PalaceHotel Blog

Je viens de terminer la lecture du dernier livre de Chris Anderson, Free. Il s’agit d’un livre sur la grande tendance des produits gratuits sur internet – et ailleurs. Mr Anderson semble vouloir inventer un nouveau concept, le “Free” ou “Free” tout court. Ce concept est intraduisible en français car il évoque non seulement la gratuité mais la liberté aussi. Cependant, le livre s’adresse clairement aux entrepreneurs, et il sera surtout question d’argent. La “gratuité” apparaît comme le résultat d’une prise de recul: un produit ou un service faisant toujours partie d’un écosystème complexe, on choisit de le rendre gratuit parce que ça attire du monde, et on se rattrape sur les produits annexes. Ou alors on rend un service gratuit pour les curieux, qui n’en feront qu’un usage léger, et on le fait payer aux utilisateurs plus exigeants. Ce genre de choses.

Mais “Free”, le concept, ça va quand même un peu plus loin. D’abord, d’après Anderson, il faut se pencher sur les raisons qui le rendent tellement attrayant sur le plan marketing. Et puis de là, comment se positionner par rapport à lui ce qui, nous dit l’auteur, est une question qui se posera à chacun de nous: on peut bien faire payer des choses aux gens, mais tout en sachant qu’il y aura presque toujours une alternative gratuite. Bon. Ensuite, il y a la Free Economy: Wikipedia, Linux, tout ça.

“Free Economy” est une idée qui fait peur aux Etats-Unis; si ce n’est pas du communisme, et si, comme on vient de le voir, “Free” n’est qu’un arme de plus dans l’arsenal de l’entrepreneur, que vient-il donc remplacer? À cette question Anderson donne 2 réponses: 1) du temps; 2) de la réputation. Du temps lorsqu’on capte votre temps de cerveau ou celui de ceux à qui vous allez parler des services que vous utilisez gratuitement; de la réputation, lorsque vous offrez gratuitement votre temps pour augmenter votre “capital social”. La boucle est bouclée: “Free” = “Money” (quoique indirectement)! et le capitalisme est sauf.

Personnellement, je trouve ça un peu décevant. Il y a aussi dans le livre une ou deux envolées sur le thème de l’abondance. “Free” serait le signe que nous nous préparons à une ère d’abondance. Plus ils se dématérialisent, plus produits et services devient abondants, et donc bon marché et, à la limite, gratuits. Ce qui est vrai aujourd’hui des services le sera bientôt pour les biens matériels.

C’est déjà plus enthousiasmant. Mais pourquoi une économie basée sur l’argent serait-elle remplacée par une économie basée sur le temps et la réputation dans une société de l’abondance? J’ai presque l’impression que ce serait pire. Au moins l’argent, malgré la mesquinerie ou la cupidité qu’il nous inspire, a une odeur de soufre qui le rend excitant, en quelque sorte. Mais le “temps (de cerveau disponible)” et la “réputation”, peut-on vraiment imaginer concepts plus vulgaires?

L’esquisse que fait Anderson d’une société où les coûts de production seraient devenus marginaux et où nous puissions remplacer le “free market” par le “Free” tout court est alléchante, mais tel qu’il en délimite les contours, il s’agit rien moins que d’un leurre. La liberté, la vraie, c’est une percée dans le corps des conventions, de cela même qui se comptabilise, l’affirmation de l’audace qui caractérise notre espèce dans ces meilleurs moments. Il est dommage qu’un mot comme Free fasse l’objet d’un aussi mauvais traitement.

Statistics are a very efficient tool in business. They provide control panels that are extremely useful to decision-makers and make it possible to optimize processes in order to maximize profit, or any other organization’s main – or higher, purpose. Statistics in business rely on metrics – quantified data. This data is obtained through a body of techniques known as “operationalization”, or how to convert the organization’s daily life’s deemed interesting deeds into manipulable numbers. It then transforms that data to produce figures that will eventually affect the organizations processes in a (hopefully) positive way.
This process is really all about numbers; however, statistics, in its noblest acceptance as a mathematical discipline, is this formidable body of techniques which create relative certainty out of near absolute uncertainty. It has its roots in probability, which itself arose from our fascination for gambling. But in common parlance, what we mean with “statistics” is very often something much simpler, which tells more about our fascination with numbers then our sheer passion for mathematical abstraction. “Show me the statistics” could as well be put as “show me the figures”: we want to see the charts, what’s on top, what’s in and what’s not.
Wired magazine’s latest cover story, “living by numbers”, is about the many means by which to track various data about ourselves and utilize that information to improve our workouts, nutrition and health. The statistics are basically inexistent and the basic premise here seems to be that personal improvement is all about getting more performant according to some body of standards put together by leading insurance companies. A very depressing perspective indeed.
Business Intelligence is much more subtle nowadays and some of its methods rely on hardcore statistical maths. In some cases, some almost “magical” technology is at hand, which really augments our cognitive abilities and let us uncover patterns that we weren’t aware of.

Now, as individual human beings, there is probably no good reason why we wouldn’t be subjected to hidden patterns, just as organizations. But there’s an additional difficulty: we are complex entities, so what areas of our lives should we focus on? Wired’s article suggest that accumulating performance indicators and relying on algorithms to cut bad habits such as smoking or overeating are a good starting point. Businesses, up to a certain level, can be compared to machines, because we like to think of them as organizations serving a specific purpose. But we human beings cannot be likened to eating/exercising/self indulging mecanisms. There are other dimensions of an individual than its sheer capacity to maintain itself in an arguably “optimal condition”, which are presumably more important for us to know about; they are probably the driving forces that motivate us to entertain any desire on these particular subjects in the first place as well (if at all). We take any business’ purpose for granted, but a human being is a whole different class of affairs. Our motivations in life are ever-changing; we set ourselves different objectives at different times of the day, goals of all sorts ranging from immediate, practically unnoticeable tasks, to aspirations of an almost spiritual nature. Our projects then get mixed up with our bad habits, and long matured destinies vanish instantly at the advent of an unmissable opportunity. Sometimes, a certain sense of absurdity emerges from our shattered existences. Yet, in many cases, we are probably just missing perspective.

To capture this information, we need a symbolic representation system that is capable to reproduce the complexity of human existence. While our various electronic devices deliver a constant flow of digital information – mail, browser history, social networks, …, this still has to be transformed into a meaningful material, one that is sufficiently rich to provide us with the many facets that need be exposed by any sufficiently powerful model of human affairs. We will then be able to look at our life and the many ways it connects with various events, the lives of our entourage, our environment, even the weather… all at one glance. We will have a life in symbols.

My Safari Bookshelf currently has two books on Collective Intelligence. They are not theoretical books, but practical programming guides. One is titled “Collective Intelligence in Action”, the other “Programming for Collective Intelligence”. Sofar I had nurtured an almost philosophical interest for CI, but these books promise much more: I can get in front of my computer and start taking advantage of it. It is becoming a resource, maybe even a new kind of utility.

Personal Intelligence is another beast. It is this most precious – and unevenly distributed, capacity of knowing oneself and others in order to make sensible decisions in life. More so even than CI, PI has deep echoes in the philosophical tradition (everyone remembers Socrates’ motto). O’Reilly does have a few books that relate to PI, but they are not programming titles.

Thus, there seems to be no way for me to leverage Personal Intelligence insights and concepts using a computer. The idea might sound idiotic, but think about it: people (you?) generate tons of highly personal information on computers these days. Imagine what Freud could do if he could lay a hand on the accumulated data you are generating on all your electronic devices. Having you lay down on a sofa would probably feel redundant.

Organizations have exercised introspection for a long time, though. In the corporate world, this is known as Business Intelligence. Techniques in these disciplines have been inspired, or directly applied, from the fields of A.I. and bioinformatics. It is a vibrant field where techniques stemming from the 70s and 80s and that have been deemed useless ever since, have finally found their target domain; what’s more, they very effectively benefit the bottom line. It is basically this technology that is being rebranded and explained in simple words in my Safari books on Collective Intelligence.

Individuals could probably benefit from these techniques, too. Through mining their own data, you and I could find out about the cycles in our lives, uncover unforeseen influences from people and events. By knowing ourselves better we could certainly gain more control over our health, personal objectives and behavioral patterns.