Change with disruptive technology

Change with disruptive technology

PROLOGUE

Motivated by previous comments by my readers, now I am taking technology in backdrop of Change.

In one of my posts on Virtual life , I had talked about the changing online culture and my experiments failing terribly. Twitter  has literally become a new advertisement machine and we all accept advertisements and news by RSS. Then why not see the advertisements which are cusomtised to OUR choice?

I dug some past soil to understand evolution and how things changed with time. I ended up asking myself- Do we really understand change? Is time a good parameter to understand change? Does technology matter when things change ?

UNDERSTANDING CHANGE

Four million years ago, primordial soup of amino acids and other simple molecules managed to turn themselves into first living cell. Though I don’t understand the phenomenon very well, I still consider this creation of life as miracle..

Interesting question is whether the cells evolved or did they make a choice to be?

Classically this question falls in category of Emergence vs Intention.

To test this idea, I took up a huge debate on idea of Free will and choice. I played positive and my friend was completely against it. His best attack was,”How can a newly born kid have a choice?” My counter argument was,”he chose to live and environment helped”. We agreed that idea of choice is in partial agreement with complex phenomenon of emergence. Probably, it answers an important question of viability as well.

Before taking up hard issue of viability of technology, let’s explore a bit more about time.

Kurzweil observed a striking feature of passage of time. He explained that, “time inherently moves in an exponential fashion and unless we’re caught in ‘knee of curve’ of eons, we do not observe things changing quickly.” Simplifying theory of relativity, I say:

Unless we’re moving at the same pace as that of change, we do not understand change very clearly.

Now, that we know how critical the pace and locus of observation is, technology can be viewed from different perspectives and at varying velocities of choices.

CUSTOMERS and SERVICES

Building on, I would like to take up one of the recently critiqued areas on internet:

Online Behavioural Advertising.

I was observing reactions of people  buying products without help of internet. Common answers were:

Product should be:

  • New
  • Different
  • Valuable and Meaningful
  • Associated to customer and
  • having GOOD SERVICES

Now why did Service hit the sweet sopt? Why was assistance so important? We all know that we need it!

To take this to next level, organisations started moulding their offerings around customer’s likleliness and their needs.

In year 2009 I can clearly claim the fact that almost everyone is online and technology is pervasive! But to understand the concept of richeness and reach associated to customer’s likeliness, I started exploring how behavior is getting targeted online? I came across this interesting book- Everything is Miscellaneous: The Powerof the New Digitial Disorder, in which David explained how things changed and how customers were attracted online. I was shocked to see what Google tried experimenting: They were tracking online user’s eye movements and gave quick and almost relevant results to the users on page1!

In her genius peice of work, Structuration Model of Technology, Orlikowski had claimed:

Human actions are enabled and constrained by structures, yet that these structures are the result of previous actions.

Hence, I realised that advertisements, or  promotion of services, over a period of time got mixed and aligned with customer habits, which in turn changed customer behavior as well.

Good? Bad? Do you see Emergence along with Intention? Power and domination? There may not be a correct answer from one perspective as this was a change.

Disruptive Technologies

The technologies which bring different value proposition that had been available previously. Products based on disruptive technologies are typically cheaper, simpler, smaller, and frequently, more convenient to use- Clayton, Harvard

Google gave advertisements differently, whereas, Amazon targeted consumer’s actions using powerful analytical tools. Every good organisation wanted to ENGAGE with their customers and disruptive technologies helped.

PERSONALISED WEB BROWSING

To change the existing model and move beyond concept of personalised home pages (like iGoogle), an organisation called PHORM, came out with something creative and disruptive, but has been defamed due to fear of privacy and protection. Here is small video, borrowed from Youtube, in which CEO of Phorm defends and explains how this technology works:

I also read several posts on Phorm- here, here, here and here, etc. But the most interesting answer by a user:

a VERY interesting step for Phorm – starting perhaps to use their technology “for the consumer” – is this the beginning of an intelligent agent – that can learn what we are interested in and assemble for US. If so, it’s like an “on the fly” version of the personalised portal/homepage/startpage model – and it could go somewhere – it could even go all over ;-) Very interesting – will watch Phorm with even greater interest now.

I believe this technology has power to give consumers a choice and  flexibility to enjoy the world around them. While exploring, I also came across International Advertising Bureau , who are leaders in behavioural advertising good practice and saw that Phorm is one of the signatory members laying down principles on good practice.

My Verdict

Moving at the pace of change and taking multiple perspectives of choices I see this Change as inevitable. It is in nature and it is Freedom..

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