building a services market for the transhuman era - tony greenberg - h+ summit @ harvard

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BOILING THE HUMAN CONVENIENCE AND CONFUSION ON THE PATH TO THE SINGULARITY Tony Greenberg & Alex Veytsel RampRate Eric Pulier ServiceMesh

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Innovation, including transhumanist innovation, is mostly the domain of private enterprise, which operates in one of a few market models – goods or services, mass-market or custom, consumer or enterprise, etc. Of these, the services model is the one that is most broken. Of Consumerist's 32 Worst Companies in America, 22 are pure-play services companies – including 7 of the 8 finalists, and the eventual winner, Comcast. The big question is: how do we get further along the transhumanist path when so much of it – uploading, virtual reality, cryonics, and likely even consumer-accessible versions of nanotechnology – are, or will be, delivered as a service? How do we find and reward the companies that won't accidentally unfreeze you after a power outage, lose your backup self, or jerk you out of paradise over a phony billing dispute when none of those things appear in the glossy brochure or the snazzy website? How can we tell the genuine article from marketing hype when our very selves depend on it? The collective stakes for building an accountable and innovative market model are high. If we take a trip 60 years back, one model started off with expectations of a sub-20 unit world market and then gave us a computer in every home – and in every pocket. Another one promised us the Jetsons and instead gave us the Canyonero, fighting tooth and nail against every innovation from safety to fuel efficiency along the way. The individual stakes may be even higher – especially if we ask someone trapped in a virtual reality built by Kafka, or AOL's cancellation department. So what do we know about it? We know how to fix services markets – including those whose participants keep stuff chilled (data centers) and those that treasure uptime and reliability (networks, clouds, etc). We hope to fix your someday. An idea generator turning perceptions and industries sideways since he was 17, Tony Greenberg is currently tearing down and rebuilding 2 markets: IT services and wine & spirits. From driving mass customization in the eyewear industry, to convincing the world that it didn’t need to hug its servers at Exodus, to pioneering online video 5 years before YouTube at DEN, Tony has fearlessly challenged and changed the status quo, while thinking ahead to the endgame when the board was still being set up. He has cut out millions of misspent money and uncovered dozens of industry myths in order to make new markets and innovations flower. Today Tony is the visionary behind RampRate, an IT services decision hub that makes multi-million dollar matches between people that need some really cold space, massive computing power and near infinite bandwidth and companies that can do so reliably, cheaply, and effectively. To the best of his knowledge, these have been used to house hot servers rather than cold bodies and corporate rather than corporeal consciousnesses, but that could change in the long run. His latest project is bringing the same decision engine to the consumer world, helping consumers start on a discovery process about their own palates, tastes, and matches with the optimal liquid refreshment.

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Page 1: Building a Services Market for the Transhuman Era - Tony Greenberg - H+ Summit @ Harvard

BOILING THE HUMAN

CONVENIENCE AND CONFUSIONON THE PATH TO THE SINGULARITY

Tony Greenberg & Alex VeytselRampRate

Eric PulierServiceMesh

Page 2: Building a Services Market for the Transhuman Era - Tony Greenberg - H+ Summit @ Harvard

BASIC CHALLENGES

Getting There from Here: Change is not inherently positive. Value-driven direction is vital.

Land of the Lost: Exponential Tech can overwhelm Linear Human decision-making.

Madoff’s Law: Anywhere a profit can be made, it will be, regardless of human consequences

THE CONCERN:

Madoff’s Law could thrive, creating an ugly future.

Page 3: Building a Services Market for the Transhuman Era - Tony Greenberg - H+ Summit @ Harvard

STUMBLING INTO THE LAND OF THE LOST

Technological Progress

Human-Scale Adaptation

De

velo

pm

ent

Time

The LandOf the Lost

Page 4: Building a Services Market for the Transhuman Era - Tony Greenberg - H+ Summit @ Harvard

INNOVATING PAST THE CHALLENGES…MAYBE

Technological Progress

Business-Model Adaptation

Human-Scale Adaptation Exploitative

Business Models

Failure to Innovate

Page 5: Building a Services Market for the Transhuman Era - Tony Greenberg - H+ Summit @ Harvard

BOILING THE FROG

Page 6: Building a Services Market for the Transhuman Era - Tony Greenberg - H+ Summit @ Harvard

DRAWING THE LINE

BUSINESS MODEL ADAPTATION

Page 7: Building a Services Market for the Transhuman Era - Tony Greenberg - H+ Summit @ Harvard

YESTERDAY’S REVOLUTIONS

Revolutions in Connecting… People to People Information to Information People to Information

And Now in Sharing…

Page 8: Building a Services Market for the Transhuman Era - Tony Greenberg - H+ Summit @ Harvard

BUILDING THE NEXT REVOLUTION: Bandwidth Heading to Zero

Page 9: Building a Services Market for the Transhuman Era - Tony Greenberg - H+ Summit @ Harvard

BUILDING THE NEXT REVOLUTION:Storage Heading to Zero

Page 10: Building a Services Market for the Transhuman Era - Tony Greenberg - H+ Summit @ Harvard

EXPONENTIAL “LAWS”TRANSFORMING BUSINESS

Moore’s Law: Number of transistors on a circuit doubles and price halves every 12 to 18 months.

Metcalfe’s Law: A network’s value rises based on the square of the number of users.

Zuckerberg’s Law: The amount of information shared between people doubles every 12 to 18 months.

Pulier’s Law: The time and cost to launch a venture that reaches 100M people halves every 12 to 18 months.

Page 11: Building a Services Market for the Transhuman Era - Tony Greenberg - H+ Summit @ Harvard

THE CONVENIENCE EFFECT

AMAZON GOOGLE FACEBOOK TWITTER ZYNGA FOURSQUARE

Then… we turn up the heat a little more…

•Default becomes “open”

•Privacy becomes a “process”

Page 12: Building a Services Market for the Transhuman Era - Tony Greenberg - H+ Summit @ Harvard

WITH GREAT POWER…

…COMES GREAT RESPONSIBILITY Or just a great opportunity to make a LOT of money…

Page 13: Building a Services Market for the Transhuman Era - Tony Greenberg - H+ Summit @ Harvard

INNOVATION: SOME MARKETS ARE WILDLY SUCCESSFUL

1943 (apocryphal) target market: 5 units worldwide (faux photo)

2009 market: 274 million units per year

Page 14: Building a Services Market for the Transhuman Era - Tony Greenberg - H+ Summit @ Harvard

INNOVATION: the PROMISE

In 1962 In 1989

Page 15: Building a Services Market for the Transhuman Era - Tony Greenberg - H+ Summit @ Harvard

Innovation: The PAYOFF?

Page 16: Building a Services Market for the Transhuman Era - Tony Greenberg - H+ Summit @ Harvard

FAILURE TO INNOVATE

Technological Progress

Business Model Adaptation

Human Scale Adaptation

Failure to Innovate

Page 17: Building a Services Market for the Transhuman Era - Tony Greenberg - H+ Summit @ Harvard

EXPLOITED IN THE LAND OF THE LOST

Technological Progress

Business Model Adaptation

Human Scale Adaptation Exploitative

Business Models

Page 18: Building a Services Market for the Transhuman Era - Tony Greenberg - H+ Summit @ Harvard

THE PARADOX OF CHOICE

happiness

choices

Alfred Toffler

Greg Easterbrook

Page 19: Building a Services Market for the Transhuman Era - Tony Greenberg - H+ Summit @ Harvard

FLEEING FROM CHOICE……TO CONFORMITY

Page 20: Building a Services Market for the Transhuman Era - Tony Greenberg - H+ Summit @ Harvard

CUSTOMER DISSERVICE:2010’S WORST COMPANIES

21 of 32 nominees are pure services companies

3 of 4 finalists- The eventual “winner”?

The Lesson: Services Markets Reward Poor Customer Service

Page 21: Building a Services Market for the Transhuman Era - Tony Greenberg - H+ Summit @ Harvard

ARE WE BUILDING A TRANSHUMANIST SERVICES MARKET?

Future Services

Virtual reality Bio-Uploading Cryonics Nanotech

Page 23: Building a Services Market for the Transhuman Era - Tony Greenberg - H+ Summit @ Harvard

HUMAN-SCALE ADAPTATION:SHIFTING THE CURVE

Page 24: Building a Services Market for the Transhuman Era - Tony Greenberg - H+ Summit @ Harvard

MUCH ADO ABOUT… SOMETHING?

Fear mongering not the same as organizing behavior change…

We Need Systemic Solutions.

Page 25: Building a Services Market for the Transhuman Era - Tony Greenberg - H+ Summit @ Harvard

YOUR ASSIGNMENT:HOW TO CREATE THE RIGHT MARKET?

Focus on:

More Innovation Less Exploitation

Resources needed: Regulation – In time? Not co-opted? Covenants – How many altruists are there? Impartial Arbiters – Who’s really impartial? Individual Choice – Did you go open source? Did

you ditch Facebook?

Page 26: Building a Services Market for the Transhuman Era - Tony Greenberg - H+ Summit @ Harvard

WHERE NEXT?

Page 27: Building a Services Market for the Transhuman Era - Tony Greenberg - H+ Summit @ Harvard

ERIC’S IDEAS

Create A Singularity Bill of Rights for humans and machines.

The Singularity Stock Exchange SSE rates companies against its Bill of Rights. Capture the conscious capitalist!

The Next Green Movement. Encourage support, pacts with higher-ranked companies.

Create predictable correlation between stock price and market success with Singularity Stock Exchange price.

Page 28: Building a Services Market for the Transhuman Era - Tony Greenberg - H+ Summit @ Harvard

ALEX’S IDEAS

Divorce political organization from geography

Create self-selecting communities Virtual societies compete for citizens More citizens = More influence Political service becomes political

imperative

Page 29: Building a Services Market for the Transhuman Era - Tony Greenberg - H+ Summit @ Harvard

TONY’S IDEAS

A world without exploitative sales and salesmanship

But How? Awareness. Expectations. Accountability/Transparency Automagical software that meshes people/technology

needs and consciousness