Paul Mason is an optimist. I’m a pessimist. He outlines the problems mankind faces in the future and suggests as a utopian solution of free money and us all working together in a non-working world. I tend more towards the four horseman of the apocalypse scenario.
Mason suggests there are a number of negative feedback loops that will work together to make the world a much poorer place for 99% of humanity, but if we reverse engineer this process we can all become richer and make a fairer and more prosperous world for all. ‘Neoliberalism is Broken’ is the title of his first chapter. We all know how this works. We’ve being doing it for the last thirty years and the process has accelerated since the financial meltdown of 2008. Work longer hours for less pay, or no pay. Sing hallelujah, and thanks boss, as money flows from the poor to the rich at an increasing rate. Thomas Piketty, Capital, did the maths. Algorithms rule the world. But Mason sees a chink of light in the information age. Technology that puts at least fifty percent of the workforce out of work, (timescale by 2050, or at cinema near you soon) will, as work itself become redundant, give us more leisure time. When the distinction between work and leisure becomes blurred creativity will flourish. Examples, oh dear, ‘people will blog, make movies, self-publish books’. Shit. I’m already doing all these things. I must be living in the future. It’s Martin Ford’s The Rise of the Robots, but with a happy ending. The robots won’t gain an awareness of themselves as a singular being, in the singularity, and mankind as being a species that has reduced the planet to a giant hamburger, and instead of keeping mankind as a pet, they’ll not do the logical thing and mine us for the energy in our hair and skin and meat and reduce the world to something like a boxset of hell played on an endless loop, but instead of that, our android friends will free us from work.
The merit in that argument is it is logical. William Shakespeare’s Brave New World before Brave New World has Ariel working for the man, Prospero, in The Tempest. All utopias are a bit like that. Prospero might have stolen an island home, but it was from an evil witch, and give him his due, he did give gainful employment to the witch’s son, and became master of the monster, Caliban, who he used as another source of free labour. Prospero was free to do what he willed, as we will be in a prosperous new age based on exciting new technologies. Fritz Laing, Metropolis. As above, so below. Aldous Huxley and George Orwell both envisaged a time when work would be something that would be optional – for the elite. As it always has been, but Mason argues that the problems facing us are global problems and unless we face them together they will defeat us and the capitalist system will fall apart.
Global warming is an example of this. Mason doesn’t think the market can work well enough to allocate resource so everyone can meet their energy needs and keep enough fossil fuels out of the air and keep the temperature of the earth below an increase of around two-degree centigrade level. After that runaway global warning will take place. Being born in a particular location will be the equivalent of a life in poverty and death with millions of refugees on the move. I called this melodramatically, The Third World War, and suggested it’s already begun. I think it’s a war already lost. Human casualties, I’d guess, somewhere in the range of the Black Death, one in four. I can be bland about it because I’ll be dead by the time this is fully realised. But if you’ve children of grandchildren, be very afraid. Mason suggests that we leave all fossil fuels in the ground, turn to solar, wind, and sea, as Germany has done, with up to 50% of its needs being met in this way. So it is possible, but is it probable?
China and India playing catch up and building or having recently built hundreds of coal-fired stations. But as Mason states ‘Between 2003 and 2010, climate change lobby groups received $558 million in the US. Exxon Mobil and the ultra-conservative Koch industries were major donors…’ What’s in it for them? Simple. Leave fossil fuels in the ground, or as Mason suggests in his chapter ‘Project Zero’ and Exxon Mobil will be worth zero on the stock market of any market. Far simpler to go out and buy a politician, or president.
One of interrelated problems Mason identified was workers in the Western world are getting older. Gee whiz, you may be saying, my hips killing me, I sure know about that. ‘Futureproofing’ on Radio 4 that around 50% of children born today will live until they’re 104. Great news for them. Around 4% of those born at the start of the last century lived long enough to collect their pension. So work hard and don’t collect your pension was the order of the day. Think about this. One in two hospital beds are filled by our fossil fools. Piketty suggests that rich countries growth will fall to around 1% to zero or negative growth. That’s where we are now. More must be done with less. That’s where we are now. Piketty also shows that the equation that you put into the system early and take it out in your later years, in health deficits, no longer works, or can be taken seriously. Mason shows that six of eight nations with populations under 30 are in Africa. Throw in India and US and the equation that one worker will be supporting one pensioner (around four workers fill those positions now) and you’ll be able to determine it doesn’t add up. Mason also shows that all that money invested in government bonds and shares and other financial assets are, in the longer term, worthless as the International Monetary Fund recognises. The bearer will not pay on demand. When it unravels, as it will, then the provider of last resort is the government.
Here’s another of my favourites. The problem of supply is one of demand. Rosa Luxemburg, and all that. As Apple who make those nice phones and tablets and were the richest company in the world find to their cost, unless poor people have money in their pockets they can’t afford to buy those shiny new toys. One in eight workers in the US have at one time worked for McDonalds. Tens of millions wait for food stamps and flood into Walmart, who tell their staff to claim for food stamps. In our country we’re looking at the same solution: the race to the bottom. The solution, increased liquidity, give more money to the rich in the hope that it trickles –eventually- down to the poor, doesn’t work. It’s never worked, but is neoliberal ideology in action.
Mason takes a hint from that well-known libertine, Friedrich Hayek, and suggests that citizens should be issued with an income to do with it what they liked by the government. Imagine if universal credit really was universal credit and how work would become an optional choice. But it’s another of Hayek’s truisms Mason challenges. Only the market can allocate resources. Computing power, argues Mason, can now do that just as effectively, or more effectively than any free market. Facebook and Google, for example, can anticipate our every need before we can even voice it. Their algorithms are getting better. What we think of choice is just a bit of camouflage as the servant serves us more of the same, but in a different colour. But imagine Mason suggests harnessing this power. Imagine the government building more houses. Imagine the government taking control of the money supply and instead of trying to sell banks we already own, lending money to rich people, lending it to fund social projects. Imagine the government running the energy industry for our benefit. I know, I know, it’s a bit much to take. Especially, the bit about taking money from the 1% who are rolling in it. There’s a loss of liberty there. Liberalism. Liberty. More equality. Mason thinks that the threats that we face will allied with the technologies that we have developed will make it brave new world with everyone sharing in the fruits of non-labour. I’m more cynical. We’re at the Wright brother stages with the first aircraft. New technologies will enrich us, but not us all. The world is a more stratified place and will become even more stratified and uneven. Four horsemen on the horizon. Not even that far. I think I can hear the thunder of hoofs. But I hope Mason is right and I’m wrong, as I usually am.
A rise in data flow
Noika can push themselves into making a great phone they’ll still not challenge Apple dominance, because it’s largely a luxury good, but they will pick up those not prepared to pay large amounts of cash for what is essentially a brand. Price elasticity is a factor here.
Explaining data-flow trends
Your experience of global data flows
Manyika et al. (2016a) suggest that data flows primarily enable the movement of goods, finance, services and people.
I’ve not got an organisation. As a writer I’m a sole trader. Dependent on the trade whims of organisations of publishing, which are dominated by the Amazon algorithm. Amazon are what global capital is about. They hold profit in offshore havens. They pay neglibile amounts of tax. They piggyback on economies while reaping vast rewards. Yet, I indirectly, work for them. They determine how much my labour is worth. The starting price for writing, as content, is zero, and doesn’t rise much above it for most writers. Amazon are great service providers. This translates how they deal nationally and internationally and provide products at rock-bottom prices. Hidden costs are exported to tax payers and suckers without leverage.
How big might data services get?
Graphs are good, but part of the mystique of big data. zetabytes? how much is that? I could google it, but it really makes not a great deal of difference. These numbers seem to have no reality in my life, yet in the internet of things it will be the oil of finance and decision making. Companies will know more about individuals than ever before and not just their credit history, but their likes and dislikes. Advertising is about selling fear -for example of missing out on a great offer – and I’m sure we’ll be manipulated, but massaged and made to feel good about being stupid. It’s happening now. I’m pretty dumb and even I know that.
Marketing and marketing research challenges
Regulating the digital market place
I believe in government, not just in defence of the realm, but in defence of the citizen. Lets face it these monopolies can slay us because we have no leverage. They have money and power and don’t mind pushing us about. Look at Ireland’s ministers turning down around 13 billion euros in compensation because they didn’t want to offend Apple. I’ll take it, if nobody else wants it.
Where insight becomes interference
One of the benefits of mass surveillance is it’s relatively cheap. as storing information moves towards zero all that data sits in silos ready to be unpicked by the next generation of pattern-recognition software. The more frightening prospect is the working class lost the propaganda war against the rich and to be poor is not only to be regarded as guilty until proven innocent, but more than this – expendable. Terrorist threats fuel a convenient backlash of if you’ve nothing to hide you’ve nothing to be worried about.
How do you feel about data collection?
I use google. So they know everything about me. That’s the price I pay for being lazy and not using other software. Google (and I’m talking as if it’s one person) and most other companies gather information which they make money out of . Facebook, knows pretty much everything about me too. Amazon ditto. These are monopolies with vast leverage. They plan to run our roads and cars in the future and run healthcare companies. Increasingly, in the new digital age there’ll be literally nowhere to hide. The future is digital, but at the cost of widespread surveillance, which is already happening and dystopia.
Trends that will shape customer insights
Throughout this course you have read about how research and analysis via digital platforms, increasingly incorporating software with complex algorithms, is helping organisations to develop insights that provide them with competitive advantage. In 2012, marketers depended on data for only 11% of all customer related decisions (Spenner and Bird, 2012). However, as Shapiro (2015) suggests, the days of opinion, intuition or instinct are fast losing ground to predictive analytics based on real models of historical data.
To humanise data is quite simply advertisers being able to push a consumer’s emotional buttons. Fear is the stick they use. But with a bigger and better understanding of what will work carrot and stick can be combined to push and pull purchases. Consumers, us suckers, are the meat in the sandwich between big data, and oligarchy.
The challenge of trust in online selling: bitcoin
Bitcoin is an acceptable currency and the more acceptable it becomes the more like it is to be treated like coins of the realm and used for payment for goods and/or services. It seems to me a kind of Ponzi scheme, but like most stock market listings in which bubbles grow and grow I’m sure it will burst. The block chain arrangement of digital information is however something that could benefit more modern hardware.
Balancing the interests of sellers and buyers online: ad-blocking software
When I can be bothered I go through my facebook and twitter accounts and block ads. I try and block all ads, but it’s not realistic. I’m aware how google positions it’s paid for contact at the top of the screen. I’m also aware that the largely liberal newspapers whose heydays were the sixties where ad space was sold at a premium is now mince. Sky News is the loss making part that Disney does not want to purchase from Rupert Murdoch. News has become dictated by the interests of the rich and that saddens me. Ad-blocking software is a good thing. But the indirect costs are borne by a loss of people power and a reliance on monopoly companies to generate content at a price close to zero. Free is the bottom line. The top line is the cost is deffered and we’ll pay more later.
Setting the scene
Every organisation says it wants to understand its customers. Here, we look at what it means to go beyond this and get real, informed insight into customer wants, needs and habits.
Apple has enormous clout. The world’s most valuable company and a bigger budget than most countries to innovate with. But it’s that old Silicon Valley thing. You’re only as good as your last product. More of the same and its specs and watches were by their standards a flop. Targeting the right customer is, of course, the big thing. Win-win in terms of resources. While I believe that algorithms rule the world I’m not stupid enough to believe I’m the exception to that rule. But I find it interesting that no market research firm hit the right notes with Brexit, gains in the Labour Party or the seismic shock of the Trump presidency. You’ve got to ask the question, value for money? or shysters and looking at the entrails of chickens?
Understanding needs and behaviours
Sales and marketing information systems
Data is the new oil. The downside is the cost is often borne by a salesforce trying to push the latest widget, or extract information from a custom that needs to be translated into gobbedlygook for management targets.
Wider systems for customer management
The richest guy on the planet, Jeff Bezos, $106 billion, give or take a few million sure knows how to track sales, monitor what you buy and suggest other options and screw down on labour costs with digital tracking device that are Orwellian.
Your experience of capturing insight
It depends who you are. Another way of putting that is how big your organisation is. Google algorithms have such a vast database they they can confidently predict way way you will jump politically, sexually and sociology. Such networks, can, of course be gamed.
Approaches to gathering and assessing customer insight
Machine to machine learning is reality. Deep mind that smashed ‘go’ champions no longer relies on analytics of past performances but ‘plays’ itself. First principles, algorithms never die. In fields of health care doctors like pilots will be just along for the ride, their pay downgraded and status smashed. From cradle to grave for those with money to pay for it will be something completely different. We live in interesting times.
Customer insight delivered
In an ideal world there would be no cold callers and everything we want would arrive just in time. Data analytics does look at the websites we open up. Then google gets paid, but that doesn’t mean, as Kay suggests that we buy the product. People may read the blurb on my book, for example, that doesn’t mean they’ll buy it. Advertising is there to nudge customers off that ledge of indecision and create demand. Algorithms and analytics are less of a blunderbuss weapon, but it still shoots wide and sprays the wrong people. I’ve not doubt autonomy will come in the future with the nudges becoming firm shoves.
Market research vs customer insight
I feel a bit of a fudge here. Pattern recognition software shows who is doing what when and anticipates the movement and jumps ahead. That’s standard for any computer. The more data. The more insight. That’s why Facebook, Google, Amazon, and Microsoft are kings.
The value of co-creation
Ironically, couldn’t get the video to work, said I needed flashdrive. emm. I’m more up to date with this hackathon business. Silicon Valley nerds sleeping under their desks. Here’s a quotation from an old hardware book, from way back in 2000. So it applies to the 1990s. Po Bronson. Every 1000 business plans sent to venture capitalists, 6 are accepted. Of those 6 companies, 4 will go bankrupt. Only one will go public.
Venture capitalist say all the time ‘good ideas come from referral.’
As a writer the odds are even worse.
Incorporating co-creation into your brand
Interesting. reminds me of the Japanese way of working in the 70s and 80s. Helping the company build value. Nice idea. Big concepts like transparency interest me. But it seems to me the same old faces claim innovation and leadership and put themselves first in line for rewards.
Sustaining marketing research with digital insight
Big data, getting the picture you can use. I liked the stories here. I think Lego after its great comeback success has rebounded. And digital doesn’t have an instinct. Only humans have an instinct. Although we might be wrong there too, with the success of Deep Mind in challenges with ‘go’ and ‘Jeopardy’. Perhaps the real worry is most of us are an open book waiting to be read.
Setting the scene
Location, location, location. A familiar refrain. Servants like Siri who are already in our homes will anticipate our needs before we know what we want. The power behind the throne is the ability to manipulate not cognitive intelligence, but emotional intelligence. What we think we need is not as powerful a driver as what we feel we need. For decades advertisers have sold us fear. I fear it will be a smoother ride now, with option a looking very much like option b.
Personalisation in digital marketing
Two-thirds of businesses do not have digital networks. Depends, of course, what is meant be business. My local boozer, for example, like so many other pubs is dying. Getting a digital service here is just a waste of cash. but if you look at Wetherspoons with prime city centre locations, sometimes the pub is so busy it’s quicker ordering a round of drinks and food with an app -click and collect – even though you’re in the pub. Money as a means of exchange will become largely redundant -as in Sweden- even for such small monetary exchanges and my old boozer, well, it will go to the wall. Not because of the digital revolution, but because people don’t drink as much and if they do they tend to drink at home, where it’s cheaper
The impact of interactivity
What a great read. Amazon has the richest man in the world as its head. And pay the least taxes per income per customer head. Even our glorious Queen Elizabeth, who is largely tax exempt and prone to the odd £200 million windfall from the taxpayer to renovate her old palaces shakes her head and calls them greedy tax dodging bastards. But here’s the hump. Like Waterstones, I work for Amazon. Not directly, not like one of those worker drones employed in their out-of-town warehouses whose every movement is regulated and filmed like a porn star, but indirectly. I’ve an author’s page. It lies dormant, mostly. But like any good consigliere Amazon knows its cut will be there or I’ll be cut.
Your online experience and behaviour
Amazon gets almost all my business when buying books. Convenience and cost (they are cheaper and less hassle than other online retailers). I sometimes use Guardian Unlimited for books, but in those two factors they are not as good, but I like their ethical stance more. I also use West Dunbartonshire’s library service, checking my books online, and more often it’s click and collect.
Selling, usually, small stuff, like a computer screen on a local site, but this is done through Facebook. Gumtree is a backup.
I use a Google browser. I know they track my data, as does these other sites, but like many other (suckers) I weigh the cost with the benefits and they come out tops.
I blog on WordPress.com and ABCtales, both free sites. The former generates income by adding ads to user content, while the latter doesn’t.
How user feedback sustains e-commerce
That’s a great chart. humans are visual animals. we like what we see and we want it-now. Amazon is great for feeding that needs. I’ve a stack of books waiting to be read. Click and collect saved Argo. And Amazon are testing pop-up shops. But really, the high street is dead. Little drones will become big drones and direct delivery will happen soon (although soon is an elastic concept). Ironically, universities that are expanding there hardware, or in old fashioned parlance, building and expanding into more real estate like Glasgow, are in the right game, but for the wrong reasons. Just the same as General Motors made more money from finance than it did from selling cars, universities will make more from real estate than teaching. I’m online now, learning. No need to go anywhere. The old Open University model is the future. The future is now.
Amazon’s business models: a case study
As an e-commerce exemplar it’s difficult to ignore Amazon. It was launched in 1995, primarily to sell physical books online, but developed a $5 billion sales base in just eight years (Chaffey, 2014), and by 2015 had around 304 million active customer accounts worldwide (Statista, 2016a).
Maps on mobile, hitting a moving target
Interesting. I get lost in a sandpit, so any help is always welcome. Books are my love. Yep. prefer hard copy. Mostly buy from Amazon. The cheapest and most convenient. Amazon would love it’s readers to go wholly digital. The reproductive costs of producing 1 digital copy and reproducing it is negligible. Sending it to your device is negligible. Profit margins are increased. Digital is good for the pedant who is looking for that word or character and can’t quite remember where it was in the book. One click and you’re there. But, of course, Amazon et al track your every click. Click bait. They want you to buy more. And they easily work out your position better than any OS map. The future of such devices is alluded to here. Three D, or 4 D or whatever version is most compatible with whatever reality we live in. Babies born now will be the most tracked on earth.
From mobile to wearable – Apple Watch
A perceived demand. The interesting thing for me was he had to develop a prototype to test his hypothesis, which is a bit like me having to write a novel to see if it’s a novel, which is fair enough. The real bummer is having to sell it too. The user had to market (his idea) and sell it.
The growth of mobile and contactless payment
Contactless payment such as swipe and go are great for the moneyed but not so great for the unmoneyed. Those with the least are the most discriminated against.
Africa’s digital economy
I guess Sarah Palin who once thought Africa was a country might not understand that is the world’s youngest and therefore I’d guess most vibrant continent.
How mobile supports Kenya’s economy
Digital is the future and old-fashioned money as a means of exchange between consumers will, very shortly, be as old fashioned as using horses for transport.
A final example of effective personalisation
By the simple act of encouraging consumers to put a name on the packaging and share the product (in real-life and digital terms) they offered a new, innovative level of personalisation.
Setting the scene
Move fast and break things enriches the already wealthy. The Schumpeterian idea is our future for better or worse. Children born now will be the most tracked in history. In some novels only the wealthy can eradicate their digital footprint. Paradoxically, not to be known, is to be somebody. The security risk of tracking devices in our home was touched on here. It’s not just phones, but our fridges, washing machines, kettles, cups. The danger of these being hacked increases exponentially. My guess is the future will be better for many, but us poor people, the largely disenfranchised, will be more easily monitored and controlled How ironic that an old blog post from a Tory MP calling for sterilization of the poor should crop up now.
Key trends in online activity
Explaining data-flow trends
Your experience of global data flows
Manyika et al. (2016a) suggest that data flows primarily enable the movement of goods, finance, services and people.
I’ve not got an organisation. As a writer I’m a sole trader. Dependent on the trade whims of organisations like publishing, which are dominated by the Amazon algorithm. Amazon are what global capital is about. They hold profit in offshore havens. They pay negligible amounts of tax. They piggyback on economies while reaping vast rewards. Yet, I indirectly, work for them. They determine how much my labour is worth. The starting price for writing, as content, is zero, and doesn’t rise much above it for most writers. Amazon are great service providers. This translates how they deal nationally and internationally and provide products at rock-bottom prices. Hidden costs are exported to tax payers and suckers without leverage.
How big might data services get?
Graphs are good, but part of the mystique of big data. zetabytes? how much is that? I could google it, but it really makes not a great deal of difference. These numbers seem to have no reality in my life, yet in the internet of things it will be the oil of finance and decision making. Companies will know more about individuals than ever before and not just their credit history, but their likes and dislikes. Advertising is about selling fear -for example of missing out on a great offer – and I’m sure we’ll be manipulated, but massaged and made to feel good about being stupid. It’s happening now. I’m pretty dumb and even I know that.
Marketing and marketing research challenges
There’s a disjuncture between people, for example, who click on a book and those that buy a book. Amazon is good at this. And they can monitor afterwards what the reader is reading. Most books downloaded to Kindle, for example, remain unread.
Towards more insightful marketing
In an article from 2016, Rosie Hawkins (Global Director of Client Solutions at TNS) highlights five key focus areas for marketers in a rapidly changing digital landscape:
For some organisations – and in particular for their public face or brand – more work is arguably needed in order for their marketing to remain appropriate and relevant to customers.
Personalisation is a buzz word. Selling is old as the devil selling Eve an apple. Buy now. Pay later. Digital means using data to highlight which way you might jump. It saves money and time if the devil know you’re going to snack on that apple anyway and he can concentrate on somebody else waiting for paradise.
Regulating the digital market place
I believe in government, not just in defence of the realm, but in defence of the citizen. Lets face it these monopolies can slay us because we have no leverage. They have money and power and don’t mind pushing us about. Look at Ireland’s ministers turning down around 13 billion euros in compensation because they didn’t want to offend Apple. I’ll take it, if nobody else wants it.
Where insight becomes interference
One of the benefits of mass surveillance is it’s relatively cheap. as storing information moves towards zero all that data sits in silos ready to be unpicked by the next generation of pattern-recognition software. The more frightening prospect is the working class lost the propaganda war against the rich and to be poor is not only to be regarded as guilty until proven innocent, but more than this – expendable. Terrorist threats fuel a convenient backlash of if you’ve nothing to hide you’ve nothing to be worried about.
How do you feel about data collection?
I use google. So they know everything about me. That’s the price I pay for being lazy and not using other software. Google (and I’m talking as if it’s one person) and most other companies gather information which they make money out of . Facebook, knows pretty much everything about me too. Amazon ditto. These are monopolies with vast leverage. They plan to run our roads and cars in the future and run healthcare companies. Increasingly, in the new digital age there’ll be literally nowhere to hide. The future is digital, but at the cost of widespread surveillance, which is already happening and dystopia.
Trends that will shape customer insights
In 2012, marketers depended on data for only 11% of all customer related decisions (Spenner and Bird, 2012). However, as Shapiro (2015) suggests, the days of opinion, intuition or instinct are fast losing ground to predictive analytics based on real models of historical data.
To humanise data is quite simply advertisers being able to push a consumer’s emotional buttons. Fear is the stick they use. But with a bigger and better understanding of what will work carrot and stick can be combined to push and pull purchases. Consumers, us suckers, are the meat in the sandwich between big data, and oligarchy.
The challenge of trust in online selling: bitcoin
Bbitcoin is an acceptable currency and the more acceptable it becomes the more like it is to be treated like coins of the realm and used for payment for goods and/or services. It seems to me a kind of Ponzi scheme, but like most stock market listings in which bubbles grow and grow I’m sure it will burst. The block chain arrangement of digital information is however something that could benefit more modern hardware.
Balancing the interests of sellers and buyers online: ad-blocking software
When I can be bothered I go through my facebook and twitter accounts and block ads. I try and block all ads, but it’s not realistic. I’m aware how google positions it’s paid for contact at the top of the screen. I’m also aware that the largely liberal newspapers whose heydays were the sixties where ad space was sold at a premium is now mince. Sky News is the loss making part that Disney does not want to purchase from Rupert Murdoch. News has become dictated by the interests of the rich and that saddens me. Ad-blocking software is a good thing. But the indirect costs are borne by a loss of people power and a reliance on monopoly companies to generate content at a price close to zero. Free is the bottom line. The top line is the cost is deffered and we’ll pay more later.