Evolution, at Break-neck Speed, as we surrender Privacy for Convenience
We’re on the move. We have to travel to get where we’re going, and sometimes even to get back!
The place for the #ConnectedConsumer is now well established – we have mobiles, we use transport of some kind, whether it’s public or private, and we are continually being led to expect ever improving service.
How fast does our pace of life have to get before it feels less human?
6mph – just a bit faster than a canal boat?
75mph – just a bit faster than the motorway speed limit (in the UK at least)?
701Millionmph – just a bit faster than the speed of light?
Light travels at a speed of 186,000 miles a second or 700 million miles an hour.
We will still Talk, Eat, and Spend, whatever the speed, so that makes us the “target audience” for a Marketing Industry trying desperately to keep up, and preferably get ahead of us, with the next new thing, and the next new technique.
While we have stopped buying newspapers, watch TV selectively – and even then avoid the commercial breaks – we have remained susceptible to the dreaded “right-hand column” on whatever screen we are using.
Ad-blocking software landed on the desk/laptop around 18months ago, and it has now finally made it to the handset too.
Nothing in life is free, so those wonderful search and browser companies may yet have to produce a tool that we can use SAFELY as our on-ramp to the Net, that we actually have to pay for – maybe even an annual subscription (keep it low & sensible folks, and I for one would be only to pleased to partake) – the ads are a damned nuisance, and take up valuable small screen real estate, especially the GIFfy ones that keep repeating the same short video snippet! Try AdBlock to start!
We know our own minds – or like to be allowed to think we do – and do our own research when we consider we want to buy. The “discretionary spend” is increasingly going in either of two directions – eating out/socialising, or that “must have” for the home, the car, or the family. We have to become masters of the art of self-control when it comes to the “impulse buy”, so the importance of that research grows with each passing day.
The lead-on from this is that we still search, and we still read, but those two then become distinct threats to the fast eroding “premium time” that we use to do what we want, or spend with who we want. Combining the two and helping us decide would have seemed to be nirvana until this week, when Google announced one of it’s next big things was going to be “Now On Tap” – automated searching based on exactly what we are looking at at any given moment. The tech has now been trained to think the way we do, to seemingly “help us out” at every stage of the way – and we will likely be even more grateful for that as it moves into our cars, and helps us with safety AND savings at the same time.
The big BUT slaps us in the face when we think about all that assistance on one hand, and total control of every photo we have ever taken in our life (also announced by Google in the form of their new Photos app), on the other.
Suddenly, we start to realise how much further we will need to let them into the deeper crevices of our life, especially what we used to call the “private” and “personal” areas, where their “forward-thinking technology” can be so much use to us.
Isn’t it a good job that they gave us much more control over App Permissions at the same time?
Already available on Blackphone; coming to an Android M phone near you, eventually.
If you switch all those permissions off, the app will not be so convenient for us.
What are YOU willing to give up?
H@hojomo