Category: Institutions and Revolutions

How the Trump Campaign Already Brings Serious Lessons About Social Segmentation Capabilities

In this excellent post ‘Trump’s Digital Campaign for 2020 Is Already Soaring‘, Frederic Filloux explains how the Trump 2020 campaign is already extremely active, focusing on voter segmentation so as to serve the most effective targeted propaganda through social networks. And it seems that the scale is quite unprecedented.

Trump digital campaign has started almost just after the election and has already spent much more money than any other campaign: “we’re doing top-level funnel marketing and what that is, is we need to find every person that’s going to vote for the president and would vote for the president and go find them now. It’s a lot cheaper to go find them now, not when the media gets all and the advertising is more expensive and we have to rush to find them. Why not find them three years out?“

The important thing is that now targeting is not any more at the group level – it is at the individual level and extremely fine. Messages can be adapted to address individual concerns and worldview. Therefore the potential for influence is extreme, because potentially people will be engaged individually with messages that are deemed adequate for them.

The power of this approach remains to be seen in the next elections, but it is of course quite worrying to observe how this is becoming an influence machine that borders on manipulation.

Share

How Demanding Freedom Can Be

In the ‘Discourse of voluntary servitude’, La Boetie, a French philosopher of the 16th century, writes a formidable quote: “Man has a preference for voluntary servitude, because servitude is confortable and makes one irresponsible. Freedom on the other hand is very demanding.”

Those words written in the context of a political essay on dictatorship do echo in the modern organization. “Voluntary servitude” in an organization is much easier and much more comfortable than freedom. And that is something that people tend to forget when salaried workers express jealousy with respect to the self-employed or entrepreneur.

As an entrepreneur I do feel sometimes when I am tired or things are difficult that I would be certainly much more comfortable being just another piece of a large organization… although clearly the comfort is just an illusion: just notice how many people report they are stressed in the workplace.

Freedom is extremely demanding. It requires a lot of leadership and a lot of self-leadership and discipline. In the long run it is extremely rewarding too.

Choose freedom. It’s tough, but it’s worth it!

Share

How the French School System Develops the Feeling of Unworthiness in students

Following up on the previous post ‘How to Respond When You Feel Unworthy‘ I would like to share with my French readers how it is becoming increasingly obvious to me that the French school system specifically develops the feeling of unworthiness in students.

In particular in competitive classes like ‘Preparatory Classes’ for major schools or in elitist high schools, teachers tend to try to motivate students by telling them they are no good, much less clever than the previous class, that they have no change of ever succeeding etc.

This behavior has many consequences: those who survive the treatment self-select themselves, and this fosters the feeling of unworthiness in students which will follow them up all their life.

In many other countries, even in competitive classes, teachers generally seem to tend to be more supportive of students, and encourage their successes.

I would maybe even suggest that this behavior in France has some substantial long-term consequences on the psyche of the elite students which form after some time the country’s elite.

I am not quite sure about the reason for this behavior but it is becoming now quite obvious to me, having been living abroad and having now children than enter those competitive classes. Maybe we should try to change this, in particular in view of the changes in the world surrounding us!

Share

How Renewable Energy Becomes Competitive With Existing Fossil Power Facilities

In this interesting post ‘The Third Phase of Clean Energy Will Be the Most Disruptive Yet‘, Ramez Naam exposes that clean power has now reached the stage of being competitive with existing fossil fuel facilities, which is a major milestone.

According to him this is phase 3 after two initial phases

  1. Initial developments dependent on subsidies
  2. Clean Power is competitive for new developments only

The post provides some statistics and trends to support the analysis. Still the most important is that in certain circumstances clean energy may challenge existing facilities. This leads thus to a substantial loss of asset value and upcoming major financial headaches for power companies, which often are very much in debt and still reimbursing the investment.

Be ready for substantial transformation of the energy market in the next few years, with potentially substantial value redistribution between players!

Share

How the Transformation of the Press Business Model Makes Access to Quality Information More Difficult

Following-up on the previous post ‘How Newspapers’ Financing Got Upended‘, the question of access of low income citizens to serious information is a major issue in our societies.

First it is important to note that it is not because information is collected and curated by a serious press company, or by state media for the sake of argument that it is not biased. However there is more confidence in the source of information and definitely some regulation mechanism to avoid fake news.

The issue remains of course that having access to serious information increasingly becomes a luxury or at least one has to commit to a minimum subscription expense, which is a disadvantage for the less wealthy. Gone are the days of the newspapers posted so that everyone could read them in passing (such as in the picture) – a sight still very much present in lower income countries. The existence of minimum access to serious journalism needs to remain warranted for all, and this is probably the next challenge.

Independent and high quality public media is a response in democratic country (financed by tax), and at the same time it is important to leave minimum access to citizens across the paywalls for all important events that need proper press coverage.

Share

How Online Sales just Overtook Brick-and-Mortar General Retail Sales in the US

In February in the USA, for the first time ever, online sales overtook a brick-and-mortar general retail shops sales. See for example this CNBC snippet ‘Online shopping overtakes a major part of retail for the first time ever‘. And when one looks at the curve it is deemed to continue!

This transformation of retailing was in the works for the last 15 years and it has taken all this time to reach that amazing stage. Still it is also interesting to watch that stores sales have remained quite stable over time (in percentage of overall retail, but increasing in absolute value) and that online sales only represent 11% of total retail sales.

In reality when one looks in detail at US retail sales from the US Census (latest), food & beverage stores, and most importantly, motor dealers, still sell more in value than online non-store sales.

Still, this statistics explain why large department stores are struggling in the US. And the amazing number of almost 60 billion $ per month of online sales is quite incredible when translated in a sheer number of packages sent for delivery!

Share

How Newspapers’ Financing Got Upended

For a long time the traditional business model of newspapers was financing through advertisement. Circulation and subscription only covered 15-25% of the overall budget. This is how they survived through the 20th century. In this interesting post ‘Winners and losers of the subscription frenzy‘ Frederic Filloux shares how this is changing dramatically with a substantial rise in the share of subscription revenue, in particular through internet.

In this article we can see in the specific example of the Seattle Times how both the current political landscape (requiring access to serious journalism) and the progressive trimming of the number of free articles visible through the paywall has dramatically increased the number and value of subscriptions. Up to the point where circulation revenue now makes more than 50% of the total revenue, and this transformation happened in about 10 years.

Of course the local advertisement market once fully benefiting newspapers has been taken over by the main online players that can provide a much more precise advertisement coverage.

With any revolution some newspapers have made it and some others haven’t; some countries are more advanced than others; and in general the support of industry moguls is also a great support to the finances of press companies (such as Jeff Bezos for the Washington Post). Still the new business model seems to be quite well defined now, and the new business model for the press established.

Share

How Mark Zuckerberg Needs and Requests Increased Regulation

In an amazing turn of events Mark Zuckerberg published simultaneously in several languages on mainstream newspaper an opinion end March that calls for increased regulation of social network activities (see the Washington post version here: ‘Mark Zuckerberg: The Internet needs new rules. Let’s start in these four areas.’)

First let’s note that this move is probably due to the underlying observation that lack of regulation may spell doom on his empire. What are the four areas he is calling for increased regulation?

  • managing better harmful content and getting external input on removal rules, as well as standardizing rules
  • better rules around political advertisement
  • a globally recognized framework around privacy and data protection aligned with the EU rules
  • guaranteeing data portability from one service to the next

Mark Zuckerberg concludes: “The rules governing the Internet allowed a generation of entrepreneurs to build services that changed the world and created a lot of value in people’s lives. It’s time to update these rules to define clear responsibilities for people, companies and governments going forward.”

I observe that the topics raised are mostly about making sure all competitors will be subject to the same scrutiny as Facebook and avoid competitors that would avoid the complication of those basic requirements. The request for regulation could go beyond this minimum.

Still it is a start, and with major social network players now asking for more regulation, the door is opened for a serious regulatory review of what has become a major tool in the world’s hands.

Share

How Social Networks and Modern Media Isolate Large Parts of the Population

Specific groups of people, based on their condition and beliefs, have always preferred different means of information: politically-orientated newspapers have existed for a long time. Still the extent of isolation of certain groups of people has reached an unprecedented level. In the USA it would seem that “one third of the American electorate has been isolated in an information loop of its own. For this group, which mistrusts the mainstream press on principle, and as a matter of political identity, Trump has become the major source of information about Trump, along with Fox News, which has slowly been merging with the Trump government.” The detail is given in the Pressthink post ‘Hating on journalists the way Trump and his core supporters do is not an act of press criticism. It’s a way of doing politics.’

We have long noted that social networks tend to close one’s source of information to what is getting broadcast by his or her immediate connections. The extent of the situation in the US is however broader as some mainstream media, in particular the Fox News network, seem to have turned frankly one-sided; and because fake news are being disseminated from the highest governmental levels, with strong hate terminology being used as well. “These are people beyond the reach of journalism, immune to its discoveries. Trump is their primary source of information about Trump. The existence of a group this size shows that de-legitimizing the news media works. The fact that it works means we will probably see more of it.”

That this happens in a country where free speech and free press laws are among the strongest in the world show the extent of the transformation of news broadcasting our societies undergo. I do not believe the change is as dramatic as mentioned, but we need to be wary about it and track fake news and fake statements with more urgency.

Share

How We Should Join ‘Team Human’ in the World of Social Media

‘Team Human’ is a movement created by Douglas Rushkoff through its TED talk ‘How to be Team Human in the digital future‘. I’m definitely on!

It starts from a rather depressing statement about social media: “Does social media really connect people in new, interesting ways? No, social media is about using our data to predict our future behavior. Or when necessary, to influence our future behavior so that we act more in accordance with our statistical profiles. The digital economy — does it like people? No” I am not so extreme in opinion, but it is certain that in part, social media has been designed to be addictive for some purpose.

His concern is that technology moguls now seem to have stopped caring about the people. “It’s funny, I used to be the guy who talked about the digital future for people who hadn’t yet experienced anything digital. And now I feel like I’m the last guy who remembers what life was like before digital technology. It’s not a matter of rejecting the digital or rejecting the technological. It’s a matter of retrieving the values that we’re in danger of leaving behind and then embedding them in the digital infrastructure for the future. “

“Join “Team Human.” Find the others. Together, let’s make the future that we always wanted.”

Share

How Technology Providers Should Care About Their Externalities

Following up on our post ‘How to Manage Unintended Consequences of Technology‘, in this interesting piece ‘Embracing externalities‘, Seth Godin remind us that externalities should be accounted by industrialism for the better.

“The opportunity is simple to describe but requires real effort to achieve: the community must enforce systems that build the external costs into the way that the industrialist does business. Faced with an incentive to decrease bycatch, waste or illness, the industrialist will do what industrialists always seek to do–make it work a little better, a little faster, a little more profitably.”

This thought is quite interesting to apply to the externalities created by technology, for example social networks. How can we make sure companies that create value from those products compensate for the externalities they necessarily create?

” Industrialism can’t solve every problem, but it can go a very long way in solving the problems that it created in the first place“. So do any technology provider: ‘Technology can’t solve every problem, but it can go a very long way in solving the problems that it created in the first place’… We should not forget that regulation can achieve this goal.

Share

How Our Usage of Maps Has Changed Dramatically

It is amazing how our usage of maps has changed dramatically with the advent of portable electronic maps. The interesting part is that beyond the map itself as a tool, our relationship with our geographical environment is also changing dramatically too.

Dwindling Road Maps

I am of a generation that used paper maps and atlases to navigate the world, including for driving around. I notice how this mundane task (which was traditionally a highly contentious activity for couples when the significant other was reading the map) has changed.

What I find to be the most startling change of functionality is the possibility to zoom as we want, using maps as an actual multi-scale tool, in addition to knowing at any one time where one is located thanks to the GPS.

Moreover, the amount of data super-imposed on the map has increased tremendously, allow new usage of maps, and they also are increasingly updated more or less real time. We tend more and more to interpret our immediate environment not only with what we can observe, but with the added data available in our pockets, from the location of services and businesses to their rating and more detail about their operation. It is augmented reality in its infancy. And it is only the beginning.

It is amazing how with portable multi-scale, multi-layer maps our perception of the physical world around us is changing. I still hope we will able to keep relying on actual observation of reality!

Share