This is not a promise to be made lightly.
It’s not, “I’ve got your back until it becomes difficult or inconvenient for me.”
It puts us on the hook, without exception.
This is a powerful promise, a commitment that can change the life of both parties. Don’t do it lightly, but do it. It’s worth it.
Cities used to die slowly. Ancient Rome, Babylon, Memphis (in Egypt) and others took generations to fade from their peaks. The reasons were easy to see:
Now, we can see it happening in a single generation. Rust Belt cities, projects in China, mining towns–they come and they go. The reasons are a bit different:
But I’m not writing about cities here. It’s a useful metaphor for software, online networks and the tools we use to do our jobs and live our digital lives.
Your ability to find a new game for your Amiga, or join a chat with your AOL buddies is mostly gone. I have no idea if it’s possible to log into myspace or second life, and my blog is no longer visible at Typepad. A relentless cycle of creative destruction, fueled by VC churn, technological advances and the network effect means that networks and software are growing faster than ever (an online network can become bigger than many countries in just a few weeks). But as these networks grow, they suck the energy out of the ones that came before.
Most of us, most of the time, are living in a ghost city.
Of course, as in almost all discussions, this is multiplied by a thousand when we add AI to the mix.
There are problems to consider and, perhaps, opportunities for contribution here.
DUMBER: In general, the arc of tools and networks that seek critical mass is to be simpler, easier to get started with and deskilled. The good news is that this gives more people a chance to participate. The bad news is that deskilling the user moves the power to the network creator. In a paint by numbers world, Picasso doesn’t often show up.
WASTE: Those old files, hard-won skills and valuable human networks from the old software stack are difficult and expensive to replace or reproduce. We’ve done almost nothing to increase adversarial interoperability and provide ownership and interchange for network users… because it’s not in the interest of the old network to make it easy for people to leave with their data, and the members of the new networks don’t care–until they become members of old networks.
AMNESIA: Not only do we lose access to our data and our social graph, we lose particular skills and the ability to pass them on to others. The new architects don’t know what we did, and since we’re often starting over, we reproduce past mistakes.
DECREASING VASTNESS: I got my first email address 50 years ago. During that lifetime online, there’s always been room for doubling. The speed of human connection, the size of the network, the bandwidth–it felt infinite, doubling every few years. But we’ve hit our last doubling. We can’t spend twice as much time online. We can’t double the number of people using the networks. We won’t notice if our bandwidth doubles…
Just as the westward expansion of Europeans in North America eventually hit the Pacific Ocean, sooner or later we have to settle in and make where we are better, not relentlessly head west.
The system is far more powerful than any individual. When a network or a software stack gains critical mass, there’s not a lot an isolated person can do about it. But just as LEED and and local building codes pushed architecture in a certain direction, organized individuals can create more digital resilience. Email’s persistence is a miracle, but that’s partly because standards bodies kept its API open and thriving.
We’re not stuck in traffic, we are traffic.
Software isn’t just a nerd in a basement writing code. It’s a craft. The UX and UI, the design of the data stack, the culture of the organization that builds and supports it–this is the architecture of our time. Except it’s not Frank Lloyd Wright building a few houses in Buffalo, it’s contagious.
We wait and hope for the first kind, the magic that arrives just when we need it. This is the magic of inspiration, or of good fortune. The magic of opportunties offered and connections made.
There never seems to be enough of this sort of magic.
The other kind, though, is surprisingly abundant. This is the magic of being able to turn on lights for others. It happens when we cause connection or open doors. It’s the magic that comes from creation, and it’s based on abundance.
The first things humans invented, before fire, the wheel or baked brie, was trust.
Trusting the others in the village. Trusting that you could get a good night’s sleep. Trusting that what you heard was true.
We’ve expanded the village from twenty people to billions. Walter Cronkite was effective because millions of people trusted him, and he earned that trust. And as the media became more powerful and fragmented, that contract began to erode.
We’ve created methods of exchange and interaction that were unimaginable just a generation ago.
And, at the same time that we’ve expanded our circles of trust, we’ve pushed to make many of them digital.
Interactions by email and zoom. Documents that are written and certified by unseen intermediaries. Stories and images that feel real and local, but might be neither one.
This only works because we’ve applied our same 20-person trust instincts to each of these interactions, billions of times, around the world.
Aided by AI, the thieves and scammers are now relentlessly working to hack this basic human instinct. They’re stealing more than money.
That email might not be from the person you think it’s from. And that online recruiter, or the text you just got–it might not be worthy of the benefit of the doubt. Even phone calls from people who aren’t who they say they are–AI bots with familiar voices and plenty of specific knowledge.
Like all things amplified by computer chips and the network, this one is going to accelerate–very quickly.
People are going to be deceived, victimized and ripped off. And the sort of intimacy that marketers and institutions counted on will erode fairly quickly.
Halloween is here, and it’s not just little kids who are wearing costumes. If someone in a clown mask walks into a bank, the tellers know something’s up… trust is the first thing to go.
The short-term response is to change our bias about digital interactions–when in doubt, be more human. When in doubt, take your time. When in doubt, ask someone else to double check.
In the long run, I think we’re going to see our circles of trust shrinking. That’s sad, it’s going to fracture networks we’ve been counting on for a long time and it’s going to be confusing since the defaults will be shifting.
Marketers will discover the costs of this, but it’s individuals that will have to rebuild what they think of as community.
Watch out for tricks. All year round.
When we’re a little behind, we borrow to catch up.
Perhaps we borrow goodwill and spend less time than we might on a project.
Or we need some money to pay the rent, so we borrow against a paycheck.
And a good night’s sleep is tempting to borrow from as well.
The borrowing compounds, with small debts turning into bigger ones.
On the other hand, when we’re a little ahead, we’re not charged interest, we earn it.
The slack in our workday gives us a chance to plan, to do work on our own account and to see the big picture.
The difference between behind and ahead often comes down to how much we’ve promised the world. If our apartment is too expensive, our customer list is too big or our social media platform is hard to keep up with, it’s easy to fall a bit behind.
This is under our control.
Overdelivering on smaller promises is a shortcut to trust, loyalty and resilience.
So many bits of information are flying around. Emails to us, articles, posts, videos, updates, memos, meetings, books…
The most common (and apparently efficient) approach is to quickly look over the new information. If it confirms what you already know, check it off. If it contradicts what you believe, find a reason to ignore it.
The alternative is to take new information and try it on for size. Have it change your mind. Imagine what happens if the information is actually true and useful. Not a checkbox confirmation, but actually a new way to see things.
You can always switch back later.
It takes about 900,000 minutes to become a board-certified dermatologist. At that point, you might be very skilled and well-informed.
It takes less than nine minutes to make your patient feel seen, understood and reassured.
If you skip the 9 minutes, you wasted the 900,000.
Organizations and brands can choose their quadrant.
It’s tempting to want the best of all four, but it’s going to take effort and focus. All of these terms are relative choices, not absolute judgments.
Where does your offering fit in?
Visitors to your new bookstore are likely to have a phone in their pockets–they could buy a book from the competition without even walking into the shop.
And diners at your funky restaurant have to pass dozens of other places to eat on their way to you. Places that are faster, more conventional and probably cheaper as well.
Good, fast and cheap used to be the goals of a typical small business. Today, there’s probably a giant, heartless competitor who is gooder, faster and cheaper than you.
The way forward is simple: Be worth the trip. Be worth the price.
“You can pick anyone, and we’re anyone” isn’t going to be helpful going forward. Be someone instead.
Racing to the bottom is no longer a viable option, but it’s more compelling and useful to race to the top than ever before.
It’s possible to consider the next event in our lives as something the world is trying to teach us.
But it might be even more effective to realize that, whenever we choose, we can learn something from what’s going on. We’re not getting taught, we’re choosing to learn. There’s a lesson in every interaction, if we want there to be.
When we choose to learn, our active participation makes a difference.
