Digital Tech Trends- 2 Decades in review Part 1

Cucarachas enojadas, fumando marijuana, buscando una fiesta.(Angry Cockroaches, Smoking Marijuana, Looking for a party)

Mr. Tito Larriva was seen singing this circa 1996 and Google was born.

Looking back right from 2017 on the twenty years of digital tech evolution, I nominate Tito for a Nobel prize in the new economic science theory.

Right in the middle of the Industrial revolution, Keynes changed the world with his monetary and fiscal intervention theories, which made America and the whole concept behind Globalization.

In the beginning of Digital Technology revolution, Mr. Tito here gives “Cucarachas Fumando Marijuana” theory, which might solve the biggest puzzle behind what’s coming next in the 21st century.

We really don’t have to wait for a third world war and half a decade to understand what actually hit us.

No Crystal Gazing here. Our research around Google has discovered some major flaws in the way world searches and Google's hegemony around the whole school of thought promoting "Google is Search".

We have reasons and theories to believe Google is simply cleaning up the zeta-mess created by itself and this cycle of messing up and cleaning up is getting bigger. Google has destroyed the beautiful internet it was conceived to be.

The moral hazards and economic blunders have Everyone in the world paying the price for this multi-trillion dollar oligarchy, covering blunders with blunders, camouflaging as cutting-edge technology and the whole "hocus pocus" of Artificial Intelligence.

We believe it all this is creating an economic worm-hole which has the potential to swallow the humanity. More than ever now is the time for people with a vantage point on what Google is! Including Technology evangelists, Digital Marketers with some soul left, Economists, Scholars, social scientists, and Artists to come together and set this straight.

In this research, we will zoom around the world started with Keynes.

How does the interventions theory work?

Why has it worked for certain worlds till now and turns a disaster for others?

What is the American dream and how Keynes shaped it?

What is globalization? Is it good for America, Or the world?

How today’s digital technology led by Google has evolved around the same set of economics but with inherent mega-flaws?

What is the reason to believe these digital corporations resemble fraud, scams, and the felony of higher order in the real world?

Why when everything is so automated, making you so efficient, with all the zeta-expensive Artificial Intelligence you can dream of; you scramble to find an hour to spend with your child?

Was Google really behind the Economic disasters of 2008, which wall street - “The Old world of capitalism” is wildly blamed for?

Is China or India really taking American Jobs or they are a few pillars which are supporting America till now while putting their own futures in grave dangers?

Did Google destroy most of the American Jobs? And Should Biker Gangs go after them now?

Did Google destroy careers of generations of journalists, who could have done better but now are really copying 100 shades of bullshit over the internet?

Why do I believe Mr. Trump is the American president who can really disrupt this whole giga-play and can inadvertently make world way better? The catch is - As India now is ruled by fakebook marketers, he too speaks in tweets. And as any digital marketer understands what that means if they both don’t realize about billions of lives looking up to them, the world is doomed, and Google wins.

Also when we write “Google” it’s not just the app or a certain company but the economics around it.

During the next parts of this series, we will dissect further mutations of Google economics with Fakebook, Twitter et. al.

Also, we are not debating the B2C, that is all the free stuff you get from Google. The search, Chrome, and Gmail.

Google is not a search company, its an ad platform. Businesses should be defined by what they make money with.

With hundreds of billions in war chest and thousands of developers working in trenches for decades, the Search function, Gmail, Chrome are the basics they can give.

What we are debating here are the costs and the economic incentives making a $133 Billion corporation.

Incentives are way bigger economic events than demand and supply, they can move any curve in any direction if applied with precision.

Google does have utility and it touches everyone in a very warm and gooey way, tickling all the right cords, and it’s all around.

And we get it! We build digital systems and know what it takes, the real story is behind the curtains.

We are talking about the B2B play, where Google makes money.

Coming from the B2B world of wall street Securitization, Risk, compliance, and technology I always had trouble understanding the whole concept of mixing B2B and B2C plays under one mega-entity, without regulations and boundaries. These regulations make most of what you do on wall street.

Without these oversights isn’t Google more like a massive oligarchy?

Or Is it built so Oligarchies can survive? Only that now there is no bloodshed.

Google apart from the blatant mixing of B2C with B2B is now also involved in direct mega projects with governments in countries like India.

Is it not putting world’s most populous democracy into a grave danger of eternal subjugation?

And that’s the real question.

Everything below shouldn’t be considered a statement but more of a question, to fire up a debate and do something about it.

Wanted to write this series way back in 2016, but somehow, I convinced myself that I need to code ballotboxIndia all by myself while researching first hand on Indian systems of droughts, floods, and the concept of water trains.

Why are farmers killing themselves in an agrarian country?

Why dengue and chikungunya fight for headlines with swine flu?

What is this smog?

Where is my tax money and does, anyone care?

Are politicians really the epitome of corruption or just dumb like a water buffalo with a rope in the hands of a larger force “the system” you don’t want to mess with but vote every now or then?

What is “the system”?  Does India really need more laws and policy reforms?

How states work? How does the center work in a federated system?

Why do they say every public administrator is corrupt? And if everything is so corrupt how a country of 1.35 Billion is holding it all together, or is it not?

Can technology, data science, digital marketing and the way I understand them, change the world or at least India’s future?

Are Indians really, un-educated, non-compliant lot which needs oligarchies to control and keep them safe from themselves?

While snooping around saw “the system” up close. Sat with farmers in village chaupals (village meetings under a tree), sampled drought first hand, Dams, River Links, “The Development”, met some amazing people calling themselves Fakirs (beggars) in practice and demeanor but with ideas for humanity way larger than what I ever saw!

Found a 960 km river system under stress to extinction and a scientist fighting for it right in the middle of Uttar Pradesh below the nose of mighty water buffalo of the politicians and some of the mightiest agencies under them with plans to build a very expensive river Mausoleum. Saw the subversion of every law of the land, the kind of bungled economics that can roll both Keynes and Marx in their graves. Every environmental prudence mankind had, which made such a populous country thrive- squandered off… till now. We acted out of duty, got many high-power agencies involved including officials from Major Planning bodies, PMO, Environment Ministry now following up the case with a few major publications in India pursuing it.

Uttar Pradesh is under mega-elections right now with giga-giants hustling so no point of pushing an already hot-button further right now, we are still too tiny to handle a panicked brute force coming at us right in the heat of elections, but we will be back right after.

Moving right into 2017 we have undertaken a research around election processes in India and have started a campaign to restrict the election rallies, incessant, expensive and oligarchical use of new(social) and old media for consent manufacturing during the time around Elections. We have proposed a concept of locally organized, inexpensive and streamlined Jan-Mela as a pre-voting process to help consent and opinion formation around candidates.

Recently our notices and posters were torn off by Student wings of political outfits and volunteers threatened, so if you see our folks in your streets running Jan-Mela research help them, we will give you a mention.

Jan-Mela (Democracy Carnivals) & Rally Bandi (Ban Election Rally’s) can be a watershed in Indian democratic history and its dire need can be seen with the seed sown somewhere in an early 21st century.

Why are we doing this?

Growing up in India I remember people with character, Non-GMO food without pesticide, politicians with fear and respect for democratic institutions at least in parliaments which were at least functioning. Family bonds better, people with more time for kids. Cricket used to be an event of art with teams slogging 5 days in cliffhangers. The news was news and views were viewed, editors had respect and a name to protect.

People worked with people in communities knew each other, worked with each other, depended on each other, directly without mediators.

Guess what, Google was not there, or the whole Keynes economics.

Information was people to people, editors to people with real human and societal filters. Not privately owned bots working for profit. Bots making everyone dance to their tunes, leaders to followers, business to costumers.

So what problem did google solve? And why it’s world’s second-biggest brand with over $133 Billion in valuation and just 57,000 employees?

The disastrous consequences, be on public lives, environment, governance, basic human rights violations of today have deep roots in the events started with Keynes in 1930s and digital technologies evolutions around 1996.

BallotboxIndia is one such technology intervention to course correct. At one hand, we are solving the problem of accountability with evidence and research-based actionable information. On the other, we are building digital marketing tools with human Intelligence right in the middle.

To know what we are doing here. Or get involved with our live experiments building way better campaign conversions for the leading brands of tomorrow, click connect.

Stay tuned, more on this later. 

Update (Jan-23-2017)

Many of the references used need some familiarity with economic theories and their evolution. I will try to make it easier with further installments. There are some references from Dusk till Dawn (Rober Rodriguez, Tarantino, Clooney) including the screengrab of Santanico Pandemonium. Apologies from non-fans