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This is by Lucas Gray, a Simpson’s and Family Guy animator. (Hat tip to Gawker)

[Minutes later:] I came across this at Gawker as well.

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The narrative was primed to develop, and so it did: Romney won the debate. The instant polls say so, and the mainstream media say so. And although I thought Obama did a far better job, I know that I’m biased that way. I’m willing to acknowledge: Romney won the debate last night.

But, although Romney won it last night, he lost it today, because now we know for sure how much he lied. We can reverse the narrative. We have an obligation to do so.

When cheaters are discovered after a game, they are stripped of their victory. That is what we of social media need to do. The mainstream media won’t because they claim they don’t proclaim winners, although that is exactly what they do.

It is up to us, the tweeters, the bloggers, the updaters of our status, the mailing listers, the tumblrs…all of us. We can turn the mainstream narrative around. That is what social media are for. We can tell the truth. We can speak honest memes to false narratives.

The truth is that Romney lost because he cheated. We together are the truth-checkers.

So here is the narrative we can make true: Romney won last night, but he lost today.

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The always-readworthy Jeremy Wagstaff has a delightful, brief essay that uses our profound ignorance of the quotidian life of the past as a reminder of just how awful we are at predicting — or envisioning — our future.

I also like Jeremy’s essay because I find that I am much more interested in histories of daily life than in broad, sweeping explanations. I consider my lack of broad sweepiness to be a weakness, so I’m not recommending it. But I’m fascinated by how different our lived lives are and have been. And will be.

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Andrew Keen is speaking. (I liveblogged him this spring when he talked at a Sogeti conference.) His talk’s title: “How today’s online social revolution is dividing, diminishing, and disorienting us.” [Note: Posted without rereading because I’m about to talk. I may go back and do some cleanup.]

Andrew opens with an anecdote. He grew up as a Jew in Britain. His siblings were split between becoming lawyers or doctors. But his mother asked him if he’d like to be the anti-Christ. So, now he’s grown up to become the anti-Christ of Silicon Valley.

“I’m not usually into intimacy,” but look at each other. How much do we know about each other? Not much. One of the great joys is getting to know one another. By 2017 there will 15x more data flowing over the network. Billions of intelligent devices. “The world we are going into is one in which 2o-25 years…you strangers will show up in a big city in London and you’ll know everything about each other.” You’ll know one another’s histories, interests…

“My argument is that we’re all stuck in Digital Vertigo. We’re all participants in a digital noir.” He shows a clip from Vertigo. “In the future these kinds of scenes won’t be possible. There won’t be private detectives…So this movie about the unfolding of understanding between strangers won’t happen.” What happens to policing. “Will we be guilty if we don’t carry our devices.” [SPOILERS] The blonde in this movie doesn’t exist. She’s a brunette shopgirl from Kansas. “The movie is about a deception…A classic Hitchcock narrative of falling in love with something that doesn’t exist. A good Catholic narrative…It’s a warning about falling in love with something that is too good to be true.” That’s what we’re doing with social media nd big data. We’re told big data brings us together. They tell us the Net gives us the opportunity for human beings to come together, to realize themselves as social beings. Big data allows us to become human.

This is about more than the Net. The revolution that Carlotta is talking about is one in which the Net becomes central in the way we live our lives. Fifteen years ago, Doc Searls, David W., and I would be marginal computer nerds, and now our books can be found in any book store. [Doc is in the audience also.]

He shows a clip from The Social Network: “We lived on farms. Now we’re going to live on the Internet.” It’s the platform of 21st century life. This is not a marginal or media issue. It is about the future of society. Many people this network will solve the core problems of life. We now have an ecosystem of apps in the business of eliminating loneliness. E.g., Highlight, “the darling of the recent SxSW show.” They say it’s “a fun way to learn more about people nearby.” Then he shows a clip from The Truman Show. His point: We’re all in our own Truman Shows. The destruction of privacy. No difference between public and private. We’re being authentic. We’re knowingly involving ourselves in this.

A quote: “Vertigo is the ultimate critics’ film because it is a dreamlike film about people who are not sure who they but who are busy econstructing themselves and each other to a f=kind of cinema ideal of the ideal soul mate.” Substitute social media for film. We’re losing what it means to be using. We’re destroying the complexity of our inner lives. We’re only able to live externally. [This is what happens when your conceptual two poles are public and private. It changes when we introduce the term “social.”]

Narcissism isn’t new. Digital narcissism has reached a climax. As we’re given personal broadcasting platforms, we’re increasingly deluded into thinking we’re interesting and important. Mostly it reveals our banality, our superficiality. [This is what you get when your conceptual poles are taken from broadcast media.]

It’s not just digital narcissism. “Visibility is a trap,” said Foucault. Hypervisibility is a hypertrap. Our data is central to Facebook and others becoming viable businesses. The issue is the business model. Data is oil, and it’s owned by the rich. Zuckerberg, Reed Hoffman, et al., are data barons. Read Susan Cain’s “Quiet”: introverts drive innovation. E.g., Steve Wozniak. Sharing is not good for innovation. Discourage your employees from talking with one another all the time. It makes them less thoughtful. It creates groupthink. If you want them to think for themselves, “take away their devices and put them in dark rooms.”

It’s also a trap when it comes to govt. Many govts are using the new tech to spy on their citizens. Cf. Bentham’s panopticon, which was corrupted into 1984 and industrial totalitarianism. We need to go back to the Industrial Age and JS Mill — Mill’s On Liberty is the best antidote to Bentham’s utilitarianism. [? I see more continuity than antidote.]

To build a civilized golden age: 1. There is a role for govt. The market needs regulation. 2. “I’m happy with the EU is working on this…and came out against FB facial recognition software. … We have a right to forget.” “It’s the most unhuman of things to remember everything.” “We shouldn’t idolize the never-forgetting nature of Big Data.” “To forget and forgive is the core essence of being human.” 3. We need better business models. We don’t want data to be the new oil. I want businesses that charge. “The free economy has been a catastrophe.”

He shows the end of The Truman Show. [SPOILER] As Truman enters reality, it’s a metaphor for our hope. We can only protect our humanness by retreating into dark, quiet places.

He finishes with a Vermeer that shows us a woman about which we know nothing. In our Age of Facebook, we need to build a world in which the woman in blue can read that letter, not reveal herself, not reveal her mystery…”

Q: You’re surprising optimistic today. In the movie Vertigo, there’s an inevitability. How about the inevitability of this social movement? Are you tilting at windmills.

Idealists tilt at windmills. People are coming to around to understanding that the world we’re collectively creating is not quite right. It’s making people uneasy. More and more books, articles, etc., that FB is deeply exploitative. We’re all like Jimmy Stewart in Vertigo. The majority of people in the world don’t want to give away their data. As more of the traditional world comes onto the Net, there will be more resistant to collapsing the private and the public. Our current path is not inevitable. Tech is religion. Tech is not autonomous, not a first mover. We created Big Data and need to reestablish our domination over it. I’m cautiously optimistic. But it could go wrong, especially in authoritarian regimes. In Silicon Valley people say privacy is dead, get over it. But privacy is essential. Once we live this public ideal, then who are we.

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I’m at Sogeti‘s annual executive conference, which brings together about 80 CEOs. I’m here with Doc Searls, Andrew Keen, and others. I’ve spoken at other Sogeti events, and I am impressed with their commitment to providing contrary points of view — including views at odds with their own corporate interests. (My one complaint: They expect all attendees to have an iPad or iPhone so that they can participate in on the realtime survey. Bad symbolism.) (Disclosure: They’re paying me to speak. They are not paying me to say something nice about them.)

Menno van Doorn begins by talking about the quantified self movement, claiming that they sometimes refer to themselves as “datasexuals” :) All part of Big Data, he says. To give us an idea of bigness, he relates the Legend of Sessa: “Give me grain, doubling the amount for each square on a chessboard.” Exponential growth meant that by the time you hit the second half of the chessboard, you’re in impossible numbers. Experts say that’s where we were in 2006 when it comes to data. But “there’s no such thing as too much data.” “Big Data is powering the next industrial revolution. Data is the new oil.”

Big Data is about (1) lots of data, (2) at high velocity, (3) using in a variety of ways. (“volume, velocity, variety.”) Michael Chui says that there’s billions in revenues to gain, including from efficiencies. But, Chui says, there are no best practices. The value comes from “human exhaust.” I.e., your digital footprint, what you leave behind in your movement through the Net. Menno thinks of this as “your recorded future.”

Three examples:

1. Menno points to Target, a company that can predict life-changing events among its customers. E.g., based on purchases of 25 products, they can predict which customers are pregnant and roughly when they are due. But, this led to Target sending promotional materials for pregnancy to young girls whose parents learned this way that their daughters were pregnant.

2. In SF, they send out police cars to neighborhoods based on 14-day predictions of where crime will occur, based on data about prior crime patterns.

3. Schufa, a German credit agency, announced they’d use social media to assess your credit worthiness. Immediately a German Minister said, “Schufa cannot become the Big Brother of the beusiness world.”

Two forces are in contention and will determine how much Big Data changes us. Today, the conference will look at the dawn of the age of big data, and then how disruptive it will be for society (the session Keen and I are in). Day 2: Bridging the gap to the new paradigm, Big Data’s fascinating future, and Decision Time: Taming Big Brother.

Carlota Perez, Prof. of Tech and Socio-Economic Development, from Venezuela speaks now.. She is a “neo-Schumpeterian.” She says her role in the conference is “locate the current crisis.” What is the real effect on innovation, and why are we only midways along in feeling the impact?

There have been 5 tech revolutions in the past 240 yeares: 1. 1771 Industrial rev. 1829. Age of steam, coal and railways. 3. 1875 Steel and heavy engineering (the first globalization). 4. Age of he automobile, oril, petrochem and mass production 5. 1971 Age of info tech and telecom. We’re only halfway through that last one. The next revolution queued up: age of biotech, bioelectronics, nanotech, and new materials. [I’m surprised she doesn’t count telegrapgh + radio + telephone, etc., as a comms rev. And I’d separate the Net as its own rev. But that’s me.]

Lifecycle of a tech rev: gestation, induction, deployment, exhaustion. The “big bang” tends to happen when the prior rev is reaching exhaustion. The structure of revs: new cheap inputs, new products, new processes. A new infrastructure arise. And a constellation of new dynamic industries that grow the world economy.

Why call these “revolutions”, she asks? Because they transform the whole economy. They bring new organizational principles and new best practice models. I.e. , a new “techno-economic paradigm.” E.g., we’ve gone from mass production to flexible production. Closed pyramids to open networks. Stable routines to continuous improvement. “Information technology finds change natural.” From human resources to human capital (from raw materials to value). Suppliers and clients to value network partners. Fixed plans to flexible strategies. Three-tier markets (big,medium,small) to hyper-segmented markets. Internationalization to globalization. Information as costly burden to info as asset. Together, these constitute a radical change in managerial common sense.

The diffusion process is broken in two: Bubble, followed by a crash, and then the Golden Age. During the bubble, financial capital forces diffusion. There is income and demand polarization. Then the crash. Then there is an institutional recomposition, leading to a golden age in which everyone benefits. Production capital takes over from financial capital (driven by the govt), and there is better distribution of income and demand.

She looks at the 5 revs, and finds the same historic pattern that she just sketched.

wo major differences between installation and deployment: 1. Bubbles vs. patient (= long-term) capital. 2. Concentrated innovation to modernize industries vs. innovation in all industries that use the new technologies. “Understanding this sequence is essential for strategic thinking.”

The structure of innovation in deployment: pa new coherent fabric of the economy emerges, leading to a golden age. Also, oligopolies emerge which means there’s less unhelpful competition. (?)

Example of prior rev: home electrical applicances: In the installation period, we had a bunch of electric utilities going into homes in the 1910s and 1930s. During the revision, we get a few more. But then in the 1950-70s. we get a surge of new applicances, including tape recorder, microwave, even the electric toothbrush. It’s enabled by universal electricity and driven by suburbinization. It’s the same pattern if you look at textile fibers, from rayon and acetate during instlation, to a huge number during deployment. E.g., structural and packaging plastics: installation brought bakelite, polystyrene and polyethylene, and then a flood of innovation during deployment. “The various systems of the ICT revolution will follow a similar sequence.” [Unless it follows the Tim Wu pattern of consolidation — e.g., everyone being required to use an iPad at a conference] During installation period, ICT was in constant supply push mode. Now must respond to demand pull. “The paradigm and its potential are now understood by all. Demand (in vol and nature) becomes the driving force.

This shifts the role of the CIO. To modernize a mature company, during installation you brought in an expert in modernization, articulating the hw and sw being pushed by the suppliers. During the deployment phase, a modern company that is innovating for strategic expansion, the CIO is an expert in strategy, specifying needs and working with suppliers. “The CIO is no longer staff. S/he must be directly involved in strategy.”

There are 3 main forces for innovation in the next 2-3 decades, as is true for all the revs. 1. Deepening and widening of the ICT tech rev, responding to user needs. 2. The users of ICT across all industries and activities. 3. The gestation of the next rev (probably bioteech, nanotech, and new materials).

Big Data is likely have a big role in each of those directions.

Q: Why are we only 50% of the way through?

A: Because the change after the recession is like opening a dam. Once you get to the point where you can have a comfortable innovation prospective, imagine the market possibilities.

Q: What can go wrong?

A: Governments. Unfettered free markets are indispensable for the installation process. Lightly guided markets are needed in the golden age. Free markets work when you need to force everyone to change. But now no longer: The state has to come in . But govts are drunk with free markets. Now finance is incompetent. “They don’t dare invest in real things.” Ideology is so strong and the understanding of history is so shallow that we’re not doing the right thing.”

Christopher Ahlberg speaks now. He’s the founder of Recorded Future. His topic: “Turning the Web into Predictive Signals.”

We see events like Arab Spring and wonder if we could have predicted them. Three things are going on: 1. Moving from smaller to larger datasets. 2. From structured to unstructured data (from numbers to text). 3. From corporate data to Internet/Web.

There’s a “seismic shift in intelligence” “emporal indexing of the Web enables Web intelligence.” The Web is not organized for finding date; it’s about finding documents.” Can we create structure for the Web we can use for analysis? A lot of work has been done on this. Why is this possible now? Fast math, large, fast storage, web harvesting, and linguistic analysis progress.

His company looks for signals in human language. E.g., temporal signals. That can turn up competitive info. But human language is tough to deal with. But also when something happens — e.g., Haitian earthquake — there are patterns in when people show up: helpers, doctors, military, do-gooder actors, etc. There tends to be a flood of notifications immediately afterwards. The Recorded Data platform does the linguistic analysis.

He gives an example: What’s going to happen to Merck over the next 90 days. Some is predictable: There will be a quarterly financial conference all. A key drug is up for approval. Can we look into the public conversations about these events, and might this guide our stock purchases? And beyond Merck, we could look at everything from cyber attacks to sales opportunities.

Some examples. 1. Monitoring unrest. Last week there were protests against Foxconn in China. Analysis of Chinese media shows that most of those protests were inland, while corporate expansion is coming in coastal areas. Or look at protests against pharmaceuticals for animal testing.

Example 2: Analyzing cyber threats. Hackers often try out an approach on a small scale and then go larger. This can give us warning.

Example 3: Competitive intelligence. When is there a free space — announcement-free — when you can get some attention. Example 4: Lead generation. E.g., look for changes in management. (New marketing person might need a new PR agency.) Exasmple 5: Trading patterns. E.g., if there’s bad news but insiders are buying.

Conclusion: As we move from small to large datasets, structured to unstructured, and from inside to outside the company, we go from surprise to foresight.

Q: What is the question you cannot answer?

A: The situations that have low frequency. It’s important that there be an opportunity for follow-up questions.

Q: What if you don’t know what the right question is?

A: When it’s unknown unknowns, you can’t ask the right question. But the great thing about visualizaton is that it helps people ask questions.

Q: How to distinguish fact from opinion on Twitter, etc.?

A: Or NYT vs. Financial Post. There isn’t a simple answer. We’re working toward being able to judge sources based on known outcomes.

Q: Do your predictions get more accurate the more data you have?

A: Generally yes, but it’s not always that simple.

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My latest column in KMWorld is about why your business needs scholars. In fact, though, it’s about why the idea of scholarship is more helpful than focusing your thinking on knowledge.

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