Digital Darwinism

by Tom Goodwin

This era was dominated by the same players that ruled the pre-digital world. We simply took the information that had once been printed on paper and placed it on a screen. In this pre-2004 world, players like Yahoo, Netvibes, Excite, Lycos or AOL became our gateway to the internet, saving it as documents and arranging information in directories much like filing cabinets. We’d taken pre-digital-world structures and replicated them. Our behaviour in this era was similar to reading magazines or newspapers; we had a relationship with a provider, and largely went down the rabbit hole that was their content. This was an internet based on homepages, bookmarks and a daily routine: the internet mainly as words, simple images and infrequent linking out.

  The search era

  The second era was one of search when the search bar became the new gateway to the internet. From 2004 onwards, the first destination we would often visit wouldn’t be a page full of information, but a search bar and nothing else. For the first time we were now in control. PageRank from Google became the enabler, but we were still the navigator. Information wasn’t pulled through to us, we had to go find it, but everyone could contribute and the popularity and depth of the internet exploded.

  This was the era of the deeper, richer, more democratic web. Content was hidden in messy structures, but was pulled up to our browsing layer by complex search algorithms. The internet in this era became about surfing. We skimmed the top of the internet, opening 10 then 20 then 30 browser windows at a time. The winner of this era was Google, the shop window for all browsing, the owner of most data, the customer interface to later own advertising.

  The social era

  The big winners in the third age were social networks. From Facebook to LinkedIn, Twitter to Snapchat, the dominant new form of browsing is based on what people we know have shared, suggested, broadcasted, retweeted or liked. From 2006 onwards, it’s these companies that have done best at recruiting users and traffic.

  We do of course still search, but usage levels over the last few years are down. We increasingly use the internet on mobile phones, but much of our time on the mobile web is spent on social media. While we may dip into the micro-portal of a banking app to find our balance, we’re probably spending more time on Facebook, WeChat or other socially oriented and curated experiences.

  The social age so far has been the most complete and mature version of the web. We’ve killed homepages and instead, when we go onto the internet, because of friends or people we follow or smart algorithms, we are presented with a version of information and the internet that is likely to be most relevant to us. Our search results are based on history, our Facebook feed is scarily based on what we would most like to see, or at least find most palatable, our Twitter feed is a less sophisticated and more pure pull-through version of what people we have chosen to listen to think we should see.

  The Internet of Things

  The main driver of the next stage of the internet comes primarily from data, but also from better processing of it and smarter actions. If the internet has always been about connections between people and information, the next paradigm is one of things being added to the mix.

  We could soon be in an era where computers effectively become a support function for us. They become an ambient assistive layer.

  A well-known expression from software developer Eric Raymond, and reported by Benedict Evans, states that, ‘A computer should never ask the user for any information that it can auto-detect, copy or deduce’ (Evans, 2016).

  As more data is recorded and shared by more things, increasingly we need to tell the computer less.

  The big hope of computing in the near future is that a vast increase in sensors, a vast improvement in how they talk to each other, a far more robust system for looking at past behaviour and making predictions, and (most importantly) a more progressive attitude from people towards what we can rely on computers to do for us, will all mean that computing becomes personalized, assistive and predictive.

  This offers incredible opportunities for brands to advertise better, and for companies to change their business models by offering to serve these new expectations. As time goes on, we have less time and more choices to make. While technologies like voice interfaces are going to reduce the cognitive burden required to make things happen, what will be even more transformative will be automation of decision, and the notion of ‘light nudges’, or key contextual suggestions. It’s fascinating for businesses to think how they can leverage the opportunities that this smartness will create. How can you get people to order more products? How can you get people to invest in more expensive systems? How can you make everything as slick, and seamless, as possible?

  The predictive web: the Th’Internet

  We see small signs of this today. For example, Google scans your e-mail and can automatically track flights and add them to your calendar. At some point everything should connect and just work, but before then, we’re stuck between the dumb and the smart – the interim of things, which I call Th’Internet.

  Soon we will see the world get smart around us. At the moment we have Amazon’s personal assistant, Alexa, and Philips personal wireless lighting, Hue, which means I have to think a little bit more about lighting my home than when I simply used a light switch. But soon perhaps when I return home on a Monday night in January my favourite jazz music will be playing and the lights will be on, but dimmed, and I’ll enter a preheated home that could tell when I’d be back. This raises fascinating user interface challenges. Does it do it automatically? Does it nudge me and ask ‘Monday night setting?’ and I have to say yes?

  Anticipatory computing will make constant micro-predictions about what we are likely to do, need, and want. Many aspects of our lives will become seamlessly assisted by thin contextual information and smart suggested options or nudges. This offers incredible opportunities for brands to advertise better and for companies to change their business model and offering to serve new expectations.

  Privacy trading

  ‘Privacy may actually be an anomaly’ said Vinton Cerf, co-creator of the military’s early internet prototype and Google executive (Ferenstein, 2013).

  For so long we’ve done all we can to guard privacy and our personal data. Increasingly we may first give up the battle and then focus on trading it for something of value.

  Living at a time when reality TV stars continue to get rich, when it seems every Instagram user wants to get paid to be an influencer, it seems rather strange to both want to be known, to be popular and envied and also to not have anyone know anything about you. Privacy is a complex matter, but is it realistic to share so much for so long and then be shocked when little about your life is a secret anymore?

  We are on the edge of a divide: some of us guard privacy furiously, some of us begrudgingly let go of it, and some of us have no understanding of it nor a real need to defend it. I’ve got a feeling that soon the battle to maintain privacy will become difficult, that the benefits of sharing data will become so clear that most people will embrace the idea that privacy is an asset to trade.

  The mistakes we made when we were young are being swept aside by the torrent of time: the errors of children today may manifest themselves on servers around the planet, as opposed to within the small confines of our schools or communities. But how can kids miss something like privacy, a concept they’ve probably never known?

  We have traded privacy for longer than we realize. We have had store cards that record what we have bought, that have aggregated and sold the data anonymously, and then used this to target us with special offers while giving us money off. When we use our phones and Google Traffic, we share our speed and locations and benefit from the greater good. Browsing and search histories are used to give us more relevant data; healthcare is based on using patient data and history; companies like 23andMe use DNA records. Through all these we have gently eroded our privacy and got little in return.

  I think in the near future we may swing to embrace privacy trading more emphatically. There are three ke
y elements to consider.

  Trust

  Seemingly weekly data breaches and hacks mean we are going to need companies with robust records for data safety and governance. It’s most likely that we will think of companies such as Amazon or Google, and far less likely Facebook, to record, store and manage our data for us. If we trust these companies with our most personal details, then we have a potential foundation for this concept.

  Transparency and control

  For this to work, companies will need to be clear, honest and transparent about what data they are keeping, what they are using it for, and to continuously offer the chance for us to control and modify it. Knowing you’ve bought a TV is one thing; knowing your blood test results or genetic code is absolutely another. If health insurers, for example, could ever access some of this information, we’d have absolute mayhem.

  Value

  So if the key is making it worth people’s while, what can be offered in exchange for the great value of the data recorded, stored and used?

  While we talk a lot about data today, the world doesn’t reflect an environment where companies know too much. I’m shown ads for watches I bought a while ago, others for rental apartment complexes I now live in; you buy a tape measure and Amazon thinks you want to avidly start collecting them.

  I enjoy the mental experiment of assuming that companies know pretty much everything about me. I’m 38 and travel a lot. Would this be a terrible world? What if someone could find a way to show me, rather than mesothelioma class-action suits or TV ads for Viagra or Chevrolet leasing, ads for a new Burberry man bag, or a new app that offers a better doctor’s experience or a stunning ad for a new lifestyle clothing company that makes edgy simple fashion? I know these companies are prepared to spend a fortune reaching me. The advertising inventory would be worth even more if I was shown fewer ads. If I was shown slightly fewer but more relevant ads, I’d be far happier, the brands would be far happier, and the TV channels who sell advertising space could make far more money at the same time.

  Let’s assume my bank and credit card company know where I am at all times, and perhaps my airline, the hotels I use, or the retailers I visit also know. In fact, why can’t everyone know where I am?

  On a conceptual level I don’t have an issue with us exploring how this data can be used. I’d love to see people focus on how this data could be stored and managed in a way that works for everyone. Maybe I don’t mind my credit card spend being shared with advertisers, my TV habits shared with banks. Maybe I just want things to work around me and this helps.

  As part of this system we will soon find friction removed from life in return. It’s amazing today that passcodes and user IDs and other accounts are still typed in every single day and often several times a day. It’s estimated $16 billion is wasted in time each year just with lost passwords (Loftus, 2010). In the future things will be seamless, with passwords fading into the background, and our face, fingers, voice, heartbeat, or other mechanisms used to gain entry seamlessly.

  The main idea here is that we stop the assumptions from the past. We have always trodden carefully around privacy as if it’s a beast that we may wake up. We have figured out subtle ways of doing little things in the background that offer no clear value, but won’t be noticed. We can start the conversation in a different way. We can work around what we can maximize as value to give to people. We can have much more honest and open conversations with people about what information they may be willing to share with us, and, assuming that they have our trust, we can create more personalized and better experiences for them.

  The benefits of privacy trading for companies in the future are clear: as we get more data from more people, we can help them make decisions like never before. We can offer better experiences: hotels that can welcome you as you check in, without any information required from you, and planes that can be kept waiting for you because they know your frequent flyer status.

  Smartness in the cloud

  Devices are becoming more intelligent and more helpful, and the cloud has enabled a smartness to pervade the technologies we use every day.

  There is much debate about the future of smartness. It’s probably the Amazon Echo that first showed the idea in practice. Amazon Echo is one of the smartest and cheapest devices currently available. It is actually just a speaker and an internet connection. The speaker here, like the Google Home or Apple HomePod, merely becomes a relatively dumb access point to the smartness in the cloud. We see this everywhere. Tablets these days are relatively cheap and don’t become obsolete so fast, PCs are stubbornly cheap and oddly slow to improve, software like Adobe now runs in the cloud and not on the device. Our data increasingly is elsewhere, on Google Docs or Dropbox.

  Moving smartness into the cloud facilitates a new system and way of thinking. The smartness is removed from devices and is now found in the systems and structures behind them. A good example is contactless payment with bank cards on the London Underground. In this system you are not buying a ticket digitally, you never own a ticket, you merely get permission to enter and permission to leave, and when you leave you are billed for the travel directly to your bank account. Imagine if, rather than passports, we carried nothing: all records were stored in the cloud – permissions, visas, entry stamps – and instead of us carrying a document, we were just identified by fingerprints like the clear entry system in the USA allows. What if we just used our face, like Face ID, to board planes and never carried tickets? What if we never needed to use a phone or metro card to get on a bus or leave a system and we were just automatically billed by our phone company for the distance we travelled, the method and the time of day based on how far we went, established by GPS routers or even sonic technology like Chirp?

  We need to get better at thinking about digital transformation in a more effective way. Credit cards are not photographs of money that people exchange; they are entirely new systems and structures built on top. Let’s rethink all systems this way. Perhaps the cash of the future is not a digital wallet but your face or a unique identity band. Perhaps we don’t carry the tech any more. It will be interesting to see what happens around the world as companies build for this.

  Increasingly life isn’t about coincidence; it’s about algorithms. News is now automatically selected based on what we like, will click on and most likely share.

  Advertising is slowly not only placed and bought with algorithms and programmatic technology but also created automatically and specifically for you. We all know retargeting, and the slippers that stalk you around the web, but increasingly there is technology like Dynamic Creative which can render out a personalized display of video ads based on your search history, weather, stock market performance, locations, and even things like stock levels in local stores. You may be shown ads for convertible cars on sunny spring days, or a pricier watch when the Dow hits new heights. Ads can be rendered out from billions of permutations to show you directions to the local store and even offer personalized pricing based on what the software thinks will make you take action.

  Demographic shifts

  One of the most profound, impactful and interesting trends that I’m not covering in detail in this book is the huge change that technology is having on society.

  I’m not best placed to do this. I’m not an expert in this field, but I want to ask some questions which many need to ponder as we look ahead. These changes are not widely discussed because I sense that most people are in denial.

  People worry about the significant changes in the distribution of population. Whether it’s the demographic time bomb of having people give up work at the same age, then living longer in retirement while requiring more expensive healthcare to keep them alive, or the changing nature of the middle class and the increasing income gaps between the rich and the poor – these are not topics that many people enjoy listening to at conferences.

  A tech-driven future is becoming divided

  We face a world that seems more divided than ever. I don�
��t think its root and only cause is technology, but technology is certainly catalysing and exaggerating social change and creating worrying futures for many in jobs and countries that face change at a pace faster than can be dealt with. It seems we are on the threshold of great change.

  It’s fair to say that at most times in human history, technology has been seen as a force for good, and as a way to progress to a better state. Technology has improved health, given us luxury in many forms, be it time or through the medium of more stuff to own. For years the world of business was a world led by business people. They had vision but they were never ‘geeks’. It’s been a world of Jack Welches, Henry Fords, Andrew Carnegies, Richard Bransons, even Steve Jobs was more entrepreneur than hacker. For a considerable length of time, scientists and ‘geeks’ didn’t shape corporate strategy: they made it happen.

  Now, for the first time in history, the geeks are calling the shots, shaping the future, and they understand technology perfectly. But they are not like the entrepreneurs of the past. These are not people who seem to have an innate understanding of people – far from it. If anything, the more objective mathematical precision required to be successful in technology and coding almost requires that these people don’t understand the subjectivity, emotion, and nuance of the human character. It creates for me a very worrying combination of circumstances. It seems that for many people the future of humanity lies not in connecting communities and building bridges between different people, but rather trying to escape, bury under, or fly over the issues that these new problems have created.

  Extremism

  We have long lived in a world where different people held different views. We have long had newspapers that represented different political sides. But we tended to know that. If you were a Fox viewer, you knew that you were seeing the right-wing side of the debate. A CNN viewer would know that they were seeing the left-wing side of the debate. But you would know that two sides existed. The same is true with newspapers – you would go to the newsagent, and see a variety of headlines, each designed with a particular audience in mind.