http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=7555958&postID=8587179857976135790

Anonymous said...

    Just this once because I'm feeling buzzed, I'm going to show you guys The Way Home. It's a really simple way, and something you should be able to grasp.

    Technology is not a goal, it is a tool. Its highest purpose is to enable and empower humans to do what they want to do, to help them reach their goals. And when it can't, to get the heck out of the way.

    What most humans desire most is to connect with other humans they care about, engage with them in deeper and more meaningful ways. To a lesser extent to share with a wider world their thoughts and achievements and receive external validation therefrom.

    You're doing a fair job of the direct interaction thing with the Skype buy, but the getting out of the way thing needs more work. Any hint that you're manipulating Skype for corporate advantage is telling people that their video chat with their mother or children is a tool you use to manipulate them so be careful here because comms with Mom & Kids are disproportionately emotionally charged. Also, Skype is not the end of this story. People communicate in different ways.

    The next thing humans want is to achieve their objective. You can't know what their objectives are, but humans are tool users - so give them flexible tools. The tools you currently provide are not flexible enough because they are deliberately blunted to pursue other corporate objectives not in line with the customer's purpose. It's well known that every tool you give or sell has as other purposes to bind the user permanently and direct their use to greater dependence on your other offerings until the user is trapped in an internecine web of dependencies from which he cannot escape: not only to outside tools, but even to new versions of your own tools. So by using your tools we guarantee that we find the end date of our essential business operations and the loss of control of our data. Stop that. Now. Please.

    The third thing humans want is not to fall into a trap from which they cannot escape. You're going to have to reengineer your entire business philosophy to change this practice. Preventing end-user choice is an obvious advantage hard to give up, but you need to do it. Putting people in a trap is something they don't forgive you for as long as they live, so this strategy that has burned so many will eventually be your demise because no corporation can deliver perfection forever. If you love them, let them go. Make it a corporate value for each independent division to earn the customer's choice each time rather than forcing them into it.

    Wednesday, November 14, 2012 4:57:00 AM