9.0 Kryptonite for a connection economy

Let’s think about the superpowers we can develop as digital humans.

There is superpower in the unfathomable amount of content the digital world generates. Our kryptonite is conscious focus and the ability to transform our world. It comes from moving beyond the words of the information superhighway to making an impact through actions and behaviours.

The idea that we are constantly being monitored is a challenge. At the same time, we have the opportunity to connect to a huge amount of resources and write our own digital footprints. The superpower of code is self direction.

Data gives us the power to discover incredible new insights and at a practical level the ability to manage and balance the inventory we have with what we need.

In 1999, that seminal work, The Cluetrain Manifesto talked about the shift from ‘markets’ to ‘conversations’. Now, as we get more digitally literate and connected, we can perhaps go up a gear shift in consciousness, from ‘conversations’ to ‘actions’, and what we do to make value-led change happen.

When it comes to digitally literacy we are all in school; data is teaching us all as we go. And as is the case with any intelligence network, the more support for education there is the better and more broad-ranging the potential is that will be generated.

As we become more sophisticated and self-assured as digital humans we can all make more use of this new power. What kind of planet might we conceive of when we have fully mapped and understood its resources?

The thunderclap and cryptocurrency are just two examples that hint at the future potential of the digital world. They way we commune and trade is undergoing a revolution that cuts across all existing boundaries of what’s possible and practical, compared to how we manage our lives now.

This chapter focuses on these themes and on networked power dynamics, the inherent characteristics of successful networks and how they innovate in the face of constraints.