The powerful internet consumer and the vulnerable citizen
Internet citizens, digital natives and teleworkers have discovered a new habitat where a new society and community agreements can be built and lived. Privacy, anonymity and lack of physical danger have empowered many of us to expand our identities, express ourselves , socialize and develop our hidden talents. This new habitat has provided new spaces and dynamics for many subcultures and ideologies fully or partially repressed by the mainstream , conventional media and public policies. At the same time new markets and possibilities of exchange have grown opening opportunities to both entrepreneurs and customer to find satisfaction to their dreams and wishes online.
Online retailing and service providing has broaden the number of professions in a way, that no industry or employment policy in the world has ever reached. Free exchange and contribution has reached high levels of relevance as much as online stores, online education and content consumption via streaming. All this changes the way we buy and sell, but most of all changes the way we make decisions about it.
Control mechanisms have been created to follow and understand all sources of information, paths, tracks and the digital print all of us leave behind when online, this way governments companies and big corporations keep control of the flows of information shared, sold and offered in the net. So we can practically know almost everything that people do or think when online, assuming they do not ever lie.
Are the new generations becoming the new rebels for a digital nation or is the digital environment educating them ?
Access vs property (for everyone?)
This week Apple announced the release of its latest operating system. This time it won´t be possible to buy it at any store but exclusively online. Amazon has launched it program to rent text books to scholars instead of selling them, someone called this a sustainable initiative. What will happen when computers, can only operate if they are connected to the web and when would it become illegal to avoid digital surveillance?
Access to contents, cloud computing, interconectivity and the possibility to be “always on” means that a lot of information, resources, software and applications will be available for many people, to be used even free of charge. But also means everything we do in that environment leaves a track, a statistic that makes databases grow and become more and more efficient. Optimizing this databases provides hints on what people, like, do , approach, enjoy and need and also allows marketeers, governments and power circles to control and direct information, reactions and scenarios in the digital world. Property (specially intellectual property) becomes and obsolete idea under the slogan of sharing and collaborating.
One amazing thin about cool things is mutation. As soon as cool is identified it mutates into something unexpected, something new, something unreachable. That will be the circle of the future markets, permanent change and permanent adaptation, multiplicity and rebellion. Slippery creativity that mutates as plants and animals do, when the weather changes. A permanent survival.
Is the market ready for this revolution? Is it ready to change and adapt at this pace ? What are communication and advertising agencies capable of offering in this environment? or will this revolution transform our actual concept of markets and trade?
In the next part: Is there a future of Money?
