An open letter to my daughters and their friends...

Most of what I write here is simply a kind of personal diary; a place where I can write down insights that I'm too afraid I'll forget absent some kind of record.  But today I believe what I have learned is important enough that my daughters need to know this.  So here goes:


Dear Amy, Julie, & Carrie,

My world is different from your world.  Duh.  But your world is different from your world too... or at least it will be.  I am seeing some trends that I believe will shape your adult lives and I think they're worth pondering as you work through the last formal years of your education.  In fact, if I'm right, these trends will be shaping those who think they're shaping the trends:  Your educators, philosophers, and leaders.

Here's where it started for me as I sat in class today:  The professor showed us this video:

Pepsi, the owner of Doritos sponsored a competition to create and then vote for the best advertisement to show at the SuperBowl in 2009.  Thousands of people submitted videos for the contest.  Everyone voted.  This one was the winner.  

What is innovative is not that it is funny, nor that it was among the top-rated commercials of that year's SuperBowl.  Rather, the surprise is it was not created by Pepsi nor by its advertising agencies.  It was not created by anyone with credentials to create.  It was created people whose video was the most liked.  Some call this "crowdsourcing."  In effect, work that used to be done by a company itself, is now opened up to those outside the company to do in competition and without a clear contract.  One winner out of thousands of submissions.  Does the Harvard professor who presented this case recognize that the product he sells (The credentials of a Harvard MBA) may be irrelevant shortly?

I learned today of a company named threadless.com. Threadless is a company that depends on individual artists to design T-shirts.  They come up with cool designs and submit them online to threadless.  Then the general public votes on which designs are best and the company prints the shirts and pays the "winners" a $2000 prize. The company itself has very little assets beyond its idea and business model.  All of the innovation comes from the artists.  Some of whom win the $2000 prize, and others who have to just enjoy the process of competing. Interestingly a lot of pop artists are building a threadless award into their resume if they're a winner.  It is becoming a new credential.

There were other examples in our conversation.  topcoder.com is a site that puts out computer software problems.  Their clients are other companies, like GE, who have software problems.  When topcoder puts out a problem it is really putting out one of its clients' problems.  Once posted, a bunch of freelance computer coders all work on the problem.  The client then picks the best solution out of all of those submitted and the winning contribution gets a cash prize.  Some of the top coders are making half-million dollar incomes in this way.

Here's another one to check out:  inocentive.com.  This is similar to topcoder, except the problems don't  have to be software.  They could be biology or chemistry or sociology or economics.  Apple has done this with the iTunes Ap Store as well.

I understand that major symphonies switched to a model like this in the past.  Auditions are now conducted blindly with instrumentalists playing their audition pieces behind a screen, known only by their numbers so that the judges cannot be biased by reputation, credentials, or history.

Here's the trend to note:

1. Many people compete
2. The top solution wins on its merits alone
3. Winner takes all
4. No credentials required to participate

You probably already have hints of this as people post their lives on facebook only to quasi-compete for how many "likes" they can get.  But the trend is much more profound than that.

1. The flattening of global income among knowledge workers is the certain end of this work.  When all that matters is the accuracy or correctness of your solution, it won't matter if you're in Bombay, Boston, or Bonn.  You'll get the same $2000.  The world of relative affluence in the West will be a curiosity of history for you and your children.
2. The need for certain credentials (a college degree, an MBA, a certification) will become less important than the value of one's solution.  Barriers to entry drop dramatically.  Drop outs who happen to be brilliant software coders (or pop artists, or photographers, or whatever) will win.
   
3. Increasingly, those that can will flourish and those that cannot or will not... will not.
   
4. The need for a completely different social safety net will be dramatic.  When a person's compensation is completely and uniquely tied to one's performance, there will be new psychological and sociological problems that will plague our collective psyche.  (The psychologists and theologians will be in high demand.)  What will it mean for our competitor to be unknown to us -- perhaps next door, perhaps in Bhutan?  What will it mean for the structure and operation of our schools and universities?

So, you're thinking, "Dad, this is deep and I'm distracted with exams or graduation or something trivial like that.  Why now?  Are you serious?"

Well, yes, actually.

In a world in which grace is increasingly irrelevant, you will need solid anchors for your sense of self.  Your mom and I have spent years reminding you that your value is not in your accomplishments, but in the quality of your character and in the intrinsic value established in you by God.  In Genesis we hear that God created and at every step "it was good."  When he created human beings, Genesis says that was "very good."  But you're about to enter a world that will increasingly send you precisely the opposite message.  You're about to raise your own families in a world in which the messages are "perform or exit."

You have watched the community at Potter's House and the life of scavengers in the dump.  You have seen what happens to community when compete or exit is the operating system of the community.  Though knowledge workers of the crowdsourcing world will not be scavenging in the dump, they may be scavenging in cyberspace.  Tough the work is different, I think this trend can have similar effects on the quality of human relationships.

My sense is that it really won't come to this.  It will be worse.  People, in a sense of absolute despair will eventually begin to opt out and there will be some sort of counteracting social upheaval.  I can't predict its details, but its certainty cannot be in doubt.

It will be my role for the next 30 years (or whatever additional time God gives me on this planet) and your roles to propose alternative cultural, philosophical, educational, theological, and value frameworks for those who would reduce human value to an all-or-nothing competition. Those alternates need not be new, but it will be women (like you) and men of unusual character who will need to step into the gap.  You will be lightning rods of truth, clarity, value, grace, and love.  As Christians, you have a scriptural foundation to use as a measuring stick, the revelation of God for clarity of thought, and the grace of God for the hope you will need to thrive.  Others may offer other world views.  But the need to interpret this grace-less world will be profound.  You will need to do this.

As I write these words, I worry that I am being a bit too melodramatic.  I hope so, but I think not.

I have no doubt of your readiness for this task.  I only write it to remind you that though Mom and I have prepared you as best as we know how, we have prepared you with the tools of a culture that is soon to disappear.  Use your formation education to learn to learn so that you can be nimble, humble, curious, and grace-full in the world that is at our doorstep.

It may be for this reason that you are here on this planet. http://threadless.com

And hey...want to go out for ice cream?