Di­git­al Feud­al­ism

Aral Balkan bent it like Beckham! With such a name, he could even be the Armenian guest player of Galatasaray, and then I could say: yeah, he bent it in, and from far, indeed! I am astonished for real. Using the perfect shade, he has painted the very curve that starts with a ‘why’ and ends in ‘we can change the world.’ The thing Dries talking about on the first day, without putting all the feeling behind. Ladies and gentlemen, Balkan did it!

I wouldn’t be able to summarize the whole presentation, watch it by all means!

Here are my reflections:

1. We are cyborgs: our mobile extends our brains, and we store the majority of our data in the cloud.

2. We deliberately ignore what happens to these data; we do not care that Big Data practically forms a complete feudalistic system around us. We even cheer, although we do not get the services for free: we give up our sphere to an organization without clearly seeing what they will do with it. Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google, had his nobly simple way to react to this concern: „If you have something you don’t want everyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing in the first place.” WTF??? What is then the field we play in? It’s the one where the business model is based on selling information. We provide the content that he aggregates and sells.

3. So what? That I no longer have a private sphere. I am an unfolded cyborg, feeding an organism I don’t know. All that because I wish for usable stuff. I don’t want Linux from an installation CD, gimme a slice of apple, and I’ll be happy. All in for iCloud and then my iPad, my iMac, and my I dunno what will revolve around the same axis, with me pushing data to the Big Brother. Gladly.

4. So what? That I no longer have an identity. It is because I do not have control over my things and because I voluntarily give up control to robots, organizations, and individuals unknown to me. By using their free, cloud-based services, I give over all the data I generate in the form of mail, comments, searches, and browsing. I often contemplate that a data-scavenger could profile me more exactly through statistical analysis of my data from the past years than my psychotherapist.

5. So what? Who cares about it all? Do you think it’s you they will care about? No, I don’t. But I know if there’s a value where I have placed a vote for good, it’s freedom, and if there’s a value that suffers in this virtual space, it’s this very freedom. I was in my early adolescence when the Big Brother, Ceausescu was executed. I remember the feeling when one has to be secretive because even the walls have ears, and you cannot speak what you think. That was a classic Stalinist dictatorship, where suppression, prohibition, and negation were used to limit my freedom. This one, in turn, is a Huxleyan approach, where my mentality transforms unnoticeably, and my natural aspiration for freedom expires gradually to give space to a craving to consume.

6. What can be done? For example, I can use open source products and can store my data, thus guarding the borders of my digital identity. More about it: http://aralbalkan.com/notes/indie-data/

7. OK then, but what about Drupal? With Drupal, it’s about time to emphasize usability to ensure a smashing result among end-users. It often means sacrificing features, saying no to a heap of goodies to create attractive and straightforward interfaces. The excellent design needs authority. The unique design is not about getting together a couple of good guys, all telling what they need, and then getting it all done so that nobody gets offended. Excellent design is a top-down process and has to be represented and driven by the CEO, as it requires tough decisions. Forget creative agencies. Design and execution can only be realized well when they are all intertwined. It is behind the secret of Apple and Google’s success. Its lack is the reason for the failure of open source products among end-users. It is where we need to do something.