The Technocrati

I come from a family of engineers. My father is an engineer. My brother. My relatives. My uncle is a nuclear engineer. Another uncle is an architect. I grew up in a world of machines and logical thought. The mentality of ‘why does this work?’ was present throughout my childhood. You can imagine my father and brother taking everything apart and trying to figure out how it works. My father would take computers home from work when I was growing up, and this was before the real ‘computer revolution’. Computers were everywhere around me before they became big. I still remember how a computer couldn’t save, and we would jimmy up cassette tapes in order to get the computer to save. It really sucked programming something only to have the computer erase it when it is turned off.

Unlike my family, I did not follow the path to become an engineer or a programmer. I ended up being the black sheep of the family. The reason why I didn’t, I suspect, is that natural longing to be different than what your father was. You don’t want to live the same life as your Dad. I became obsessed with Human Nature. Instead of figuring out why a machine would work, I would want to know why a Human would work. I agree with John Adams when he said he studied Shakespeare to “explore the labyrinths of Human Nature”.

A big reason why I chose this path is because Human Nature, the programming that runs in our brains that we are often unaware of, is eternal. Programming is not. You have to constantly learn new programming languages. But Human Nature remains the same. People will still be reading Shakespeare five hundred years from now. So subjects not just as art would attract me, but sales, business, and the law as well. Most knowledge about Human Nature today is found in sales and business, not in the psycho-babble of psychology or sociology. Going this direction took my life on a very different path than my family. It involves less money, for sure, but it also involves things that last. What I do cannot become obsolete… at least not through changes in technology. There is a reason why Shakespeare threw in, to the puzzlement of scholars, the gravedigger scene in Hamlet. Shakespeare is mocking the lawyer, the real estate agent, and the politician in favor of the gravedigger because the “house that the gravedigger makes last until doomsday”.

Subjects like the Blue Ocean Strategy and disruption I find appealing not just in terms of understanding Nintendo’s business or even business in general, but of Human Nature in general. Disruption, for example, explained to me why railroad companies couldn’t see cars destroying their business or why the airplane was invented by a small shop of bicycle manufacturers instead of big companies.

My interest and obsession of Human Nature is not shared by my relatives, obviously. They do make plenty of money doing what they do. What more is there for them to learn? But I try to point out that they are still just a cog in the wheel. They do not understand why, despite their great skills, why they are working for an employer who could, say, use a fortune teller to make business decisions.

Bill Gates sits on top the financial mountain made during the computer revolution. Is Bill Gates a good programmer? No, he is very bad. His talents really have nothing to do with engineering but everything to do with seeing the future and knowing Human Nature well enough to get people to work for him and aggressively seize it. When he first saw the iPod, he took it from his dinner guest’s hands and played around with it. He said, “This is well made,” and the guest said, “It is for Mac,” and Bill Gates said, “ONLY for Mac?” He handed back the device and looked a little worried probably as he was imagining the future. Meanwhile, an editor on Slashdot laughed at the iPod and called it “lame”.

This divide we see everywhere. People of the engineering or programming personality are not too well versed with Human Nature. Their exploration of Nature is through engineering and that is fine. People are formed by Nature to explore herself through different ways. But instead of the aristocratic view they believe themselves, I remind them it is actually the reverse. They are the most highly disrupted, the most highly leveraged of any type of employee. And a lifetime of learning about engineering prevents one from running the business for the most part. Even as far back in the Roman times, the highly intelligent engineers were the slaves. Despite how it is depicted in conventional wisdom, the more intelligent a person is means the more likely enslaved the person becomes. This is why ‘freemen’ are always seen as ‘stupid’. Intelligence tends to slouch towards security, not freedom. This is why you find universities filled with very intelligent teachers but scared to death of freedom meaning they yearn the secure sanctuary of the university outside the free rolling world that is outside the university. Galileo was opposed by the university because his ‘paradigm shift’ took away their security. Same with Einstein.

In our Era, what is most remarkable is that the Silicon Revolution, recognized in the Computer Revolution or Internet Revolution, is seen as the flower grown from these engineer type personalities. Of course, it is not. They are the flowering of Human Nature. Disruption is all about this. The bedrock of Disruption is overshooting customers’ needs which are these engineer personalities getting out of control and following the path of “technology”. The consumers, however, just want to get the job done. Examples of this exist everywhere. But the most recognizable one you may know is the PlayStation 3. Kutaragi was an engineer and had that engineer personality. A success in engineering does not equal a success in Human Nature.

I love my family, and I am not criticizing the engineer personality so much  as showing why it keeps leading off a cliff ultimately. Ever since the Computer Revolution, many engineers have gotten quite a swelled head. They are no longer engineers. They find themselves as a type of Neo Aristocrats. They imagine all of society changing and morphing with the next wave of computer technology. They do not see technology as an instrument of Human Nature but as a molder of it.

I call them the Technocrati. The Technocrati believe they are the genius explorers who will bring down “technology” from a mountain and reshape society. It is not so much that the Technocrati are obsessed with technology as they are obsessed with technology riding the horse of Human Nature.

Ultimately, they are wrong. It is Human Nature who is the driver, it is Human Nature who is riding the horse of technology. Disruption is so prevalent because of the Technocrati. A *better* disk is not better to the consumer’s jobs to be done. The Wii’s success is because the console fit Human Nature better than the PlayStation 3. Breaking down the walls in interface was removing a choke point while increasing the graphics was increasing a point in the pipe that was well wide enough already.

Ten years ago, it was declared that the “business cycle was over”. Stocks were racing up on new technology companies, i.e. the “Dot-Com Bubble”. It is preposterous that people were throwing so much money into companies that made no cashflow. Everyone, today, recognizes that it was preposterous. Yet, it happened. Why? It is because of the Technocrati. They believed that some new source of technology would re-write society and Human Nature. Naturally, no one wanted to be left behind of the next ‘big thing’.

Remember the Segway? The little scooter with two wheels ultimately failed. The inventor was obviously a Technocrati.

Why hasn’t Linux taken off? It is because you have a well meaning programmer spend tons of time tweaking something yet the user just wants to do something simple like watch videos in his web browser. Technocrati see innovation only in engineering but not in the consumer side.

Why is Steve Jobs worth his weight in gold? At one demonstration, software was shown to Jobs about how to copy something (like a webpage or DVD or something). They showed off their program with its nice menus and all that. Steve Jobs just shook his head and just went to the whiteboard and drew a square. He said he wanted it as simple as dragging the file and putting it into the square and have it start copying. The programmers were unhappy with this. This would mean more work for them! Another example had Apple employees insist on making a wrist computer as they saw it taking off and altering society. Steve Jobs said no. The employees bolted and made their own company. Their wrist watch never took off and the company closed. Steve jobs, who was seen as holding back ‘progress’ by them, had his eye on Human Nature. The employees could only see the engineering side of it.

At first, the Technocrati were isolated among the programmers back in the 80s. But the Technocratis have grown tremendously since then. There are many investors and marketers who are Technocratis, for example.

One of the biggest ways to spot a Technocrati is if he or she believes society is going to change because of a product or technology. Technocrati believe technology is in the driver’s seat, not Human Nature. Another way to spot Technocrati is their incredible lack of discussing customers. Customers are not interesting to them.

Business guys who speak only of “business models” would be Technocrati, as an example. Marketers who talk only about new ways of getting one’s message out would be a Technocrati. Analysts these days are now all Technocratis.

Remember the High Definition Generation? This is what the Technocrati called this video game generation. Nintendo was backwards and going to go out of business because their console wasn’t in high definition, meanwhile Sony’s PS3 was going to control the living room, replace DVDs with Blue-Ray, all because of high definition. This massive failure in seeing the future is entirely due to the Technocrati. (Most hardcore gamers are ‘Technocrati’ too. They buy the hype, hook, line, and sinker when a new game will ‘change everything’ because it has a new type of game engine. And they are obsessed with the technology (or the lack of it from their view) of the Wii-mote or the consoles in general).

What I find funny about the Technocrati is that when one great “next revolution” sputters out, they just invent a new one! When that one sputters out, it is replaced with yet another one. Prior to the NES, the Technocrati believed that the home computer would control all appliances including refrigerators and washing machine (computers may be in them, but they are certainly not controlled by the main PC). Five years ago, investors, Sony, and Microsoft believed that living rooms would be controlled by a video game console (however, the price of the screen dropped and now there are screens everywhere. The living room cannot be controlled).

When Little Big Planet came out, which received hype because it was going to change everything about video games, it did not do so well and certainly hasn’t changed anything. When Spore came out, there was massive hype about that, and its reception was very poor. User Generated Content is yet another Technocrati dream. The “Game Industry” was all excited because the “Game Industry” is composed of Technocrati as are many other industries.

Lately, it is being bandied about that content no longer matters, only ‘user-generated content’ does. This is being pointed at with comments on websites, on blogs (such as this one), and everywhere else. This will ultimately be ended up being proven wrong as content does matter as people don’t want to consume other people’s garbage. But it is exciting to the Technocrati because it is a technology innovation they believe will “change society”. The Technocrati are so out of it that they believe the Internet “invented” user-generated content. Apparently, they missed the letters-to-the-editor or pamphleteering that has gone on for centuries. Human Nature does not change. Reality is not Star Trek.

Now, the “next revolution” is said to be ‘digital distribution’. It, of course, will “change society” as all these “next revolutions” will ‘change society’. But digital distribution is not an exact word. CDs, for example, were digital information that was distributed on disc. Disks, of course, were digital distribution. Obviously, they do not mean ‘digital distribution’ in itself but should be called ‘disk-less distribution’. But leaving in the word ‘digital’ makes it sound as if it is part of the next wave of the Silicon Revolution and to oppose it would be the same as to oppose the very name of progress!

Digital distribution is desired by the Technocrati for one reason only and it is really nothing about costs. Putting out a freaking disc is not that hard. AOL used to mail out free discs to all the mailboxes in America (remember those?).

Digital distribution is all about control. Whose control? Why, the Technocrati’s of course. Retailers will have no control over what product is put out because they are out of the loop. There will be no used goods since the consumer has no control over the product. The consumer doesn’t even have control if he or she can play it at a friend’s house.

The Technocrati saying that digital distribution is the ‘future’ because of iTunes is, in traditional Technocrati ways, missing the point. The success of iTunes had nothing to do with ‘digital distribution’. It had everything to do with CUSTOMERS IN CONTROL. The Music Industry was trying to control their consumers. They would intentionally put a single good song with many bad songs in a CD and hope everyone would buy it for that one good song. The Music Industry was trying to prevent people from ripping the songs off their own CD and playing it in any order they want. With iTunes, consumers could buy the song they wanted instead of buying songs they did not want. They could re-arrange music in any way they want.

For proof that iTunes is about consumer control and not “digital distribution”, look at the DRM. Steve Jobs is having Apple fight DRM that the Music Industry wants to slap onto everything. Apple is fighting DRM because it prevents consumers in how they want to arrange their music. The Music Industry, who does not want to lose control, is resisting.

The Game Industry is acting exactly the same way as the Music Industry is. Digital distribution is nothing about greater convenience for the consumer or lower prices. If it were, you would be able to rip your games and play them digitally like you did with CDs. The PSP Go is illustrative that lower prices are not the impetus. It is about control. And “digital distribution” gives the Game Industry dictatorial control over its games.

The consumer has no rights with “digital distribution”. The consumer only has ‘privileges’.

The consumer will be privileged to play the game when he or she wants to.

The consumer will be privileged to make a back-up copy of the game in case the company goes bankrupt.

The consumer will be privileged to take the game at a friend’s house.

The consumer will be privileged to sell away his or her version of the game (hah! you know this isn’t going to happen).

At a dinner party, a programmer I know began talking gloriously about the future. His work involves wireless technologies. He even began speaking excitedly about OnLive and how “it will change everything”. At this moment, I stopped him. I said, “Not once did you ever mention consumers. Who is going to buy this thing if not the consumers?” It was like I splashed cold water on him. I believe, at that moment, was the first time he actually began thinking about consumers. I said, “You know, consumers may not want to buy something where they cannot own.” Decades of consumer habits are not going to change overnight. Gamers are used to owning their games, not renting them. When someone points out cable services, I say, “Look at the behavior of the gamer. They do not play games continuously as they watch television. Often, games are kept in the back of the closet and it comes out now and then. Gamers tend to be heavy gaming in spurts. Unlike TV, life makes it difficult to be a constant gamer all the time.”

Regardless, the fact that such a thing of OnLive has gotten this far without anyone talking about the consumers shows just how prevalent the Technocrati are. Today, gaming no longer talks about gamers. It talks only about the “industry”. “The Wii is not going the path of the Industry,” they said in a very disdainful tone. But it was going the path of consumers, and that is what ultimately matters. The Industry does not exist on its own free will. It exists entirely on the pleasure of the consumers.

The Technocrati do not take consumers seriously. Either they are idiots or they are Luddites to “progress”. Consumers, to the Technocrati, often end up being seen as obstacles to overcome.

When you first heard and understood disruption, you likely got very excited because it showed how consumers control the future. Ironically, Clayton Christensen says every time he talks about disruption, the room of executives look with fear and panic.

There is one common thread that makes up the entire Silicon Revolution. The common element found in every part of the computer and internet revolution is CONSUMERS TAKING GREATER CONTROL. Unlike what the Game Industry says, it is not the opposite of the “Industry” taking control away from the consumers. That is not going to work.

Games, in many ways, will be disc less. But they will be in total control of the consumer. Consumers will not bow down to dictatorial control of their games.

What may be “revolution” to an industry will be seen as “control” to the people. The consumers will insist they be in control. And they will win because they pay the bills.