Re: [projectvrm] Cybertwin

[Doc Searls < >]

On Oct 12, 2011, at 3:38 PM, Devon Loffreto wrote:

Doc,

Id like to challenge your notion of "super-human" as a problem...

Tools make us super-human. I can think of many that do so... such as hammers or computers.

The problem with corporations is not that they are not Human (certainly they are not Human enough)... the problem with corporations is that too many Humans stand in proximity to corporations and accept creating a less powerful humanity as a result. Corporations are tools. Hating on tools is bad precedent. Hating on frail Human choices or social-structures is much more empowering.

The problem with the corporate-personhood debate is that it wants to decrease the power of tools without taking an adequate look at how Humans are the real problem in the exchange. Those corporate shells get all of their power from Humans that are willing to occupy subservient, controllable roles as W2 employees within the corporate shell.

Conversely, a single-member corporate entity does not instigate the same issue as a corporate entity with 1000 employees. Is the static corporate tool the problem, or is it the compliant un-empowered social-structure of the W2 employee?

This is very germane to VRM... because the next market structure composed of VRM rights and empowerments is going to be redistributing transactional powers to consumers that today are held closely by employees. In many ways, the enemy of a VRM future is the employment structure of today. As I have said before, compliant customers are just employees who work for the cheese they use to willingly consume... and who our political leaders call on in times of need to do more of the same... predictably.

This is also the problem I have with the current political obsession with "jobs." We might as well be in support of "cogs." 

I never wanted a job. But I always wanted to do good work. I think that's the case with most people, whether they know it or not. The employment structure of today might be normative, but that doesn't make it right.

If we want equal power in the market among participants, we will not get it by decreasing corporate power...we will get it by increasing Human power.

Good point.

The fact that too many market participants occupy roles as subservient powerless employment structures within empowered corporate tools is the problem. I am all for universally distributed privately owned super-Humans. Sounds like an empowering future. Zero W2 employee-customers... why not? Maybe a teacher that owns his/her job under contractual Terms will get a little respect in the marketplace, rather than depend on a union to destroy market value in order to protect their job?

Daniel Pink nailed this more than a decade ago in Free Agent Nation, in which he brought up William Whyte's 1950's classic, The Organization Man. (Hell, I remember *reading* that in the '50s.)

As to the cybertwin idea... mycybertwin.com has been around and progressing for years in its own right. A bit freaky though.

 

Devon Loffreto

Other names are available, though. Or were this morning. :-)

Doc