Technology is a catalyst for improving life

The wisdom in “Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder” also applies to “Technology is in the experience of the recipient.” Arthur C. Clark maintained that “Technology is indistinguishable from magic.” R. Buckminster Fuller’s position was that “Humanity is acquiring all the right technology for all the wrong reasons”. Albert Einstein said that “Technology has exceeded our humanity.” Generation X and Y express their opinion through the words “Technology is cool.” Like beauty, technology has as many meanings as there are lives on this earth.

This diversity in meaning has existed forever for every thing that has improved human life. While many early scriptures presented “Fire” as a representation of the Almighty or as a gift from the Almighty to mankind, mankind values fire for the heat it provides and the creativity it has unleashed. Over the years, we have figured out how to use fire for comfort, for increasing our food supply by cooking before eating, for keeping predators at bay and even for disposing all traces of what we dislike and like. Fire was a hot technology many eons ago but is not on our technology radar today because its benefits are widely available and as a result, our creative attention has shifted away from fire.

Life, however, poses different challenges in different parts of the world. In much of the developed world, electricity has almost gained the status of a human right. In the developing and rural world where electricity is a rare and uncertain commodity but whose potential to improve life is accepted, creative minds are focused on electrification technologies. In a similar vein, as technologies that defined the manufacturing age loose attention of minds in the West, they are front-and-center in local creative minds in China and India because of their potential to improve local lives through industrialization.

Trust is key for Technology Monetization

We humans are a careful and trusting but community-loving lot. We are willing to share our wants with others we trust and, if we can do so anonymously, we are willing to share with Madison Avenue.

While it is against our nature to hang a public notice outside our home, just look at what we are doing on the Internet. We search on the Internet believing we are anonymous when in fact the search provider knows what we are searching for and is storing that information. Also, believing that everything we type and upload is protected we share our most private details and desires with friends on a Social Networking website that we trust when it promises to follow our wishes regarding community and privacy.

Simply stated, we are volunteering all the very same information that Madison Avenue wants to create a timely snapshot of each of us. We are the trusting type and believe that the recipients of our trust do care enough to deserve our trust.

Facebook’s recent adventure with its Beacon Project is an example of how we react if trust is violated. Facebook’s attempt to monetize its technology investments by sharing online purchase histories without maintaining individual anonymity infuriated everyone including persons who received histories.

On the other hand, Google is successful at continuing to cultivate our confidence that every search is anonymous and has cleverly leveraged our search topic as fodder for Madison Avenue’s hunger. Such creative middlemen with squeaky-clean reputations are worth their weight in gold to Madison Avenue as evidenced by Google’s revenues. It is no stretch of the imagination that Google’s revenues are expected to continue to grow as it enters new markets, if Google's behaviour continues to show that Google cares about how it uses personal information.

In short, Google has figured out that trust (how personal information is used) is fundamental to monetizing investments in technology. Is it any wonder then that Microsoft now wants to buy Yahoo for a princely sum as the only way to monetize Internet investments?