Steve Jobs’ gift was creating markets. Since his passing, Apple has been content to meet market demands. They have become “a man with a mortgage”, the middle-aged professional who has too much to risk to be romanced outside the comfort of the secure box they live in; or rather circle. And who could blame them?
What tech needs is innovation that creates new ways of doing things the way the first Mac computer did and later the iPhone and iPad. Improving camera lenses is great. Creating an entirely new paradigm is what is needed.
You could say that all of big tech has reached middle-age, comfortable collecting profits off products, services, and the collection of data. And that’s the problem.
Sometimes we don’t know what we need until someone creates it.
No one in early America was sitting around barnyards wishing they had a pickup truck. But the combustion engine changed all that. It changed work and life and the world.
We’ve reached a point where tech needs to give us the next thing we need, but haven’t dreamt of yet. Something that changes our lives the way penicillin and satellites and electricity and the cell phone did.
Here’s what I think it is: Individual digital ownership.
I know, it doesn’t sound as exciting as a bullet train or as cool as video on demand, but think what you could do if you actually owned your digital self…because right now, you don’t. Right now your digital self is being bought and sold, exploited and hacked. But more importantly, you have no control over how that data is monetized, and no part of it.
Digital ownership gives you the opportunity to create universal earned income. That means you monetize your digital profile and earn money from advertisers.
Digital ownership means you are free to choose who sees your personal data.
Digital ownership means a verifiable you. No mix ups with people who have similar names. No land title disputes based on identity fraud. No identity fraud period.
Digital ownership means your digital life lives beyond you, a legacy journal for your posterity.
Digital ownership connects the digital you with the physical you so you no longer need passwords yet you are more secure than ever before.
At Clear, we’ve built our company by staying ahead of what people need. The market opportunity is less important to us than those people who benefit from it. That’s why we built our company on open source and open standards. We’re a different kind of company. We focus on improving people’s lives by giving them the freedom to move about digitally on their own terms.
Check us out at clearunited.com.
