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Tech Marketing: Future Again!

6/16/2015

The Future (adjective) is - a mystical infrastructure, networks resolving global issues in seconds, clouds of global unity, artificial reservoirs of intelligence. The future offers everything.
fiction in the past become realities for tomorrow
That's technology marketing.

As I begin 2021 reading numerous technology websites and randomly view ads popping-up like weeds in a June lawn, there's a singular word, "future" - an adaptive, culture-dependent, over-reaching, pretentious word still driving imaginations to anywhere but here and now.

Marketing time and future events is the method of showing us how human value is insufficient, imperfect and technological wonders can replace humans. It's not new but it always changes in synchronization with world problems such as those listed by the United Nations. Food, Water, Health, Immigration, Climate, War.

In 2020, suddenly, the world changed. The futurists never warned us how -

The future wasn't supposed to bring a global pandemic.
The future wasn't supposed to have genetic surveillance.
The tech future never envisioned cancel culture.
The future wasn't Russian and Chinese cyber infiltration.
The future wasn't for designing human-animal hybrids.
The tech future wasn't supposed to be the end of privacy.
The future didn't present an "existential crisis" to all human life on Earth.

There are hundreds of books for purchase about the technological future of everything. Should you not have the time to read them, just read some of the hundreds of digital ads interrupting screen space when trying to read an article. Imaginative and inspiring; the future of everything is about humans+computational systems fully in sync. Humans have never been in sync.

Do you really want to know the future of everything? Tech marketing has a way of planting hope, inspiring the generations as well as seeding fear. When the present world introduces more issues of survival we feel disappointed by everything tech firms dream of; humans synchronized with computers.

robertpwaters.com

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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.

Tech Marketing: Future Again!

emotional vs surrendered intelligence

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