Category: Fourth Revolution

Why are we blind to the Fourth Revolution?

Most of us are blind the Fourth Revolution. We see the changes in the world but fail to appreciate that our mindset and understanding of how the world goes needs to change dramatically.

blind man looking for the Fourth Revolution
looking for the Fourth Revolution

Daniel Kahneman, the first noneconomist to win a Nobel Prize in economics, for his work on ways in which humans aren’t rational economic actors, calls this effect “theory-induced blindness”: adherence to a belief about how the world works that prevents you from seeing how the world really works.

Look at the blind man on the left. That is exactly how we are. We are trying to touch things around us, we have a cane to avoid falling if possible, and we listen intently. Still we are blinded by our Industrial Age mindset. By good ol’ TV. By multiple distractions.

Silence…

The change in the world is so loud and so silent at the same time. Precursors are there. Numerous. And most of us still can’t see it.

Probably because we are afraid to see it. To lose our usual marks.

The Fourth Revolution is there. The world has changed forever. Don’t be afraid, take your dark glasses of, and enjoy the sweet warm light!

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Get out of the personal commodity trap

In the Industrial Age, people were a commodity. They had a tag given by their diploma, were part of a category and were just inter-changeable.
That started changing with the emergence of the Knowledge Worker, one of the precursors of the Fourth Revolution. Still there were broad categories of Knowledge Workers.

the personal commodity trap
the commodity trap

Beyond the Fourth Revolution, the K.E.E.N will absolutely need to avoid becoming a commodity.

As the excellent illustration says – make sure not a lot of ordinary people understand what you are doing. Invent a fancy job title, an unexpected tag line to describe what you are doing.

Develop a unique personal brand. And market yourself.

Commodities are easily replaced. Commodities’ price gets down with competition from low cost countries.

Above all, don’t stay a commodity. Get out of the commodity trap. Start now to build your identity, your brand, and to market yourself.

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The dawn of the World Dream

After the Fourth Revolution, the World Dream will be the dream of billions of individuals.

It will replace the American Dream.

What will be the World Dream?

First, it will state that whatever your origin, color, ethnicity, and wherever you live, you have a chance to be successful. You have a chance to become part of the leadership of the Collaborative Age. And this apply to the entire World, thanks to cheap, long distance interactive communication. This is a revolution for 80% of Humankind!

Second, what will make you successful is not what made you successful in the Industrial Age. In the Industrial Age, compliance, hard work, career, diploma, were crucial. What is important in the Collaborative Age is to develop a unique personal brand, to get noticed on the virtual collaborative universe, to produce a unique contribution to the world, to connect emotionally with many individuals.

Third, the outcome of the World Dream will not only be the materialistic comfort of home –  although a minimum satisfaction of basic material needs is still crucial. It will be the feeling to have contributed usefully to the life of a number of other people, to have created a new way of looking at the world, of having opened the eye of a community on a particular issue. Instead of discretion it will be, a strong public presence.

Are we ready to dream the World Dream? Many young people in developing and emerging countries already dream it. Let’s joint them. And act accordingly.

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The end of the materialistic American Dream.

This is the end of the American Dream.

classical american dream picture
classical american dream picture

At least part of it. The part that was materialistic. The part where middle class workers, if working hard and persistently, could pretend to all the materialistic belongings that the consumption society would offer: a house, a car, a fridge, a TV…

That’s because, being a middle class employee of a large manufacturing company is a concept that is disappearing with the end of the Industrial Age.

That’s because we are not any more in an Age of materialistic scarcity. We are now an era of abundance. Material belongings define much less our identity.

Still so many people are fond of the image of the “American dream”, possibly because it is a secure life of lifelong employment, where plans could be made over decades in a stable environment, where progressive savings would buy the belongings of your dreams.

Stop dreaming. That’s over.
Don’t live in delusion. The world has changed.

It is not getting more unsafe. It is getting different. The Fourth Revolution is there. It will change our image of success.
Tomorrow, the World Dream will be ours.

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Quakebook – the Fourth Revolution in action

Just read on Seth Godin’s Domino project blog: Organizing the tribe, teaching, aiding...

I summarize the post and add some content from Amazon.com here:

A new ebook by and for Japanese earthquake survivors.

I’m not sure if you’ve come across Quakebook: it’s a collection of short stories by people who were in the earthquake in Japan on March 11.

quakebook - stories from the Japanese earthquake
quakebook

In just over a week, a group of unpaid professional and citizen journalists who met on Twitter created a book to raise money for Japanese Red Cross earthquake and tsunami relief efforts.

In addition to essays, artwork and photographs submitted by people around the world, including people who endured the disaster and journalists who covered it, 2:46: Aftershocks: Stories from the Japan Earthquake contains a piece by Yoko Ono, and work created specifically for the book by authors William Gibson, Barry Eisler and Jake Adelstein.“The primary goal,” says the book’s editor, a British resident of Japan, “is to record the moment, and in doing so raise money for the Japanese Red Cross Society to help the thousands of homeless, hungry and cold survivors of the earthquake and tsunami. The biggest frustration for many of us was being unable to help these victims. I don’t have any medical skills, and I’m not a helicopter pilot, but I can edit. A few tweets pulled together nearly everything – all the participants, all the expertise – and in just over a week we had created a book including stories from an 80-year-old grandfather in Sendai, a couple in Canada waiting to hear if their relatives were okay, and a Japanese family who left their home, telling their young son they might never be able to return.”

People can buy the book at Amazon UK http://amzn.to/qbuk and Amazon US http://amzn.to/quakebkus

They can also follow @quakebook on Twitter, re-tweet the #quakebook hashtag, like the Quakebook page on Facebook http://on.fb.me/htJxCw, or simply express their support at the Quakebook site http://bit.ly/qukbook

WOW! The power of the Fourth Revolution in action where people need most of it! In one month a book is out and people are connected like never before!

 

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POD (print-on-demand) and 3-D printing

Did you hear about 3-D printing? Today there are printing machines that are able to print in three dimensions, complex shapes.

3D printing in action
3D printing in action

They use much less material than conventional manufacturing (which starts from a large chunk of material and removes most of it through machining).

They build objects layers after layers, using perfectly controlled materials.

An article by The Economist on 3D printing highlights the current development status and the potentialities of the technology. By the way, the glove above was 3D printed.

So, let’s now cross the potentialities of 3D printing of objects with POD (print-on-demand). When will be the day where you find a nice new object in a magazine, will download the file and get it printed at the next door 3D printing shop?

No more worries of having to search store after store for that unique object of your dreams. Design it and print it!

Well that might come a few years later than for books POD, but that’ll come. And then manufacturing, in the Industrial Age meaning of mass production, will shrink significantly. Because we want to have unique objects, 3D objects POD will be the response. Only those basic components which benefit greatly from the savings of mass production will remained produced that way.

Are you ready for the revolution of 3-D objects print-on-demand?

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Make connectivity free!

I was travelling lately and I am still amazed at how difficult it can be to get reasonably cheap access to the internet for a traveller.

wifi logoWell of course there are some free computers to be able to look at some basic websites in most airports and a lot of hotels. I’m speaking about getting internet access for one’s device – computer or other device.

Want to connect your computer in wifi at the airport? You need to pay. Want to connect your computer in the hotel? Again, you are charged a small fortune.

Of course that depends on the country and some countries have understood the benefit of making free connections available – and they are often not the most developed. They are the emerging countries and the small dynamic countries like Hong Kong and Singapore.

Wonder why these countries will develop more value and will overtake the countries that still believe that connectivity should be exclusive and expensive?

Unleash value by enhancing free connectivity everywhere!

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Measuring the available cognitive surplus

A useful statistics in the excellent book by Clay Shirky, “cognitive surplus“.

Cognitive surplus is that cognitive capability that is available during our free time. It has steadily increased during the Industrial Revolution, in particular in the 20th century. But, it has mainly been devoted to broadcasting media, and mainly TV.

American watch about 200 billion hours of TV every year (and, interestingly enough, this is still increasing).

All of Wikipedia, all articles, edits, in all languages represents roughly about 100 million hours of contributions (over 10 years or so).

Hence, Wikipedia, this extraordinary sum of human knowledge, permamently updated (so much that it is a worthwhile source of information) represents less than 0.005% of the available cognitive surplus.

So… can you imagine what will happen when just 1% of the available cognitive surplus will be used for the community?

That’s right, it will be a true Revolution, the Fourth Revolution.

When do you start contributing a small share of your cognitive surplus?

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The bureaucratic entanglement (part 2)

Bureaucracy is pervading our mindset so much that when we are faced with a problem, our first reaction is to add another layer of bureaucracy.

Enron crash
Enron crash

Take the Enron scandal for example. What was the reaction? A book of new rules, also known as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. Voted by 99% of representatives and senators.

Add controls, permissions to ask before doing anything. Is that safer? That’s not sure at all. Is it stifling companies? That’s pretty sure – all the companies that can are fleeing the US stock markets to avoid the additional bureaucracy.

Anyone working on technical risk knows that adding new safety systems necessarily adds new risks. It introduces additional complexity, new types of failures. It generally lowers reliability. It often makes sure the widget does not work even if it could.

So, what’s the solution?

Bureaucratic approaches rely on removing the responsibility, bringing it higher in the hierarchy, splitting it between people looking at each other suspiciously. They rely on permissions to be asked before doing anything.

Make people irresponsible and they will certainly behave so.

The solution is to make people responsible. Entrepreneurs. Foster taking initiatives without asking for permission first. Give authority and accountability as close to the ground you can. Encourage people to multiply the value they create for the organization.

Let’s aim to remove everyday one bureaucratic itch in the organization. Within a few weeks you’ll see the difference. And more happy people that will be easier to retain in your influence zone!

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The bureaucratic entanglement (part 1)

Bureaucracy is stifling entrepreneurship. While it looks like rampant redtape is there for all the good reasons, it is stifling bureaucratic companies to death. Entangled in their procedures they will one by one topple over.
Open, fluid organizations based on decentralized accountability will take over.

Corporate bureaucracy
Corporate bureaucracy at work

In the industrial age, where communication was scarce and large companies based their competitive advantage on information management, bureaucracy was all about making the organization more efficient. Bureaucracy was the essence of the corporation.
Today where information management is inexpensive and can be done by anyone with an internet connection much more effectively than any bureaucratic organization, it is obsolete. The quest for efficiency of commodity production has been replaced by the quest for effective creative solutions.

As often with Fundamental Revolutions, what was the life-giving system of the previous age has become gangrenous.

Every day we meet bureaucracy: “sorry, that is not the standard operating procedure“… “I need to ask permission first higher up“… “that’s a good idea but it does not fit in the box“…

Sorry, but the game is over. Get rid of the bureaucracy or you’ll die. And slow death is generally the most painful.

Wake up. Reject bureaucracy. Do something today for others in your company without asking permission first. You’ll see. It’s great.

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Collaborative tools and catastrophes: transformation of the emergency response

Collaborative tools of the Fourth Revolution are reshaping the way we manage catastrophic events.

Examples from the Japan Earthquake:

If you are looking for information on people in the quake zone, Google has opened a Person Finder page.

Ushahidi, a crowdsourcing mapping tool, has set up a local platform for Japanthat allows people in the area affected by the earthquake to text the location of people who may be trapped in damaged buildings

And did you notice how Facebook is slow these days? That’s certainly because so many people use it to connect, give news to loved ones.

The full extend of how these collaborative tools will change emergency response is, I believe, not yet apprehended by Emergency Response Institutions. For example, this great video from TED shows how collaborative map making changed the response to the Haiti quake.

Emergency Response Institutions need to account for the Fourth Revolution. People are connected. They stay connected. And together they can greatly help themselves. When Emergency Response Institutions will know how to leverage this connectivity, their intervention methods will transform for the better.

Emergency Response institutions need to change. Let’s tell them.

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