’t fear the web, they drink it in, and they are being trained to think in a whole new way.

SOS For SEOs

Aren’t we all looking for the Can’t Fail Café? And aren’t way too many SEO executives sitting in the Disaster Diner wondering how they got there?

Recently I read an article on SEO BLOG entitled “Top Ten Reasons Why SEOs Fail on Social Media” The SOS message came through loud and quite clear to me. I agree with the author wholeheartedly—the problem with most search engine optimizers is that they are stuck spinning their wheels in SEO 1.O while the web is now in 2.0 and quickly heading into 3.0. The author’s 10 points revolve around the notion that social networking is advancing at a rate that is leaving all the old practices of Web 1.0 in the dust. An SEO stuck in the past handles social bookmarking like web directories, treats content like filler with no real commitment to community management, or just simply refuses to share. Those three major sins alone doom many SEOs to failure simply because they create yesterday’s newspaper, and even today’s newspaper is worthless to a person living in Web 2.0 and itching for 3.0.

The search engine of the future, which is what we’re developing with neemee™, is one that will be powered by human perspectives not mathematical algorithms.

Neemee is already a creative search engine that allows you to browse with heart, soul, and passion—and soon you’ll be able to tap into a social network completely dedicated to open-source sharing and collaboration. We’re not there yet; we need to add social networking and functions for chat and other sharing. We’ll also need to move quickly to 3D and advance toward the other kindling fires sparking Web 3.0.

It’s like the semantic web has a boat design blueprint and we have a boat built and on a shakedown cruise.

Welcome to "Tiser" Mania

The Advertiser versus the Microtiser™ is turning out to be one of the biggest battles for dominance since the dinosaur versus the mammal.  And the climate change seems to be in favor of the little guy once again. It’s a battle for relevance, size, scope, and status quo—and past supremacy holds very little sway.

The national election is bringing statisticians out of the woodwork to disseminate and interpret as much data as they can get their hands on, no matter what the margin of error is or how ultimately relevant it turns out to be. The blogger on the fringe is stealing the life breath from the big mammoths such as the New York Times and Washington Post. This massive surge of individual perspective gains relevance as representative of larger views.

Statistical data is not the Tyrannosaurus Rex it once was. We’re finding the art side, the evidence of the individual, is gaining importance as the emerging pesky, warm-blooded threat to the big guy.

The graphic at the top of this page was taken from the Presidential Watch O8 website and represents, as they say, “the ultimate set of tools to see, hear, and feel what citizens and supporters are saying on the Internet about the 2008 presidential elections.” Just by clicking on any one of the virtual communities, big or small, you can instantly get an update on that community’s take on the elections. What looks like a universe somewhere in space is really a universe inside the Internet—and it is constantly in a state of flux, just like life here on earth. It’s a massive amount of evidence, some of it backed up by statistics, much of it opinion and observation placed there based on the everyday life of an individual. It is an amazing map of the macro and the micro. And when you travel from one place to the other, your behavioral breadcrumbs allow your every move to be tracked and recorded.

Watch the CultureWaves™!

Each culture wave is the result of sifting through ever-changing patterns of life and linking them together in unexpected ways. Because it reflects the changing nature of life, a culture wave is never static. It lives, matures, or dies based on the cultural behavior it represents. That is why it is so important to watch how each wave changes over time.

We’ve been tracking our own take on what’s happening in the culture for almost three years now and currently are monitoring more than 34 different waves. It’s fascinating to me to see that some of what’s showing up as mainstream CultureWaves™ today surfaced back then as subtle shifts in cultural behavior. 

I thought you might like to take a peak at a sample of our mainstreaming, growing, and emerging CultureWaves. Each wave is accompanied by a quote illustrating the human truth that it represents. If these CultureWaves give you ideas, well, they should.  Mainstreaming and growing waves tell you what’s happening now; but the new ones, the emerging waves, have the potential of giving you a glimpse into the future. And that’s always worth a look.

These waves have tremendous societal impact on culture in the marketplace. If you see something that intrigues you, or want to know more, contact me. I’d love to hear which waves catch your attention.

1. CLOCKLESS

Hyper-life consumers find 24-hour solutions.

You respond when your body calls out, especially when it’s hungry, wants entertainment, or desires to buy. Our 24/7 society is subject to spur-of-the moment gratifications that can be satisfied instantly. And it’s made possible because of cell phones, pagers, computers, and other mobile devices that get us what we want even as we run to our next commitment.

“I want what I want when I want it!”

2. SENSORY APPEAL

Targeting the senses with new textures, colors, tastes, and sounds.

Activating the senses is becoming more and more ubiquitous. Our bodies create emotions based on reaction to sensory stimulus and seek enjoyment in the results. As a result, we are constantly looking for new ways to be stimulated.

“I’ll take the one that appeals to all my senses.”

3. BODY WARRANTY

Pushing our body beyond its limits.

Where’s a Fountain of Youth when you need one? If we can’t get it through magic, we get it through technology. When you connect the desire for immortality with the pervasive ability of technology to improve the body’s performance, you can see why people are demanding more out of their bodies.

“I want more out of my body than ever before.”

4. GREEN HOT

The return to nature by force.

Environmentalism isn’t just for tree huggers anymore. Large numbers of people are rallying to influence the good health of the planet. Their passion drives them to embrace perceptual concepts such as Healthy, Organic, Whole, and Sourced. This “green is good” ethos is shifting how companies are acting and investing.

“I’m not asking you to go green; I’m telling you.”

The Flip That Will Fuel the Future

The world is being rocked today by a seismic shift created by life forces all converging into a new way of looking at things.

Design, technology, entertainment, and well-being are all converging at record speeds to influence our culture, our markets, our businesses, and our lives in ways we’ve never experienced before. And it’s all happening in real time, from moment-to-moment from person-to-person, with intimacy never before possible.

The fact that communities can be formed on the Web overnight to react either to world events or simply to a new product introduction is an amazing phenomenon. This and other radical cultural evolutions must be harnessed if a company hopes to survive with any consistent measure of future success.

Right now, today, most companies have their eyes trained on exactly the wrong thing. They are fixated on their equity when they should be focused on the insights that will drive their futures.

Clash? or Cash?

Ever since someone decided to buy a loaf of bread rather than raising the wheat and baking it, culture and marketing have been giving each other clues to success. But anyone who’s ever launched a new product knows, if you’re not in tune with the culture, if you clash—you lose. Nothing is more of a moving target than American culture. Of course when you catch a wave, the payoff can be big.

I see our culture as a shape-shifting steady ebb and flow of old and new, established tradition and rebellion, facts and new facts, emotional ties and passionate breaks from the past.

In today’s marketing world it is vitally important to constantly be updated on what’s happening in the world—to make sure what you’re doing is going to catch that next big wave. With the need for speed in creating multimedia plans, including mass, B2B, and one-to-one communications, there’s no such thing as a slow build. You must be able to grab an emerging trend, figure out how it connects to your consumer, and then ride the build in the culture and the marketplace. When it reaches the mainstream the gold rush is over. You don’t want to be the last miner in the mine.