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Marketing Technology: Future Again!

6/16/2015

2026 edits: The Future (adjective) is a mystical infrastructure of networks resolving global issues in seconds, clouds of global unity, artificial reservoirs of intelligence & wisdom.
That's technology marketing.

As I begin 2021 reading numerous technology posts on LinkedIn and the WSJ, ads are popping up like weeds in a June lawn, and there's a singular word, "future" operating as a hypnotic agent in all marketing.

Marketing the future is a sales strategy, first, for showing how human function is insufficient, imperfect. But unlike beauty and food marketing, technological product marketing sets out to replace humans, and this is good for all mankind; trust us. A second sales angle is synchronizing the future promises with current world problems such as those listed by the United Nations: Food, Water, Health, Immigration, Climate, War.

How is reality going in human+tech synchronization?

The future wasn't supposed to experience a global pandemic.
The future wasn't supposed to saturate us with surveillance.
The tech future is now cognitive replacement.
The future wasn't AI cyber and drone wars.
The future wasn't childhood AI chat addiction.
The future wasn't global unemployment from AI.
The future would resolve the U.N. top 5 problems.
The future is futurism.

Futurism is a general theory of human+computational systems fully in sync. Humans have never been in sync.

Technology marketing hypes hope, inspires generations to believe not so much in a new technology but rather, their own future. When the current technological innovations introduce new existential issues, we feel disappointed by everything tech firms are marketing, that is, humans synchronized with data systems. And yet, humans have never been in sync though it must be of first priority.

robertpwaters.com
2026

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emotional vs surrendered intelligence

6/8/2015

A well-known private firm in Middle-Tennessee has a reputation for conducting as many as ten interviews per job candidate. If there is a current “norm” post-recession in interview counts it seems to be three to five per applicant.

The goal in HR is finding it. “It” being Emotional Intelligence. Here’s where human behavioral psychology and now, neuroscience enters. Emotional Intel is about thought process, latent or surface, projected as graphs and/or metrics. Job candidates are presented situations and challenges. Responses produce a score leading to further analysis. Analytics churn up predictions about behavior and future performance tied to firm revenue, pay scale, departmental goals. Outcome: a software-selected candidate.

A contrast to Emotional Intelligence theory
When business leaders accept that HR can hyper-metricize every job candidate using behavioral sciences in software assessment - they practice Surrendered Intelligence. Surrendered Intel means wisdom and intuition commonly used to assess people and environments are replaced. Surrendered Intel occurs when software games and personality tests are presumed to be valid decoders of human passion, skill and potential. It is, for lack of definition, denying the value of applying intuition and thoughtful perceptions about job candidates – including a resume of past successes – for current “emotional intelligence” theory. For instance, a resume is not predictive, only historical. How can one gather predictive behavioral metrics on past accomplishments? Can’t. Instead, assessment software+predictive analytics tells the employer the [future]way a person will likely act, likely think and likely produce. Previously, however, the company chose their target realm of behaviors. These are contained in software tests provided by firms marketing human asset capabilities. Almost. From psychology labs within American universities flow the latest theories on human attributes as Emotional Intelligence, usually using common words like entrepreneur, innovator, self-awareness, risk taker, self-of-all-things. Nothing new – just usual psychology with a new spin from marketing. As for brain function; well, neurology investigates the relationship between the nervous system and brain so, although neuroscience is trendy it’s not the science for assessing skills by HR officers.

Surrendered Intelligence is simply business denying job applicants a way to present their skills and intelligence in a highly personal engagement. Replacing such a natural process is the drive to apply software generated metrics that find people who think alike, are predictable and valued for likeness instead of uniqueness. HR tests people more often than trusting people. I often refer to the new processes as trading a handshake for a "mindshake"; which is to say, the nature of TMI - too much information - becomes an obsessive search for data.

Assessing job candidates psychological test scores, graphs of latent thoughts about things of life, benchmarks in skill categories, deep diving into Twitter and FB accounts - play into the great hype of big data or the sharing economy. Truthfully, only 63% of the American workforce is working. Many, I believe, are not only intelligent, trainable and skilled, but have struggled to scale HR's presentation of surrendered intelligence. We must get back to valuing people by eliminating reliance on the value of bio-data and behavioral sciences.

Marketing Technology: Future Again!

emotional vs surrendered intelligence

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