This is Part Two of series brought to us by Mark Davies - market information obsessed anthropologist & technologist (and incidentally the founder/CEO of Esoko)
New initiatives have emerged focussed on the tools, but lack the content...
The lack of very local digital content is acute in Africa and is one reason even Google’s strategy is challenged here. Google Trader (among others) have offered cool new technologies, but without any real content they're just not being used. So new technology makers are reluctantly but inevitably drawn into collecting content. It's difficult to not assume the two must go hand in hand.
As these new projects emerge, pushed into building both the tools and the content, they are seen as ‘private’ Market Information Systems – and it's assumed that they're only driven by profits. But it’s critical here to understand that most of these innovations are actually focussed on the technology, and can realistically accommodate any kind of content – private or public. A small business or a government, a multi-national or an NGO project. In short, we need a more rigorous distinction between tool providers and content providers.
And we should also recognize that content can come from a multiple number of sources. Isn’t that the lesson we’ve learned over the last ten years? That content provided by your neighbour may be equally or even more relevant than that provided by your government, or by CNN. Twitter and Facebook have given us, our friends and our peers, a voice. Technology in this sense is content. And it’s only the way we filter it that becomes relevant. Can't we create or define or change our 'filter bubbles' to serve our needs, and allow us to choose which source, which flavour, which relevance we have?
The MIS world hasn’t yet moved where we’ve all moved to...that we all have a voice, and the tools allow us to 'slide the volume control' on one or the other dialog, hopefully creating interesting feedback to the content that the market really wants. Voting with your fingers as it were. If the MIS community could recognize that they need each other, and separate functions clearly, we may have a more coherent approach and understanding.
Click here to continue to Part III...
Click here to continue to Part III...
