The ‘international workers’ day’ should be called the ‘cognitive surplus day’

The international workers’ day is a celebration of the struggle for the 8 hours work day. The corresponding Wikipedia article on the international workers’ day gives an excellent historical account of the events leading to its creation.

The concept of the international workers’ day is fundamentally an Industrial Age concept. It is the symbol of the struggle of the Unions against the Corporations. It is the symbol of the struggle of the manufacturing worker for better conditions – a struggle that was finally successful as available workers became scarce when the countryside got depleted of its population at the beginning of the 20th century.

Why would we continue to celebrate this outdated celebration?

Still the 8 hours workday was the beginning of something else. It was the beginning of the availability of time for one’s recreation, of the creation of the conditions of the collaborative surplus of humankind. The 8 hours workday, and later the paid leave, gave the opportunity to many more people to have free time. Most of this time got used to receive passively broadcasted material, but a few people started to use this time to contribute to the world.

And, with the Fourth Revolution, that has now become an epidemics.

Let’s celebrate the ‘international workers’ day’ as the ‘cognitive surplus day’!

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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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Change the way you see yourself

Every so often I bump into Anais Nin famous quote, and every time I find it inspiring anew, and so true.

the world inside us
the world inside us

Let us quote it in its full extent here:
“The way you see yourself shapes your life. How you define life determines your destiny. Your perspective will influence how you invest your time, spend your money, use your talents and value your relationships.

We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.” – Anais Nin

 

Take 5 mins. Meditate that sentence. The easiest way to find whether we have a strong perspective which excessively distorts our view of reality is to get an external feedback. Get someone you trust, if possible living a very different life. Ask whether they believe your view reality is distorted. And then investigate why. And change. And get free.

The picture is from Dan Mountford, great photos to be discovered on Flicker

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Bonus: how to market oneself in the Collaborative Age

Now that we’ve ascertained that personal marketing is necessary for the K.E.E.N. in the Collaborative Age, this great post from Mitch Joel about “Personal branding is not an option – it is the recipe to success” is a good place to start to know how to market oneself on the Internet.

Enjoy your first personal marketing steps!

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Not a lot of people know how to market themselves

Knowing how to market oneself is a great differentiator. It can mean orders of magnitude of differences in influence, revenue. It makes the difference between the competent-knowledgeable, and the successful achievers.

What prevents us from developing this important skill?

  • as we saw in the previous blog post, developing a personal unique brand is against Industrial Age mindset and is rejected by our social environment;
  • marketing oneself is scary, because it means standing up and getting rejected more often than accepted;
  • successful marketing involves developing an emotional connection with prospective buyers, and this is not something we have been educated to develop and enhance

    • Still, self-marketing it is a key skill that differentiates successful achievers in any field.

    How can we develop this skill? Beyond developing one’s brand, expose yourself! Find your unique selling proposition, stand up and start marketing it. Persist, get feedback, and you’ll get there.

    So, when do you start marketing yourself?

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    Developing a personal brand: a revolutionary idea – and so much needed!

    The Fourth Revolution is here. Today anybody living anywhere can develop a personal brand that will be visible over the entire Internet.

    Personal brand marketing
    Personal brand marketing

    This requires a good definition of one’s personal purpose and a persistent and consistent communication over many media.

    But it is necessary.

    And actually, it is key for the successful K.E.E.N. to develop such personal brand.

    The Industrial Age mindset is completely opposed to such idea: people were put in categories, by profession and diploma. They were considered interchangeable in the workplace. And any individual deviating from such classification was considered suspiciously, and he or she did not fit anymore in these categories.

    Today, more and more, exceptions to the Industrial Age categories are the rule. Although failing bureaucratic organizations will continue to resist the idea for a while, the future is that each individual will have a specific profile and a specific brand.
    And that’s needed because having a strong personal brand increases one’s value by being unique: possibly the unique response or profile to solve a particular issue.

    So, when do you start developing your personal brand on the Internet and in the world? It will take time. Start today.

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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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    Making sense of data: the limits of datadregding

    Today as yesterday, making sense of available data to create information and knowledge is as important as before.

    The difference is that the available data is way larger and much more accessible to anybody. Statistical analysis tools on Internet-based communication are available for free, like Google Analytics. And a lot of people try to use then to increase their own or their marketing impact.

    And there come questions like ‘what’s the best time for me to tweet’? It’s possible to run that analysis, as this blog post by Chris Penn, “when is the best time to tweet”, shows. Now what is the meaning of this analysis? Is it statistically significant? Do we effectively control all the other parameters that influence the result? What are the assumptions – here, the assumption is clearly that people are supposed to live in real time, you want to tweet at a moment they are connected. Is that real? For myself I look at tweeter once a day for all the day’s tweets…

    This excellent post by Tom Webster about ‘Social Media data dregding” shows very clearly how these challenges affect the interpretation of the data.

    As a conclusion. Running statistical analysis on heaps of data, in the Fourth Revolution, is easier than ever. It makes all the more dangerous the conclusions we get. The good old principles of statistical control and design of experiments are still valid. And more needed than ever. That should be part of the basic literacy in the Collaborative Age.

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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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    The future of manufacturing and POD (print-on-demand)

    Do you know POD (print-on-demand)? Well that’s quite easy: you choose the book you want and a machine produces it for you in a few minutes, cover, binding and all.

    print-on-demand machine
    print-on-demand machine

    That’s not a dream: that’s today. As a self-publisher, Amazon and a number of others propose to put my book on display in their electronic stores. Should anyone buy it, a copy gets printed and sent.

    No more stocks of hundreds of books that might not be sold. No more risk to produce stocks of no value. Just-in-time print-on-demand.

    What’s visionary though is electronic bookstores just consisting of a print-on-demand (POD) machine. Because people still like to touch books and get a quick glimpse inside. But soon that will take off.

    Think of it. Today more than 60% of the price of a book is distribution – manual handling, logistics, taking back unsold books etc. POD just does bypass this problem. It will remove distributors as intermediaries and create value by making more books physically available everywhere that a huge bookstore could ever contain.

    POD will replace bulk manufacturing. Because it will also apply to everything else, not just books.

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