Monday, November 28, 2016

Another Digital Manifest

It's been Future Convention day in Frankfurt and here is the tweet I wrote while reflecting on what I saw today:


Don't get me wrong, it was a great day with a hundred ideas, concepts and biz-models to learn about and interesting talks in the business line to attend.

Nevertheless following the discussion panel in the evening I felt there could have been more:
  • More insight into how digitization is about to revolutionize or transform how society works. 
  • And more controversial ideas on how to get a grip on what is happening and shaping the rules of play to create value. 
We are talking value not in a strictly monetary sense but understand it as the well being for us humans engaged in our globalizing social collective.
This is why I found myself capturing my basic impressions on the state of digitization below. Feel free to comment, agree, disagree and share ideas and resources on digitization that you feel excited or concerned about:   

 

The Digital Manifest

1) The dynamics of acceleration by setting up and using networks and digitizing the way we communicate and work is a feature of the collective. 

2) Individuals can't or at least won't be able to cope with the speed of technical progress in terms of learning. But we like to believe that they can a lot.

3) Without moderating boundary conditions a thriving collective does not in itself establish or care for the well being of individuals.

4) We don't have a clue or at least are far from establishing consensus on which set of rules to impose would be wise.

5)  The current dynamics of digitization is a global phenomenon. But we are lost maybe stuck in the trouble to define, implement and establish a set of rules we deem useful.

6) As long as we fail to come up with such rules, we will see cultural achievements, moral values and social peace erode increasingly faster day by day.

7) This development is a chance to change human society into something more human. The chance exists because morals and responsibilty are always based on human, empathetic interaction between individuals fostered globally by digital networks.

Final Remark: There is another digital manifest you can find at Spektrum der Wissenschaft. It is labeled "Digital Democracy not dictatorship of data" and worthwhile to read (german).

Wednesday, September 14, 2016

Kategorienfehler oder Vermeidung von Verantwortung

Notizen und Gedanken zum Artikel "Kennzahlen forcieren eine Entmenschlichung der Wirtschaft" von Conny Dethloff aus der Reise des Verstehens: http://blog-conny-dethloff.de/?p=3587

Zuweilen ist es interessant Zusammenhänge des Wirtschaftens aus einer anderen Perspektive als der des Geldes zu betrachten. Die Frage wie findet sich der Mensch als Mensch in wirtschaftlichen Zusammenhängen wieder, ist ein mit moralisch, emotionalen Konflikten besetztes Thema und eine nähere Betrachtung oft erhellend.

Ausgangspunkt ist die interessante Denksportaufgabe folgend aus der Behauptung, die Modellierung von Zusammenhängen durch Zahlen und physikalische Einheiten würde bei der Betrachtung von Verhältnissen verschiedener Einheiten einen grundlegenden Kategorienfehler begehen. Da Multiplikation und Division auf Addition und Subtraktion beruhen, müsste man eigentlich auch verschiedene Masseinheiten addieren und subtrahieren können. Aber was soll das Ergebnis hiervon sein?

Was passiert hier?

Hmm?!? Hier haben wir also den Versuch eines Wiederspruchsbeweises, um übliche Denkmuster aufzubrechen. Ich halte ihn für einen interessanten Denkanstoß, obwohl konzeptionell falsch und unschlüssig. Letztlich lenkt das vom Kern der Beobachtung der Entmenschlichung eher ab, als ihn zu erklären oder zu stützen. Das ist schade und daher folgt der Versuch einer Klärung:

Widerspruch zum Widerspruch

Der Widerspruch entsteht nur dadurch, dass eine Randbedingung der Modellierung von Zusammenhängen über physikalische Einheiten nicht betrachtet wird. Diese Methodik der Modellierung formuliert als eine Regel der Modellbildung, dass bei der Erstellung von Verhältnissen die Einheiten mitgeführt und zuweilen auch mit eigenständigen Namen versehen werden. Das ist hilfreich, weil man gemerkt hat, dass diese Modellierung mit empirischen Phänomenen passt und sinnvolle Aussagen liefert. Es handelt sich um sinnvolle Modellbildung, nicht um unmittelbare Realität. Modelle haben Grenzen und eine der Grenzen ist, dass verschiedene Einheiten nicht durch Addition und Subtraktion verrechnet werden. Es ist eine Grenze, weil im Rahmen der Modellbildung dieser Vorgang keine sinnvolle Bindung des Ergebnisses mit der Realität erreicht. Man kann auch vorsichtiger formulieren, es ist bisher niemandem etwas eingefallen, weshalb das sinnvoll sein soll, also wird es nicht gemacht. Das heranziehen eines Widerspruch von außerhalb des Gültigkeitsbereichs des Modells bzw. durch die Nutzung eines Vorgangs, der in der gewählten Modellbildung als nicht sinnvoll angesehen wird, um das Modell zu diskreditieren und seine Sinnhaftigkeit grundsätzlich zu bezweifeln und daher grundlegende Kategorienfehler zu behaupten, ist daher eine Scheinargumentation.

Sinnvoller und nicht statthafter Umgang mit Modellen

Womit nicht gesagt sein soll, dass die Art der Modellbildung keinen Einfluss darauf hätte, wie wir mit der Welt umgehen. Im Gegenteil. Die Behauptung von Kategorienfehlern erscheint mir aber wenig konstruktiv. Ein besseres Verständnis der Grenzen und Effekte der verwendeten Modellbildung kann unmittelbarer helfen zu einer Modellbildung der Wirklichkeit zu kommen, in der Menschlichkeit besser zum tragen kommt. Vorab wäre natürlich zu klären, ob das überhaupt ein gemeinsames Ziel ist. Die entsprechende Diskussion ist ebenfalls wesentlich unmittelbarer und effektvoller, als eine vergleichsweise abstrakte und wackelige Argumention verbundener aber nicht in einem schlüssigen Konzept integrierter Methodiken. Vorausgesetzt es geht um einen Effekt, der über eine äußerst interessante Denkübung hinaus geht.

Entmenschlichung und Verantwortung
Die Grundaussage, dass Kennzahlen ungeeignet sind Lebendigkeit zu fassen und inherent eine Entmenschlichung der Wirtschaft befördern braucht die obige Fundierung nicht. Die Art der Modellbildung der Wirtschaftstheorie beinhaltet massive Vereinfachungen insb. den quasi vollständigen Bereich menschlichen Erleben mit all seinen Widersprüchen und Selbstbezüglichkeiten, die Komplexität menschlichen Handelns und zwischenmenschlicher Beziehungen usw. Es ist eben ein Modell nicht die Wirklichkeit. Wenn wir uns in ein Modell einsperren lassen, das uns nicht berücksichtigt, nenne ich das Passivität getrieben aus dem Wunsch Verantwortung zu vermeiden. Häufiger verwendet, weil genau dieser Umstand gleichzeitig beschönigt und befördert wird, ist der Begriff "Sachzwang".

Saturday, June 18, 2016

On Blockchain Layers, Risk and Learning

Here is some thoughts on Bitcoin, Blockchain, Ethereum and TheDAO, risks involved and the driving power of money.

The Fintech Bubble by Joi Ito calls for "as many of us as possible [to] focus on the infrastructure and the opportunities at the lowest layers of this stack we are trying to build." The article points out that it might be a bad idea to build castles on top of slippery ground that needs to be properly secured before putting too much pressure on it. This is a good thing to keep in mind, but learning fast is the positive side to having a lot of interesting and ambitious activity in the application layer. If everybody involved keeps a close eye on how much risk he or she can personally take, I think that learning fast even if it involves failing is a good thing to do. Chances are that being quick is necessary to "completely reinvent the nature of money and accounting". If regulation and big names in the money business should really catch up they will try to defend their assets. This has a lot of potential to get in the way of strengthening and exploring the blockchain.
Why do we need learning?

As we have no final idea how the layers in block chain tech should be organized to optimize for robustness, adaptability and ease of understanding/using the technology, it won't work out to get things right without experiments in applications. There will be fails, major ones likely, before the platform or landscape of platforms has settled. Comparing early blockchain to early internet is a fruitful point of view but you need to keep in mind that the link to money is much more direct for the blockchain and the link to user applications is less direct for blockchain tech. This makes for a very much different risk profile. Blockchain, Coins, Platforms for distributed consensus dig into the major conflict between centralized and decentralized infrastructure and are dealing with assets that convert to fiat currencies instantly. Hope and greed at scale will always have a seat at this table and everyone involved needs to find his very personal balance for investing time and money.

Is risk realized a bad thing?

No it is not. There is no doubt, whenever some risk materializes. it hurts. Someone will be in pain and needs to ask: Could I have known this to avoid the trouble I got myself into. This is learning and it is never more direct as in moments of great clearity when you lost a sum of money recently. If you take risk you better know that you can handle it. That said we should remember that money is not lost but changes hands. Blown investments are one of the more efficient mechanisms to transfer money from the relatively wealthy to those who invested time and devotion. This is why we should continue to aggressively evaluate the problem landscape for fast learning while embracing and controlling risk at the personal and corporate level.

Saturday, May 14, 2016

There Is No Scarcity With Digital Artefacts

Money features scarcity!

Scarcity is at the core of the value of money. If money would not be scarce for nearly all of us, it would not work well as a utility to measure the value of goods and services. The Tool for matching supply and demand by some kind of market mechanism would break down.

Having to cope with scarcity everyone of us is trying to keep some kind of balance between getting or aggregation money and spending it to consume goods and services at a certain price point. How you try to establish this balance is a very personal choice and involves tradeoffs between immediate satisfaction and securing future options or even trying to build long term perspectives by taking investment risks. Living for the moment is a battles planning vs saving vs investing into the future. Most of what we do as participants on various markets is focused and based on scarcity. If something is not scarce, we tend not to recognize it's value. Consumption will then neither provide the boost to our self-esteem nor the desired social impact. Whatever is not scarce will become a commodity of minor importance.

Enter the stage: digital goods!

There is no natural scarcity in digital goods. Cost of duplication is marginal and closes in on zero. A first in human history this enables production and delivery of global products. This opportunity carries the cost of a major shift for successfully applicable business models.

With our current market paradigm classic business models based on scarcity can no longer compete with delivery models that scale to the global audience at no direct cost whatsoever for a single artefact. Neither selling nor consuming digital goods based on distribution and monetizition concepts from the physical world work too well. Trying to save old-style business suffers from a major problem due to the lack of control of how, by whom and to whom the digital product will be transfered or shared. The digital product is not not scarce. To keep in control or reestablish control established industries on the brink of digital disruption muster a lot of effort that goes into artificially recreating scarcity.

That's what they call DRM Digital Rights Management. Calling it Digital Scarcity Management might be more to the point. Does it work? No. Artificial scarcity cuts down on likes, shares and mentions. A major drawback when competing for the global audience. 

For a digital business model to be successful you need to rethink what is scarce. It's not the digital artefact. It's users, their time and attention that are scarce.

You need to accept that abundance of digital artefacts themselves is inevitable. Otherwise your business won't be up to it's coopetition. 

--bw

Thanks for reading, feel free to share your comments. I'll follow up with thoughts on:

 -> Sharing and Marketing
 -> Attention and Participation
 -> Users and Software Maintainance