PERSONAL DASHBOARD 2020 Open Letter to Bill Gates & Larry Page. Please give us back Control over our Life
Dear Mr. Gates and Mr. Page,
In 2020, there will be so many companies and governments wanting to communicate with us, that it is impossible to keep overview. There will be so many criminals spamming us, trying to steal our identity and invading our privacy, that we will feel like loosing the battle. In 2020, more than ever before in history, we need control. We will want back control over our personal life, and we will want technology to enable "personal selfservice dashboards" and "permission instruments", like pictures and video's that only display if we give permission. We will want back control over our personal data, our subscriptions, our financial transactions, our privacy. Control over our communications with the rest of the world. We don't want to be available 24/7, we want to be selectively available. We need a tool to manage all our transactions, our communications and our personal files. We need a tool to protect us against identity theft and spam. A tool that integrates all information and communication flowing into and out of our mobile phone, our laptop, our home, and gives us the power of selective availability and selective communication. This tool will help us to make choices and create simplicity. We need this virtual driver seat because it is an essential tool for survival in the virtual and transparent future of 2020. And we must be in the driver's seat. Not the government. Not the bank. Not a global company. But we. We will be in charge and we can be in charge, for the first time in history.
I call this tool Personal Dashboard, a self-service Information, Communication & Privacy Control Centre. The next big thing after the website, and a likely bestseller to 8 billion citizens worldwide. Consider it to be your personal manager. With a few clicks, you subscribe and unsubscribe to the newspaper, you order your passport and a pizza, you obtain a residence permit, pay the rent. You allow or block ads. You allow companies and governments and friends to get access to you and to deal with you -- or not. You grant permission to companies and governments to use your personal data -- or not. In this Personal Dashboard, you will have a current account with your government. Government will act truly as one government, not as many. The motto is: 1 government, 1 face, 1 interface, 1 citizen card -- and your dashboard is the interface.
The problem is, no one is building Dashboard yet. Sure, there are some attempts, but they are weak. I urge everyone who cares about customer control, to build Dashboard. 8 billion people will buy Dashboard. Dashboard Company will be the new Google and the new Microsoft of 2020. Stop thinking paper. Stop thinking websites. Start thinking customer power. Start creating Dashboard, please. Give us back control over our life in 2020.
Back in 1994, I was one of the first Dutch Internet pioneers with my own website. Back then were the wonderful, amazing days you could view a listing of all the websites in the country -- scrolling down for just one screen... My first two thoughts back then after my discovery of the web: Wow, this means freedom!; and Wow, everything will be Web!
More than a decennium later, everything is Web. The past few years we have seen a new phase: personalized websites. Companies and governments open up their websites to their customers, so that customers can store their files on their site. The likes of MyShell.com, MyGov.nl, MyGoogle.cn, MyVodafone.in et cetera et cetera. OK, it is more transparent, but it is still a mess. We have to log into all those sites under totally different circumstances and with totally different passwords, and our information is stored in numerous different and incompatible ways. This means it is a digital version of the paper situation in which your data is stored in hundreds of databases without you knowing it.
MyShell.com et cetera is just a passing phase in the development towards the ultimate site: MySite.com. Let's take my name for an example: MarcelBullinga.nl -- but in a totally different way. That site is your Personal Dashboard. On that site your rule prevails, no one else. All companies and governments you do business with, may access your Dashboard and write in it. It is the world turned upside down. We do not log into company sites anymore, no, they log into ours!
Right now, both governments and financial institutions from all around the globe are experimenting with dashboard-like concepts. You should not be impressed, it is fractional, weak attempts. They either create a limited, government-only dashboard or a financial dashboard that is linked and limited exclusively to a financial institution or a specific company. Which is simply another form of customer lock-in. We need "customer lock-out", we need unlinking... These experiments are valuable only as an intermediate phase towards the ultimate goal. That is what the unique, integrated, user central Dashboard is all about. Only that can give us what we so badly need in future: checked trust, transparency, simplicity, overview, user control, self control, self service. Dashboard provides us with tools for managing all these aspects. It gives us the power of selective availability and selective communication in a maddening information rich world. It gives you the power to manage and control your data and your privacy. It gives you the power to manage who may and who may not communicate with you, and under what conditions. It is a spam free and ad free environment. There is no advertising in the dashboard, unless you allow it of course.
How will we use Dashboard in 2020?Dashboard combines all your personal, unique information with trusted public and commercial information. It is a biometrically safe, web-based environment. It will be the one and only globally trusted environment in which all other people and parties worldwide will find authenticated information about us: our rights to social security, the licenses granted to us by government, but also our identity and our partial identities. That is important, since identity fraud is the basis for many other forms of fraud. In Dashboard future, it will be very difficult to lie. Dashboard will be available from any machine, at any place -- as long as you are online. Since it is an online tool, security and an offline backup are essential.
Dashboard will incorporate and integrate only globally standardized and trusted information and communication flows, and combine these flows with the unique data of each owner. Dashboard is therefore strictly and uniquely personal; it is your personal identity. You always log in first, and on the whole globe there can only be one You who is online at the same time. One multi-biometrically proven You. We pay with our sweat, so to speak.
In this secure environment you click on buttons that do something for you. You cancel or start a subscription, you accept a bill and pay for it, you search or have an intelligent agent search for you, you chat with someone online and exchange verified partial identities, like your gender or age. No more cheating, no more lying! You start a video conference and you exchange and create visual and textual data that possess your integrated biometric watermark or signature. Dashboard allows you to browse, search, pay and mail (although emailing is just a way of offline chatting, so it will probably disappear as a separate functionality). An intelligent agent knows your likes and dislikes and learns from your search, click and decision behaviour, and gives you personal advice.
These are the functionality buttons in Dashboard:
Life Events Manager. Allows you to manage all your life events, from hospital treatments to pension. Dashboard offers a fully integrated overview of your past, current and future life events. Its user interface is created according to your life events (birth, growth, relations, education) and your roles (citizen, inhabitant, house owner, patient, and your rights an duties as an employer/employee, civil servant, volunteer, et cetera. So, it incorporates and integrates all your existing files.
Dashboard uses and combines trusted data scattered over the whole wide world. It will use trusted data provided by authentic registrations and sources only, both from government and companies, worldwide. Like registrations of income, address, name, professions, taxes et cetera. The unique, integrated user view is generated dynamically each time you access Dashboard.
Some of these sources however will not be accessible to the user. For example, you can see your police record but not change it.
Choice Manager. You will use all kinds of third party knowledge systems, helping you in making regular choices, like buying a car, buying a house, starting anew company et cetera.
Subscription Manager. Gives you control over all the subscriptions with companies and governments.
Financial & Payment Manager. Gives you control over all your financial assets and transactions. Peer to peer spending money and online earning money. Dashboard does not offer a new payment system; it offers open standard, integrated access to all existing payment systems.
Communication & Privacy Manager. Gives you control over all communication with you and allows you to manage all your privacy settings. Block and allow people and machines. People you chat with, will know for sure you are an adult (or a child), that you have enough money to pay for something, that you indeed have a license to build a house, et cetera. People you email with, will know for sure you sent that (trusted) mail, not a fraudulent spammer.
You decide what happens with your personal data and under what circumstances other parties may use this. You will be able to exercise real-time control over that use -- it is not a matter of blue eyes trust, it is a matter of digital at-a-distance manipulation of data. You will be able to manage in what way your data (and what data) appears in any company database. Maybe the company does not even know you are in their database. You grant permissions to any party you would like to use your data in a certain way. You will have real-time generated, up to date lists of all parties that use your data. You can revoke your permissions anytime in real-time, provided you have fulfilled your part of the bargain (for example, a payment).
Basically, all the data that you create (by travelling, by making transactions and so on) is owned by at least 2 parties: you and a company or government. That means that both parties have to give their permission to use and manipulate the data. For that, we will need biometric data, biometric cameras, biometric mobiles and biometric laptops. Your biometric watermark is stamped into the pictures that you take or that someone else takes of you. No one will be able to publish pictures of you on the net without your permission anymore. If someone else publishes your pictures without your permission in a non-permission environment, or if you withdraw a previous permission, the picture goes black in real-time. Not only will Dashboard enable permission marketing, but also permission publishing.
Traces Manager. Gives you control over all the traces you leave when writing documents, creating images, paying your bills et cetera.
Identity Manager. Allows you to manage all your partial identities.
Time line for Dashboard CompanySo, we all want that neutral, open standard Dashboard with its unique selling point: the user decides, totally and unconditionally. But no one is building it yet! We need Dashboard Company to create it. Sounds logic, not? The intermediary that integrates all partial dashboards to be developed between now and 2020. The company that creates the Mother of all Dashboards. In the end Dashboard Company will have sold 8 billion Personal Dashboards, and Dashboard Company will be the new Google and the new Microsoft of 2020.
What will investors in Dashboard Company face in the coming years?
2007: Dashboard prototype for free on the internet. Basic functionality. People can use it to get control and overview over their subscriptions, warned how and when they should be cancelled, et cetera. Dashboard also displays a partial financial overview. The user still has to type in his data himself.
2008: a paid Plus version of Dashboard is introduced. In this version an open payment system is included. More functionality. Hacking of Dashboard invited, but unsuccessful.
2009: Due to massive use of Dashboard, companies and governments start to get interested. First organizations agree to access Dashboard files and write directly in them.
2015: Dashboard rolled out over the globe. Firm booster to global standardisation.
2020. 8 billion world inhabitants use Dashboard.
I urge everyone who cares about customer control, to stop thinking paper. Stop thinking websites. Start thinking customer power. Start creating Dashboard!
Independent European Futurist and Guest Speaker Marcel Bullinga has a passion for the future and innovation. His motto: "There is not one single future, there are many thousands. Choose the one you want!" In 2000, Marcel presented his book In Total Selfcontrol for European Parliament. Mail your reaction to info@futurecheck.nl
This article is part of Europe in 2020. Related sub articles: Smart Law Enforcement 2020. Open Letter to all democratic Police & Justice Leaders; plus Checklist Successful Innovation in 1 Day. The PDF containing all articles is called Futurecheck Knowledgeletter 2006 and can be downloaded for free. Share!
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