The evolution of control: Coding is power

I had lunch with some of the guys from ThirdEyeT yesterday, and apart from business (I'm pleased to say I sit on the advisory board) we talked about something I think could be as revolutionary as the peer-to-peer publishing ability of the internet.

It all stems from a notion raised by Dom Penrice, one of the big brains behind the very interesting publishing model driving www.basedrift.com

Dom suggests the new owners of the means of production/control are not all of us (as you may conclude from the fact that we are all publishers now) they are, in fact, the coders. (image courtesy)

The ownership of the means of production has always been a pretty centralised affair.

Centralizing ownership meant centralizing control.

Way back when, The church owned the books and their production so it owned information. And that gave it control.

With the arrival of the printing press those who owned the means of creating and distributing information multiplied.

The result was new ideas spread more rapidly and were put into action faster, creating value for more and more people.

Or, the Renaissance, as it's otherwise known.

As industrialisation got swinging, and mass production started matching lowest common denominator needs, we developed faster and faster printing presses and distribution processes.

Cinema, radio, tv are all examples. Faster printing presses with ever broader reach.

Ownership of the means of production was still in the hands of the few though.

With the arrival of the Internet we all became publishers. Control of information was suddenly harder to make money from. Ask any traditional media owner.

Where once the ability to publish information (and therefore control it and everything reliant upon that) was scarce (and therefore valuable) now that ability had become abundant.

Publishing is virtually ubiquitous now. And almost ubiquitously virtual.

So a new currency emerged, a new scarce means of production: code.

Programmers now decide our experience and control our opportunities. They are the new press barons.

Except there are lots of them. Not ubiquitous. But lots.

So we've reached a new stage of control where more people (those with programming skills) have control, but still not enough for the true group forming value of the Internet to fulfil its potential.

How so? Well, just as an idea benefits from evolution, so an implementation.

If I share an idea, you will take elements of it that you find useful to share among your peers. Your feedback to me may benefit my version of the idea. Your evolution of it (with your next community of purpose) may make the idea a better fit for you and/or a better fit for the larger fitness landscape (the evolutionary model).

Ideas benefit from complex adaptive systems - such as peer to peer digital networks. The Internet.

They benefit so effectively from this today because our ability to publish our ideas one to another has become ubiquitous. We (pretty much) all know how to do this peer to peer publishing of ideas thing.

But far less of us know how to implement them when it comes to the coding and design.

And when an idea reaches that stage the evolutionary processes slow right down. There are too few people available to lend their skills to adapt code to make it a better fit for their purposes in rapid iterative processes of the kind we have for ideas.

Imagine if we could make it as easy to code as it is to publish.

Look what ubiquitous publishing has done for the production and exchange of content/information/ideas/

human relationships.

More content uploaded to Youtube in the last year than broadcast by TV ever.

Ubiquitous publishing.

Imagine ubiquitous coding.

That's precisely what Dom Penrice has in mind: finding ways to allow anyone to manipulate code, parcel up the value created and pass it on to the next person with shared need. The next person can then add their value to hone or reshape for their community of purpose. And so on ad infinitum with evolutionary processes amplifying or damping as dictated by the fitness landscape.

Dom's vision is that at each iteration those that have contributed get paid, feeding back, pyramid style, to the originator.

It is a supply web, networked world approach to programming and one which could be as revolutionary as the arrival of ubiquitous publishing itself.

ThirdeyeT are starting to put the idea of ubiquitous coding to practical effect in their new publishing cms. It allows them to change the design of their site (and not just reskin it) in two days flat - without the need for any specialist skills.

I know many a editor who would be very grateful of that.

In the days of the constant relaunch giving control directly to the people with the vision has to be a good thing.

We're all publishers now. All advertisers, all marketers.

When we are all coders, then the next revolution will begin.

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Three great things filtered, discovered and delivered to me, by you

Image by luc legay via FlickrHuman-powered search never ceases to amaze me.

It brings things to me I never knew I needed to know, with incredible accuracy.

In the days before always-on real-time access, there was an element of patience involved.

It was hard to conceive of the global phone-a-friend as a true competitor to the I-need-an-answer-now nature of algorithmic search.

But the more connected we become, with more relevant people (ad hoc real-time self-forming communities of purpose) the more competitive we become. We regularly beat the machine.

Ask a relevant question of your community of purpose and you'll more often than not be more satisfied with the result of that vs google.

Indeed because the content people share Is great metadata about themselves, as is the people they share with, We get better and better at finding the right people, with right results for us.

It's got to the point for me now that it is no longer a search function - at least not one activated by me at a certain point in time.

It's closer to human-powered RSS. The feeds are people, and the results of their discoveries are ready filtered to be truly relevant to me.

More than that, they are delivered to me at the moment we share purpose. There's no friendspam clogging up the inbox.

It's the most relevant, fastest and most trustworthy news channel I have.

There are three examples below. Discoveries I didn't know I needed to know - and could not of consciously searched for.

If it wasn't for my communities of purpose I would not know about any of them.

Metadata shared widely to enable communities of purpose to connect is already disrupting algorithmic search - the keystone to the wealth of the world's fastest growing company in history, google.

You can be sure if it can disrupt even this, there are few corners of the economy and society which will be untouched. This is just the start.

Those examples:

Each of these were delivered to me through the community of purpose I share via Twitter:

1. Awesome presentation on the future of social networks via charlene li (delivered via a dm recommending mashable's link from Jill Simon!)
Charlene Li talks about 'air' her take on the expression of metadata beyond silos.

The Future Of Social Networks

View more presentations or upload your own. (tags: future advertising)

2. The because effect in full effect, courtesy of Monty Python.Monty Python Puts Free Video Online, Sells 23000% More DVDs

3.Honda on the value of failure (which fits nicely with my take on evolutionary models in complex adaptive systems, fitness landscapes - like the economy and the internet.

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The Crunch and your personal experiments

An unhealthy dose of risk aversion has swept through the financial world since it got taken somewhat by surprise by the crunch.

It's extending its hope-corroding fingers into the world of social media start-ups.

Less of Google's - 'you can't milk a calf' - more of - 'show me the money'!

Don't let this eat at you, too. Don't be part of a downturn in personal experimentation. (image courtesy)

For example. When you hear Google is closing services, does it make you think twice before uploading content to any new-comer? Does the risk averse monkey on your back whisper: "you'll lose it forever if they go belly-up"?

Are you sticking with the devils you know? The brands you already have a taste for?

Who you trust for cloud services is built around assumptions of long term reliability.

To win in this space cloud competitors will have to offer guarantees to customers - and evidence of a personal content migration or retrieval plan should the worst happen.

Which takes you back to needing to prove a value for these relationships to funders.

And it's all adding up to creating a credit crunch of experimentation.

Experimentation - our essential playfulness - is vital for the health of our web and for increasing innovation, innovation which brings efficiency and wealth for all. The more experiments, the more successfully we find good fits for the evolutionary fitness landscapes that can converge and amplify through the two complex adaptive systems of the web and the economy.

The less we experiment, the less chance of finding all the right fits for all possible niches and needs.

Your willingness to experiment is the equivalent of the banking system's willingness to lend.

There is no government bail-out scheme on offer for this.

Only you can keep the flame of experimentation and innovation alive.

And you must.

Lend yourself - your time, your playfulness, your innovative spirit - so that the evolution of the web may continue.

Try the new guys. Take a risk. Extend them some of your credit.

Show the bankers how it's done!

Show your intent with a comment below! Encourage your friends to do it too, blog and tweet it, email and text it.

You are the driving force of the web.

Go play!

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