The ‘Age of the Customer’ began in the early 2000’s and was a fundamental power shift between businesses and their customers.  Those businesses that got this shift right would dominate; those that did not would suffer. This forecast has borne truth over the past 10+ years, and organizations like Amazon, Facebook and Google have reaped huge rewards.

The question now is, will this Age continue? Or are the first signs of its passing already appearing?  The year 2006 brought the arrival of the smartphone.   It was the advent of the smartphone and the myriad of free Apps with no other business model than collection and monetization of behavior data that crossed the data Rubicon and effectively turned customers into products.

Over the past 18 to 24 months a series of events have presaged the shifting of the Age.  First, the 2016 US Presidential Election scandal with the manipulation of the people through coordinated disinformation campaigns while Facebook and Google sat back and ignored the actions.  Second, the slow reveal of information about China’s new Social Score (coercion) system, which grades their citizens like an episode of Black Mirror. Finally, the spotlight shone on data collection behaviors of businesses and organizations as a result of the EU’s recently enacted GDPR legislation.

These are just three of the many incidents where it has become very clear, that here and now at the end of the Age of the Customer, the line distinguishing the customer from product has all but disappeared; and when the customer becomes the product then really bad things can happen.  

Do not expect the market to change its behavior. It is like the orchestra playing on the deck of the Titanic, businesses and analysts continue to clamor for “more data”, and with each additional data element collected each one of us slips closer to a form of slavery. When we lose total control of our data in our modern digital society we are enslaved.  This reality very clear with the Chinese Social Score system.

In the dimming of the current Age, new points of light are appearing and with these lights hope to avert the new slavery.  The current political turmoil in the US has opened the eyes of many (though not all) of the public to the true intent of organizations like Facebook and Google to reduce everyone one of us to data elements.  The US Senate, while very slow to start, finally is appearing to wake up take these threats seriously. The continual drum beat of concern of people like Prof. Scott Galloway of NYU appears to be finally raising questions at the right levels.

The EU with its imperfect GDPR legislation appears ready and willing to fight for the rights of the person.  A side affect of GDPR is increased public awareness of all the data being created and what is being done with it.  This is a key first step.

Technologies, while in part being the source of the problem, also seem to be offering solutions to prevent the loss of freedom.  Decentralization and distributed computing (DDC) technologies like Blockchain, Hyperledger, MDLs and Holochain are providing the foundations for dozens of projects that are trying to provide alternative endings for the current data freedom challenges.

Organizations like MyData Global and the Digital Identity Foundation are organizing technologists, business people, lawyers and designers to come up with laws, business models, protocols and standards to allow the best elements of digitization to thrive without the loss of freedom.

Freedom or slavery?

Fundamentally, businesses and organizations have to make a decision that will either greatly strengthen their trust relationships with their customers (and employees) or reduce it to nothing.  Are your customers people or products?   

If you treat and value your customer as people, their reduction to data to be monetized and manipulated cannot happen.  

As we leave the Age of the Customer and enter the Age of the Digital Person, which road do you choose?  Freedom or slavery?