Category: Collaborative Age

How the GameStop Stock Event Ushers a New Era of Collective Resistance

The Gamestock event a few weeks ago where individual investors banding together drove the stock price up to create havoc in hedge funds and institutional investors is an interesting illustration of the power of the collective mobilized by social networks against institutions. This happened in a context of a brand loved by passionate geeks being under attack by finance hedge funds. I believe it is only the start of such situations and regulators in all industries will have to develop guidelines to deal with such collective mobilisations.

It is today very easy if there an online community with similar passions to create a movement, and this movement can have real-life effects. It happens on the political scene (various revolutions, not to mention the infamous US Capitol invasion) and will also increasingly happen on the economical scene (various boycotts, or joint action against certain companies deemed nefarious).

In the case of Gamestop, some wonder if it is a manipulation (i.e. a movement started by some people who had a vested interest to win heaps of money) but that will be hard to prove because it does not fall under the traditional stock manipulation definition (see for example this Forbes article “Reddit And GameStop Lessons: Former SEC Enforcement Chief Explains Stock Manipulation And How To Avoid Trouble“). At most an intent may be proven, but individuals that played along can’t get indicted.

Now that it is obvious how online communities can create substantial change in the way markets and regulated activities happen, regulators should develop strong guidelines about how to deal with such events: early detection, preventive actions and also a raft of corrective actions (mostly of the cool-off type) if effects are visible. At the same time collective action has always been part of political and trade-unions freedom and can’t be banned. It is a thin thread and it is essential to develop the right approaches and methods to deal with those events.

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How Social Media Could Be Adjusted to Make a Positive Contribution

Quite opposed to our previous post ‘How Social Media Currently Rewards Bad Behavior‘, Seth Godin post ‘Amplify possibility‘ provides a much more positive view on the adjustments that would be required to make social media more positive.

His analysis of the current situation echoes the analysis of many: “The social media companies optimized their algorithms for profit. And profit, they figured, would come from engagement. And engagement, they figured, would come from confounding our instincts and rewarding outrage.”

He uses a metaphor that I find powerful. Many people slow down to watch when there is an accident on the road, but we are almost in social media today at the stage where we create accidents to engage and get the attention of people!

However, according to him, “That’s not how the world actually works” Actual influencers, he argues, behave differently. It is more a long term engagement, a commitment over time, the development of deep relationships and expertise.

Thus it should not be too difficult to tweak the engagement rules of social media to reward those behaviors instead of the ones we see. “Amplify possibility. Dial down the spread of disinformation, trolling and division. Make it almost impossible to get famous at the expense of civilization. Embrace the fact that breaking news doesn’t have to be the rhythm of our days. Reward thoughtfulness and consistency and responsibility.”

I find this approach enticing, although obviously that would require quite a focus change from the major social medias of today, and less seeking of profit and market share. Maybe that could be an idea for a social network competitor?

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How Hardware Infrastructure Can Be Vulnerable to Hacking

This Wired article ‘How 30 Lines of Code Blew Up a 27-Ton Generator‘ exposes at length the Aurora experiment in 2007 – how a small file was able to destroy a large diesel generator hardware, demonstrating the vulnerability of hardware to hacking (also in Wikipedia ‘Aurora Generator Test‘). This shows that well thought hacking can be targeted to destroy fully non-digital hardware. What about our vulnerability now that IoT is widespread and most hardware also host a large amount of software?

I find this article worth reading because it shows that hardware destruction was carried out indirectly, analyzing ways of making it dysfunction. It requires a lot of analysis and is not straightforward, but remains impressive as it shows that is could be relatively easy to disrupt heavily the infrastructures we have come to rely on.

It demonstrates that with the right focus and willingness, hacking can have a substantial impact on hardware. This was again demonstrated as well with the famous affair of the destruction of Iranian centrifuge uranium enrichment facilities through hacking.

The scary part is with our increasingly connected hardware – cars, key house control systems – our vulnerability has probably increased many times over the situation a decade ago. There is probably something to be done to ensure that our infrastructures remain secure in the future!

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How Begpackers are a Reflection of the Free Culture

This Quartz post ‘The ‘begpacker’ phenomenon shows how fake poverty has become a status symbol‘ addresses the issue of the ‘begpackers’ – typically western young people who travel far and beg their money for travel. I have seen them in Asia as quite a recent trend, begging in very public and central locations, and this is strongly resented by inhabitants of many poorer countries. I believe this is an effect of social media and the habit to get a lot for free.

“In the age of social media, crowdfunding, and hashtags, the dream of free travel has morphed once again, giving us the phenomenon of #begpackers: People who travel backpacker-style on a beggar’s budget, asking for contributions, freebies, and handouts from locals or fellow travelers to as they go.”

While travelling on a shoestring is definitely not new (that’s the motto of the famous Lonely Planet guides), visibly begging in public spaces is. Before, people either depended on their own limited resources, or took some jobs to get more.

The article expands on the fact that begging is a status symbol in the age of social networks. I am not so sure. I would tend to believe that we are getting used to having access to many services for free (in exchange for our data of course) and that as a consequence we don’t necessarily understand that it does not apply fully to the real world, in particular far from home.

Let’s remember that having access to so much for free is not actually for free, and that there are ethical boundaries that should not be crossed in relying on others to get along for free.

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How to Move in the Collaborative Age in the 2020s Decade

In this post ‘An Agenda for the 2020s: Inventing the Knowledge Age‘ by Alan Wenger (a New-York based Venture Capitalist), some key success factors for moving into the Collaborative Age are listed.

First, I note that the overall perspective of the author is quite aligned with my Fourth Revolution viewpoint: “Technological progress has shifted scarcity for humanity. When we were foragers, food was scarce. During the agrarian age, it was land. Following the industrial revolution, capital became scarce. With digital technologies scarcity is shifting once more. We need to figure out how to live in a World After Capital in which the only scarcity is our attention.” Attention being new the new scarcity, it is an essential skill we need to practice more.

According to the author the key success factors include:

  • Fighting the climate crisis
  • Defending democracy
  • Promoting universal basic income
  • Fostering decentralisation
  • Developing mindfulness
  • Resuming learning

I’d probably add something about inequality and inclusiveness

In any case, important transformations will have to happen in the 2020s decade to move into the Collaborative Age. They will be accelerated by the Covid crisis and possibly other upcoming world transformations as well. Be ready for change!

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How Not To Be Forgotten in the Collaborative Age

I like this quote from Benjamin Franklin “If you would not be forgotten, as soon as you are dead and rotten, either write things worth reading, or do things worth writing.” I take that to heart writing books. But what does that mean in today’s collaborative age with the internet?

The quote provides two interesting alternatives so that you get remembered. In any case it reminds us about our own impermanence and what we can do to try to overcome it.

Writing since the writing revolution has been the way to get memories and information pass reliably from generation to generation. The intent is still valid today although the number of things written or otherwise published or created increases dramatically; and the barrier to writing and broadcasting is much lower than it was in Franklin’s time where being published was reserved to the few.

I still believe that quality, thoughtful writing is still important beyond what we all publish on all sorts of media. The process itself is enriching, and the outcome is a sounder basis for people to build upon – as long as it is worth reading. Even in the collaborative age, quality writing remains important; as are all creative work based on image or video. What counts is the effort and the depth of the expression.

Express yourself in ways that are worth reading, watching or listening to, and that will stand the test of time. Do the effort to reach that quality!

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How Internet is Getting Increasingly Split

A good summary of what is currently happening on the internet is given in those posts by Darin Stewart ‘Welcome to the Splinternet‘ and ‘TikTok is just the latest victim of the fracturing Internet‘. Of course the trend has been around for some time, but it now definitely clear that internet is not any more global, but multiple.

“What was promised as the great agent of globalization is rapidly becoming an enabler of isolationism. The borderless, digital frontier international businesses and organizations aligned themselves to is fragmenting. New borders and checkpoints are emerging.” “Technical fragmentation currently prevents roughly 25% of internet users, most in emerging markets, from accessing 70% of the Web. Political fragmentation has already divided the Internet into East and West, but recent developments are further divvying up the web into strongly bordered regional federations.”

This fragmentation has been driven by legal aspects (data protection laws), copyright and commercial issues, political issues (China being the best known, but India also participating) etc. It is quite interesting that this trend is parallel to the trend to reel back from globalization.

“Over time it creates a parallel reality that is extremely difficult to break out of. When amplified by the walled garden effect users are separated from non-aligned segments of the web as firmly as if they were on different networks altogether.”

When travelling it is possible to overcome some of the access limitations but when staying in one’s country, only advanced tricks will allow to overcome these limitations. Most people will increasingly be participating to a more limited version of internet. And that is probably reinforce the current issue of people being increasingly caught in the bubble of their own opinion and social network.

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How Virtual Characters and Deepfakes Are Becoming Mainstream

This interesting post ‘Deepfakes Are Becoming the Hot New Corporate Training Tool‘ shows how deepfakes start to become commonplace including as a corporate tool. In this example, it is used to allow simultaneous communication of a corporate messages in many different languages and cultures.

“This month, advertising giant WPP will send unusual corporate training videos to tens of thousands of employees worldwide. A presenter will speak in the recipient’s language and address them by name, while explaining some basic concepts in artificial intelligence. The videos themselves will be powerful demonstrations of what AI can do: The face, and the words it speaks, will be synthesized by software.”

Virtual presenters are used in this case, which are becoming increasingly frequent (refer for example to our posts ‘How Virtual Creatures Invade Our Connections and our World‘ and ‘How We Will Increasingly Interact With Artificial Humans‘). In this case, “the ability to personalize and localize video to many individuals makes for more compelling footage than the usual corporate fare“; and it is also cheaper and easier than mobilizing actual actors (another trade that is due for automation it seems!).

I have personally already used virtual voice-overs; using virtual people in videos is just another step and it is just around the corner. We need to get ready to face increasingly virtual interactions with people we will struggle to decide if real or virtual.

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How the Economy Becomes Increasingly Bi-Polar

This extremely interesting post ‘We’re living in two economies, and they are tearing us apart‘ aligns with many of our views in terms of the current revolutionary transformation from the Industrial Age into a new age which the author calls ‘Autonomous Age’, which is what we call the ‘Collaborative Age’. The interesting part is the analysis of what happens in the economy during this transformation, with an increased bi-polar economy between traditional (physical) and virtual economies.

The interesting part of the analysis is how the two economies are “pulling in opposite directions, and doing so, tearing the Old Order apart“. “In particular, the traditional economy is biased toward inflation. By comparison, the Autonomous Economy is biased toward deflation.” “The problem is non-monetizable productivity — unlike in the real world, the productivity gains in the Autonomous Economy don’t translate to increased incomes for average folks.”

We connect here with the Baumol effect that we described in the post ‘How the Relative Increase of Cost for Education or Health Care Can be Explained‘. Physical services struggle to improve in terms of productivity and become therefore relatively more expensive.

The author of the post however goes further and asks itself how we can avoid an upcoming wave of unemployment as the virtual economy productivity will require much less people to provide the same or a better level of service.

As I observe at the same time a strong trend to go local and develop human touch services, I am not too concerned on the long term although the transition may well be difficult as people lose their jobs and struggle to transform their occupation.

The bi-polar economy is there to stay and we need to be ready for the disruption. I remain optimistic on the longer term, but we need to brace for the short term.

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How Easy It Is to Fool Artificial Intelligence

I love this funny post ‘Hackers stuck a 2-inch strip of tape on a 35mph speed sign and successfully tricked 2 Teslas into accelerating to 85mph’. The point here is not really about Tesla reliability, but how easy it is still to trick Artificial Intelligence recognition tools.

In this particularly funny example the researchers just changed slightly the speed limit sign and it was enough to trick the sign recognition algorithm that watches the road and determines what is the acceptable speed (see the image). This type of system is increasingly prevalent in cars generally just to update the actually applicable speed limit that is provided as a guidance to the driver.

What is really impressive here is obviously how easy it seems to fool an Artificial Intelligence-based recognition software. If that’s the case for something so obvious and mundane, then what are the consequences for more complex applications like face recognition? Are they also as easy to fool?

Artificial Intelligence does not seem to be quite completely robust yet. Some progress is still needed!

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How Difficult It Becomes to Create Virtual Legends for Covert Operations

We already know ‘How Easy Modern Technology Makes It For Spies‘, it seems on the other hand that it makes it more complicated on some other aspects, like creating legends for secret agents. As explained in this interesting article ‘There Is No ‘Going Dark:’ Always-On Surveillance Posing Risks To US Covert Operations‘

In this fascinating account, US government seems to be quite worried about being able to maintain secrecy around its operations. Available data makes it relatively easy to know the background of individuals and what their real occupation is likely to be. Agents can easily be under constant surveillance as soon as they are in a foreign country. Biometric verification makes it much more difficult to change identities and travel under a different name.

“This is how spy craft works now. Everything is online, digitized, and likely to be accessed by agents of enemy states. There’s no flying under the digital radar. And if it’s true for government employees, it’s doubly true for US citizens who don’t have the ability to alter/remove collected data or a network of security professionals doing whatever they can to protect them (and their data) from outsiders.”

Even better, some recent reports show how critical it is not allow soldiers to carry their hand phone in battle, making it too easy to geo-localise them or to identify the source of their phone signal.

Our privacy is gone, and one consequence is that it is much more difficult for covert operations to be setup. It becomes increasingly difficult to make believe we are someone else than what really are.

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How We Now Realize What VUCA Really Means

The VUCA concept has been trendy for a while to describe the modern complex world: Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, and Ambiguous. I am not quite sure all of those that used this term really understood what it meant. The Covid-19 pandemics has provided an interesting example and probably a realization for many!

We actually should not be astonished by such events in the modern world. Because of globalisation any such events becomes global much more quickly than before. This crisis will probably go down in history books as one of the fastest spreading crisis throughout the world, where worldviews and appreciation of the situation have changed drastically from one day to the next. Still, there have been such crisis before and there will be in the future. Only, changes happen now much faster and in a more unpredictable manner.

When spirits will get quieter after the crisis, we’ll certainly see that the global economy was ready anyway for a shake-up as it does every decade or so. The Covid-19 was a strong initiator, more so because of the impact of the initial event. New equilibrium will be found for a few years, with probably western democracies weakened compared to Asia. As any catastrophic event, it will lead to a new world stability model – for a while only.

The funny thing is really that the proponents of VUCA got probably overwhelmed too by the violence of the crisis. Welcome to the collaborative age!

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