Ken Yarmosh – Product Strategist and Technology Connoisseur

As someone who works in the online marketing space, I understand that my job is primarily one of math. In fact, one of the most significant differences between the interactive medium of the Internet and traditional offline channels comes down to the massive volume of data produced by people browsing the web. Succeeding in online marketing is highly correlated to interpreting and analyzing this data. It is not just OK to have the data, although it must be collected. Data must inform decisions.

In a recent Wired article, Chris Anderson explores the data intensive world of the Internet, through the lens of Google. His thesis is that the Petabyte Age, the age of what appears to be infinite data, represents the end of models:

There is now a better way. Petabytes allow us to say: “Correlation is enough.” We can stop looking for models. We can analyze the data without hypotheses about what it might show. We can throw the numbers into the biggest computing clusters the world has ever seen and let statistical algorithms find patterns where science cannot.

Google represents the ultimate data-driven company. Not only does it use tools like its own Google Website Optimizer to constantly tune and improve customer interaction with its sites, over the years it has produced one of the best pulses on culture – the Google Zeitgeist – has recently upgraded its trends tool, continues to buy or innovate in the online media space, and has more servers than McDonalds has hamburgers. They’ve got a lot of data and that’s just the public face of the company.

Anderson notes that the humble beginnings of the Stanford dropouts was really just about math applied to data:

For instance, Google conquered the advertising world with nothing more than applied mathematics. It didn’t pretend to know anything about the culture and conventions of advertising — it just assumed that better data, with better analytical tools, would win the day. And Google was right.

Later, he writes:

Out with every theory of human behavior, from linguistics to sociology. Forget taxonomy, ontology, and psychology. Who knows why people do what they do? The point is they do it, and we can track and measure it with unprecedented fidelity. With enough data, the numbers speak for themselves.

Anderson believes the Google philosophy is “poised to go mainstream.” Google’s data-driven, computer-intensive approach will have significant impacts on science and will offer “a whole new way of understanding the world.”

I agree. The concepts in the Petabyte Age are only beginning to surface. Google is the model and the far surpassing leader. Those that follow their model, at some level, will survive. Those that fail to understand the importance of this paradigm will become obsolete.

Looking out my hotel room window tonight, I saw an apartment building across the way with a telling sight: countless rows of glowing televisions. Even in the city that never sleeps, the preferred nightly activity is plopping down in front of the T.V.

The same view, decades ago, would have been very different. I wonder if the view alone is what would have been the most significant difference. I wonder if the absence of the T.V. was simply satisfied by the radio and if not the radio the evening paper – or if the difference would be something much more profound.

There’s no doubt that there is comfort and convenience in our modern lives. We no longer have to plan social outing details because we can call friends via our cell phones when we get to venues. We can easily find our ways in unfamiliar places without having a map because of the GPS technology that sits on our car dashboards. And of course, as the glowing lights shown across the street indicate, we can keep up with breaking news from around the world, check tomorrow’s weather, and watch any of hundreds of movies, all by clicking a button.

Technology can make life easier. We know its benefits. But do we know its costs? Do we know the implication of millions of people sitting in front of their televisions several hours a day? Or if not there, browsing the Internet, talking/texting on their cell phones, gaming, and the like?

Surely, arguments can be made to say that media like movies, for example, simply are evolutions of books. Skeptics might say that all of the gizmos and gadgetry around us are modern day reincarnations of elements that humans have experienced for quite some time.

Yet It feels different. It feels like we are living in a unique time, with distinct circumstances, allowing us to be better, faster, and smarter.

Are we?

Are we smarter or do we just have easier access to information via the Internet? Are we faster or do we just have less patience and satisfy for lower quality? Are we better or have we just convinced ourselves of the necessity of our always-on connected world?

Sometimes I think that we are no better off being on. It’s not technology’s fault. It’s ours. We’ve opted to be lazier by watching more T.V. and reading less. We’ve preferred mindless hours on insipid websites over ones of substance. We’ve habituated ourselves to checking e-mail on mobile phones during unoccupied moments instead of pausing for reflection or even, dare I write, enjoying silence and non-stimulation.

There’s hope to be better off being on – but we have to want it. We have to purpose towards it. We have to break our digital addictions. We have to reduce the number of glowing screens – or at least ensure that they are not just numbing our minds.

There is a high likelihood that if you are reading this article, you have already seriously impacted your family history. That’s because mostly digitally savvy people read this blog. You probably have accounts on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, FriendFeed, and an onslaught of other websites and web services. All of which leave a huge digital trail for an increasingly preferred research tool — the web — and its major innovation — search.

Consider, for example, the Scobleizer. Do a search on his last name — “Scoble” — and you will notice dozens and dozens of search result pages about “Robert Scoble.” You’ll find a similar, although not as overwhelming trend, for other well-known web personalities by querying a last name only.

These individuals, of course, are not the only people who have these surnames. It is debatable whether they are the most important. Yet Google and other search engines, by far and away, claim them as the most relevant results for their last names.

That’s mainly because they are technology savvy. They, unlike their relatives, were knowledgeable enough to start a blog. They, unlike others with their last name, have a peer group of connected individuals constantly linking to them. They, unlike their ancestors, have occupations that exist because of the web.

The impact is significant. It would take considerable effort to re-write Scoble’s dominance of the “Scoble” search query. The consequence is that Robert Scoble has essentially eradicated the web’s history of the Scoble name and presently defines all references to it. Anyone trying to learn about the history behind the Scoble surname via the web, which again, is now a primary resource for research, would be hard-pressed to do so. Even this search (i.e., scoble last name meaning) does not return helpful information.

Is Scoble an extreme case? Sure. But there are plenty of similar scenarios. My last name, for example, yields a dominance of results for “Yarmosh.” I can assure you I am not the most important Yarmosh ever. I’m certain many in my family would argue this point.

Search results evolve over time but it is not clear how they will change from generation to generation. Will Robert Scoble forever be the “most important” Scoble? Will I always be the “most important” Yarmosh? We are still at the outset of a first generation shaping the web and subsequently, search results. It remains to be seen if our first-mover advantage allows us to forever maintain digital dominance and re-shape/shape the history of our families.