The Future Currency-A Review of The Reputation Economy

I think if were honest with ourselves, despite our culture’s obsession with youth, most of us would not want to relive our high school years. Even if you liked high school and remember those days with fondness, and I’ll tell you right now, I don’t get you at all, I doubt you’d want to BE fourteen again. Think about it; homework, curfews, no driver’s license, raging hormones, worries about your future and dealing with your family dynamic at a much younger and rawer age. You might think, well, if I could go back, knowing what I know now, sure I’d go. Let me tell you, it would suck. Why you ask. Think about it, who listens to a fourteen year old? All of the knowledge, none of the respect? Trust me, it would suck.

I do think, however, that our current fourteen year olds will have that dream. To go back, knowing now what they didn’t know then, and not make the Facebook or Tumblr post or that comment on Snapchat that screwed up their entire future. The Back to the Future films got it all wrong. It’s not what you do in the physical world that will haunt you so much as all the data that gets stored about you in the digital one. At least, that is the future that Michael Fertik’s book Reputation Economy sees coming, and in many cases, is already here.

His basic idea is that computers will be trusted in the future to look at every element of your online social life to make determinations about you. Those results will play a large role in determining the opportunities you receive and you won’t even know about it most of the time. This has already begun with companies using programs like DAMM (Decision Almost Made by a Machine) to sort through job applications and look at your purchasing history to determine perks. There are many who might say, what is the difference this time? Life’s not fair. Some people are going to get ahead and others left behind and perhaps that’s the way it will always be. There is more than a little cold truth in that. But, somehow the iciness of a computer deciding your fate, for me, takes it to a whole new level. A computer that can’t be appealed to, that lacks a sense of humor or the ability to detect or even determine the nuance of your typed joke or ironic comment, that cannot tell fact from fiction and never forgets anything should be feared. Worse, we know that computers make mistakes. We know that imputing bad data, no matter how much, only yields bad results. We know that some of the most important traits, like kindness or creativity or good manners, cannot be quantified by a computer. We know all of this, but it’s expedient to use them for many tasks, tasks that determine people’s futures. It cuts costs, saves time and those rewards outweigh, for many, the ethical issues involved.

Well, you say, then I’ll just opt out. I’ll keep my kids off Facebook and get rid of everything and avoid all this. Guess what? Opting out looks suspicious. It stands out. It makes people think you have something to hide. So what do you do? You manage it. That is the entire point of Fertik’s book, and his company Reputation.com. You can say that he’s a bit biased, but his message, be transparent and authentic, but not too much because something controversial might come up and be used against you, feels like how many of us are approaching our digital lives, doesn’t it? His advice get ahead of anything negative (Hello Google Alerts), you ignore what you can and accept that sometimes the best option is to walk away. You be proactive.

Welcome to the future. It’s already giving me a headache.