Customisation
I stared at my HSBC credit card receipt. Has customising gone too far? It said I owed them £2.50. This was surprising, but not unwelcome. The date said it was 01.01.01. Here, I strongly disagreed. But when I shared my concern with the bank attendant, I got a shrug. “Happens to everyone. You can use our telephone banking”.
Customisation came up again the next day. I listened to Gillian Tett’s beautifully delivered presentation about the silo consequences that we create for ourselves while we customise. When we customise our feed, we create a silo. We block those who think differently and only surround ourselves with people who are like us. Silos are bad for you and they stop your business from thriving. If you employ a lot of people, the teams of 150 need rotating and mixing regularly with members of different teams, to be exposed to different views and ideas rather than focus on defending their expertise.
Gillian challenged us to try following people with views opposite to ours, just for two weeks, so we stop surrounding ourselves with like-minded individuals and try to see the world from a very different angle, or, as she calls it, different silo. This sounded interesting. But I am not sure how this would work in light of the recent snooping initiatives. Am I right in assuming that if you surround yourself with extremists, you will end up on the same list as they are? I.e. in the customised extremist silo?
On the networking scene, today for the first time I’ve experienced lots of interest towards cyber security People went out of their way to introduce me to their friends. Cyber awareness if finally here. This is great news. But don’t get blinded by the algorithm discussion. Stop focusing on surveillance. Go, install email encryption before a hacker decides to burgle your email. If you choose the technophobe-friendly, award-winning mkryptor, I’ll give you a free trial. Do this now.
Stop the burglar from customising your property.
Beatrice Freeman, Marketing Director for mkryptor
