Why Technology Platforms Fail and the Four Stages of Knowledge

Facebook has recently announced that it will launch AI - chatbots that can boost engagement on its social media platforms.?Hilary Sutcliffe , a leader in an organization that designs solutions that benefit society, summarized the general reaction in a single?statement .?

"Facebook users get LLM chatbots with personas to get users to stick around. Just what we all need, computers with personas pretending to be our friend. "

She also shared a link to a brilliant article by Cory Doctorow - a Canadian-British blogger and journalist. He coined the term?Enshittification , which describes how technology platforms eventually die. I am quoting the first paragraph here because I don't think anyone can write it better.?

Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.

He gives beautiful examples of how Amazon, Facebook, and TikTok execute the same play. Facebook started as a fantastic platform. They were true to their mission statement - "Give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together." You met long-lost friends and got virtually introduced to their families, parents, and kids. You found communities of thousands of people who shared your interests, from?reading? to trading parts that would help restore?World War II bikes .?

It became impossible to leave Facebook because all your friends were there. Then came the time for phase two, when you suddenly started noticing feeds from people you did not know or follow. It began with Media companies who leveraged this to boost viewership to their sites so they could get better advertising prices. People got used to finding news and op-eds through Facebook and stopped visiting their sites. Then, Facebook stopped boosting their feeds and pushed the publications to pay and boost their links.?

"?The publications were hostage to those readers, who were hostage to each other."

The next thing you encountered was a barrage of advertising on Facebook. The advertisers targeted you based on your demographics and activity and initially paid a pittance to Facebook. The moment they got hooked on Facebook, the advertising prices went up. Hence, we now have a situation where the users are unhappy since they cannot connect easily with friends and family. All they see are boosted posts and advertisements. Publishers are moving away due to exorbitant prices but have already witnessed a dramatic fall in direct traffic. Sellers are unhappy due to high charges, and people keep commenting that most products advertised and sold are scams. The quote by??Cat Valente? summarizes it perfectly.?

Platforms like Prodigy transformed themselves overnight, from a place where you went for social connection to a place where you were expected to stop talking to each other and start buying things.

I often sit back and wonder how we human beings manage to go wrong with everything. Every single system of governance has eventually failed. Most organizations have succumbed to market pressure and moved away from their roots. While it's rewarding in the short term, it is nearly always catastrophic in the long term. It was heartbreaking to read After Steve, where the journalist Tripp Mickle describes how Apple has transitioned from a product company to a services-driven company.?

The answer finally boils down to a couple of simple points.?

• We never focus on elevating the human consciousness. All spiritual traditions in the world have some practice of reflection and meditation that allow you to rise above the basic gene of selfishness to find empathy and compassion in your heart. The modern education system has completely morphed into an assembly line to support the capitalist economy. Hence, every single leader is fine-tuned to focus on self-interest at the expense of the world and then rest the blame on the very nature of capitalism.?
• We don't know how to consume and process complex information because we are trained to skim-read and know enough to get a passing grade in studies, work, and life.?

So how do we consume information in a way that adds meaning to our lives and benefits society at large? I found the answer in a nugget of wisdom shared by my guru Om Swami.

The Four Stages of Knowledge

My guru Om Swami describes that every person, including the spiritual seeker, has to go through four stages of knowledge. When you first read something, all you gather is information. Many of us are very happy at this stage and start feeling proud that we know something others don't. We start flaunting this knowledge at every possible opportunity. However, the truly wise are those who use this stage to realize what they do not know.?

Then, you meditate on this information; it sinks within you. The rumination continues consciously and subconsciously and gradually turns into knowledge. Even at this stage, the knowledge is second-hand. You have gathered it from different places. This is like the honey bee collecting pollen. The honey is, in fact, the spit of the honeybee that has been sweetened due to continuous rumination. This constant rumination is what turns the bitter pollen into honey.

Similarly, when you contemplate second-hand knowledge over a period of time, it becomes wisdom. Now, your mind has the discrimination to differentiate textbook knowledge from actual wisdom. You have risen above bookish knowledge.?

Finally, when you meditate with a single-minded concentration on that wisdom or go through transformational life experiences, it is called Vipashya or insight. This is the truth you realize by walking your individual path and giving yourself time to move from information to insight.?

Summary

This same story applies to individuals and organizations. We are trained so deeply for instant gratification and quick results that we celebrate too much during the information acquisition phase and don't even approach insights. Hence, people drop out after a bachelor's degree to find the highest-paying job. Organizations follow the quickest path to revenue maximization versus staying true to their purpose, and human society remains a poor imitation of its true potential.?

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