nyuudo

WYSiWYG

Users and Services must notice the difference between Abstraction and Reality

2013 was -more than ever- a year of immediacy confirmed as value for society and for the ones who want to lead millenials. Those leaders who hide from problems or make a public demonstration of negligence avoiding immediate action are condemned to be replaced. Still, I don't see any social value of immediacy as an asset. The best example could be the bad reputation of quants or even bitcoin and its dizzy behavior in the market fluctuating about 50% up or down just for the pleasure of wealth risk junkies.

Nor technologies, neither strategies are solving problems completely as they pretend to do when they are presuming to be ubiquitous and fast. I tend to think is something related to rhythms instead of immediacy. The rhythm or pulse is natural, the result of years of evolution and associated ideas were fundamental to come to the same ambiguous conclusions that formulas cannot and will not predict.

Said and done is no longer enough. Tweets and pictures published are relevant only to big data but for humans a whole experience implemented is the thing that make the difference. Directly or indirectly due to the events of 2013 there are 3 topics that probably will become more significant for society and economy in 2014: Privacy, cognition as a service and storytelling.

"I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel" ~ Maya Angelou ~

Once Snowden revealed the opaque side of privacy for big companies and governments, other services for messaging and browsing internet gained visibility. At the same time IT companies are embracing the internet of things with a pinch of salt, seduced by the wide range of possibilities to make applications more "natural". The relatively new concept called cognition as a service could involve many aspects of human interaction with the help of "invisible" tech solutions inside. But in my opinion the main factor that could transform the topics mentioned before in economic and socially attractive tools is still the most complex to achieve effectively. I mean storytelling, which for me is the proper way to get the message through different generations, cultures or social status.

The message, collective and individual, coming from experience is more valuable than any amount of immediate information. Nevertheless there's one last challenge that we should overcome to guarantee the success of all these ideas. 21st century technology has created the ironic assumption that internet access is so feasible for mankind to the point that some innovations and services are creating business models ignoring unresolved historical claims like health access, education access, housing access, energy access, food access, water access...

Maybe a good resolution for 2014, in a saturated information environment, is to make an effort to spread awareness, users and services must notice the difference between abstraction and reality. Above all faux optimism, disposable luxury, colorful gadgets, everything apps, at the end of the day, at the beginning of the year, what you see is what you get.