As business bloggers most of us probably have at least a passing interest in the future of where things may be going on the web. Things seem to be developing quickly and changing rapidly.
Curly over at The Digerati Life had an interesting post earlier in the week speculating about the possibilities of Web 3.0. Will it be spookier?
(Thanks to Joe Hauckes at Working at Home on the Internet for pointing this post out in his Helpful Reads.)
America is a land of folks who car about personal privacy. Yet we seem to be ceding more and more of it to large institutional interests such as governmental bodies and large corporations.
Back in 1950 George Orwell published his classic 1984 which told about one possible future where the government controlled virtually every aspect of people’s lives.
If you haven’t read it, the story is a frightening cautionary tale. The details are a little fuzzy for me as I read it decades ago. But I seem to remember that somehow a person from the past ends up in the government controlled future.
In the end what he learns about the complete lack of freedom is overwhelming for him and has disastrous consequences.
With the preponderance of high speed internet connections and the increasing sophistication of the tools available to us we as consumers are steadily sharing more and more information with the “powers that be” that can collect that info.
At the same time we make our marketing decisions based on the best information we can get about our customers. Their internet habits could contain quite valuable info for our marketing efforts.
So what do you think as we head out into our Brave New World? Is it a gold mine opportunity for better customer information? Or are we heading into a time when individual liberty will be slowly squeezed out by the powerful “controlers”?
Information is now a commodity. There is no power having or knowing information but the application of that information – now that is power.
I also believe that “closing the sale” is dead as is the traditional approach taken in sales training today.
It is a goldmine for those with the skills to be able to innovate and apply information in new and unique ways.
What if the idea of individual liberty was just an idea and the “controllers” simply allowed you to think you were free? Is perception reality? Hmmm…
Greg, I don’t see the value of information to be in the area of closing, but more in terms of marketing to more qualified leads.
The question is, I think, how much of our internet activity should be considered private personal business, and how much should be available to the marketers to utilize to target us with stuff?
Personally I don’t believe that perception is reality at all. Of course I can’t prove that to someone who says it does.
I also think that the vast majority of folks act as if perception were reality. Most do so probably without thinking about it. So in my interactions with most folks I try to keep in mind that they aren’t likely to differentiate between the two. And then I strategize accordingly.