LIVING IN A

CONNECTED MARKETPLACE

I. THE RISE OF THE AUGMENTED CONSUMER

YESTERDAY Living on rails

Powerful mass media VS hard-to-surface consumer feedback (no web 2.0)

Media

consumption

time

(reading,

gathering info)

DOWN

TOPconversation

Strong time and space constraints (lack of mobile devices, media & interconnectivity)

Shopping

time

Try-out

time

Feedback

time

YESTERDAY A very linear purchase funnel

TOWARDS THE METAVERSE

INTERNETOF THINGSRFID

WORLD

WEBWIDE

STANDARDSUNIFIEDPROGRAMMING

MOBILEWEB

AUGMENTEDREALITY

DEVICEINTERCONNECTION

breaking the barriers of time & space, interconnecting the cyberspace & the physical world

LANGUAGES

CLOUDCOMPUTING

TODAY TOMORROW What seemed sci-fi yesterday…

MIT’s Sixth Sense at TED, February 2009

… now is reality.

Geolocationbased (peer-)reviews

Retail price & review comparisonsthrough bar code scanning

NO NEED ANYMORE TO GATHER INFORMATION BEFORE SHOPPING –ONE CAN DO IT RIGHT ON THE SPOT, THROUGH HIS/HER MOBILE PHONE

TODAY TOMORROW

“The future is already

here – it's just not evenly

distributed” – 2003

TODAY TOMORROW

WILLIAM GIBSON(author of Neuromancer, the book that

inspired The Matrix and pioneered cyberpunk)

They may not look like the

neural implants we

fantasized about 30 years

ago, and yet mobile

phones connected to the

Internet and its pool of

content – easily browsable

through search engines –

already act as physical

extensions of our memory

A more and more complex pathwayTODAY

Towards a seamless integration of data from

very different sources in our everyday lifeTOMORROW

Microsoft’s Productivity Future Vision, 2011

II. THE DATA CRAZE

THE IMPRESSION OF CONTROL AUTOMATIC DATA COLLECTION OFFERS CAN BE QUITE APPEALING…

TO MARKETERS, OF COURSE

YET ALSO TO CONSUMERS

Tracking one’s electricalconsumption or diet; remembering

previously visited places…

Consumer profiling…

… resulting in more effective & tailored ads (ex: retargeting)

Better sales predictionmodels to manage

supply chains

…and overwHElming

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/30/opinion/sunday/giving-the-fbi-what-it-wants.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2

HASAN M. ELAHI – Giving the FBI what it wants

Data Overload – aka information flooding as the best way to

defeat automatic data collection

SELECTIVE IGNORANCE VS HYPERCHOICE

Having to deal with too many elements of very differentlevels of importance can make the informed decisionprocess even less effective than the uninformed one

“Much needs to occur, however, between the

collection of data and observations [...].

For mature thought there is no mechanical substitute. Creative thought and essentially repetitive thought are very different things.

For the latter there are, and may be, powerful

mechanical aids”

VANNEVAR BUSH(author of As We May Think, a 1945 article that

prefigured the hypertext system through the concept of the Memex Machine)

DATA COLLECTION CAN BE AUTOMATED, YET DATA PROCESSING CANNOT

HOW INSIGHTS WORK

- Figures have no meaning by themselves

- To know what to monitor, quantitative research needs qualitative researchbeforehand to identify emerging trends (and hence to dertermine the resultingmetrics it should track, as they have a precise statistical meaning)

THE DATA PROTECTION

PARADOX

• The more carefully it is conceiled, the moreit attracts attention (hiding in plain sight)

• Data collection itself is less important thanthe ability to analyze it and sort it properly

• Processing data effectively remains – and will probably remain – a costy work to do odds are very small that it will soon beapplied to anyone without any specificpurpose

• Proprietary data prevents cross fertilization& weaken the automatic processingcomputer can do

AIs & THE FUTURE OF DATA PROCESSING

RAYMOND KURZWEIL(author of The Singularity is Near,

which deals with how sentient machines might change our future)

Provided a real AI emerges, it could offer a real alternative to human data processing.

Yet, the question remains whether or not this sentient artificial being would agree to do it. If it really is intelligent, it mayprobably find that being given only suchtasks is dull, boring & repetitive…

III. FROM CLUSTERED DIGITAL IDENTITIES TO AUNIFIEDONE?

THE INTERNET’S FOUNDING PHILOSOPHY

ANONYMITY

BIAS-FREE

SHAREDKNOWLEDGE

COLLECTIVEINTEREST

FREEDOMOF THOUGHT

FREEDOMOF SPEECH

Pioneered by scholars

& researchers

YET ANONIMITY ON THE WEB FACES SEVERAL OPPONENTS

$Corporations & private companies that want to cross consumer data

Governmental and peace-keeping agencies that want to ease the

tracking of individuals for enquiries

rep

ort

ing

WHAT THE TRADE-OFF COULD BEIF GOVERNMENTS MAKE THE 1st MOVE

UNIFIED DIGITAL PASSPORTGOVERNMENTAL

AGENCIES

LOGIN TO SITES& WEB SERVICES

deliver & guarantee

SITES THAT TRY TO ACCESS PEOPLE’S INFORMATION

asking permission from and eventually paying a tax to

HOW PRIVATE COMPANIES ARE ALREADY TRYING TO ENFORCE IT TO THEIR ADVANTAGE

Logging oneself into any Google service (Gmail, Agenda, Docs etc.)…

…automatically logs you into any otherGoogle service (including YouTube)…

…and probably soon to other services (as pictured above, Facebook nowdetects if you are logged in Gmail)

allowing marketers to cross even more data types

together, to build an evenmore complete profile and

customer journey

THE FILTER BUBBLE

personnalizedweb searches

showing differentresults for each

individual

WHEN EASIER IS NOT NECESSARILY BETTER

Being able to ask computers questions directly and getanswers immediately may beconvenient – but not having to rephrase those questions or to think of the proper words in advance may deprive us of ourability to question whichagenda lies behind one formulation VS another

TOWARDS THE DEATH OF SERENDIPITY?

back to a life on rails, freed from time and spaceconstraints YET with new barriers (labelling)

Happy accident –aka when one finds something that he was not expecting to find.

written by Alex Delamairealex.delamaire.net@alexdlmr

Part of a series of interventions given atSciencesPo Paris by THIERRY JADOT, StarcomFrance CEO – featuring THOMAS JAMET, headof branded content at Newcast France.

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