What if the real reason the #elonmusks of our time are forcing #humans back into physical workplaces is because they know if it doesn’t happen more widely, then their long-existent, highly prized, and presumably immensely costly #secrecypositive thinking-spaces, based in such physical locations, will begin to lose their advantages over what was once a mostly blindsided European tech and socioeconomic sector?
Mil Williams, 9th July 2023, Stockholm Sweden
Background
From the slides included below today:
“Our defensible position is clear: all big #it companies long ago chose not to sell it. Instead, they preferred to use it for their own innovations. Perhaps not technologies or platforms as such – but certainly the idea: totally hermetic tools of creativity and business modelling.”
The full slide-deck can be found by downloading from the link that follows:
• The Philosopher Space | #NOTthepanopticon slide-deck
• The Philosopher Space | the full online whitepaper
But not only that: #espionage, #nationbuilding, interfering with due #democratic process … and #cultural/#industrial #intellectualproperty/#ip, and its broader tracking.
Yes. The final image above says “With A Little Help From My Friends” …
And actually, really rather a lot. Because I do have them, too. Though some spread the half-truth it ain’t so.
Why this post today
However, I’m not posting again about this brief and perhaps not overwhelming slide-deck to repeat myself. No.
It’s because I had an insight yesterday evening, late. I’ve been reading surveys from PwC and others — really cool surveys which shape narratives and edit reality interestingly, well and deliberatedly — which talk of how #innovation amongst the less advantaged has increased. And then again, more generally, how #innovation in digitally connected and aware organisations is increasing leaps and bounds over the olde-worlde office-bound competition.
I wonder something else, in the light of my slide-deck’s thesis: what if for the first time — post-pandemic times, I mean — everyone is innovating? Not just the companies of #techbarons which own already, use habitually, and restrict the distribution fiercely of #privacypositive and #secrecypositive thinking-spaces. The spaces that mean 29 out of the top 30 Internet companies aren’t European:
No.
In this sense, partly so, with hybrid and working-from-home workflows, it’s become easier to hack into a part of the system but also — maybe even more — harder for intrusive #bigtech to establish the overall narrative arc of a potential new competitor, in respect of an equally potential #innovation — or even #invention! — in the throes of. Like the difference between traditional warfare versus guerrilla, perhaps?
The real reason #techbarons want their workforces back behind THEIR closed doors
What if the real reason the #elonmusks of our time are forcing #humans back into physical workplaces is because they know if it doesn’t happen more widely, then their long-existent, highly prized, and presumably immensely costly #secrecypositive thinking-spaces, based in such physical locations, will begin to lose their advantages over what was once mostly blindsided European tech and socioeconomic sectors?
What do I mean?
In the face of the #totalsurveillance #panopticon used by aggressive corporates — particularly #bigtech corporates — against anyone they decided was a threat, there was little the rest of the world — without a shield of some sort, I am saying — could do to protect its ideas. Or even develop them half usefully before they were gouged into non-existence.
But maybe, just maybe, that competitive advantage began to fizzle during pandemic. With everyone outside #secrecypositive and/or #secrecy-obsessed HQs, and the world all operating from home, two consequences emerged:
1. Everyone worldwide was in just about the same conditions, as far as the visibility of #innovation and #invention was concerned.
2. Suddenly a new openness — a confidence that it was OK to be nonconformists in front of colleagues — began to arise. We communicate via Zoom, in pyjamas, wild cats running across desks, children bursting in unexpectedly … and business, serious starched white-collar business, is suddenly exposed to real human life. In business contexts. And what’s more, it works.
Of course, collaterally, we’d gain equal confidence to THINK as WE TRULY HAVE BEEN THINKING all these years! Only they never let us shine … hardly once.
Should we then forget about our own #secrecypositive thinking-spaces?
Am I suggesting that there’s no need for #privacypositive and #secrecypositive thinking-spaces of our own?
No. I’m not.
Even whilst we are more dispersed and yet creatively so at the moment, and even as this makes the overall shape of a competitor’s #innovation more difficult to sense as well, sooner or later they will work out a way. But in the meantime, they need US all back in OUR offices and locatable, just as much as they need THEIR workforces back in THEIR offices, and once more hideable.
In truth, isn’t it the case that hybrid and working-from-home workplaces are to the #secrecy-obsessed #techbarons what #opensource at its most competent most competently was to closed source? A breath of collaborative and hyper-creative air in often challenging and anti-creative hyper-competitive environments.
Our challenge now
The question is: do we now have the balls to deliver for our humanity what #techbarons multiple have only ever cared to deliver for themselves?
And perhaps not even fully for their shareholders … not even this!
After all, the species is burning the planet, #bigtech has kept to itself this #freethinking on steroids I discuss in this post (and other places, too) for all these years … and all they’ve been able to use it for instead is making money out of a pandemic and putin’s three wars. As well some untold number of other human tragedies …
I’d guess since #totalsurveillance itself was implemented: 2003, says anyone?
Because NO ONE in the history of warfare has ever invented a sword without developing it’s related shield. So whilst the digital #panopticon was applied for reasons we all understood clearly in their day, #bigtech has sold global humanity short ever since.
How? I’d surmise by developing the aforementioned #freethinking on rockets — but for purely selfish gain.
In summary
Shouldn’t we all now REALLY feel cheated by the #techbarons of the world who act like this?
Actually, I think we should. Look. Give us all a break, guys. The planet needs us to be all at the top of our games much much more than rockets to Mars ever will.
How about we collaborate instead?
Ever heard of a philosopher kind of a guy called John Forbes Nash Jr?
mil's page 