Explicit Intent is Identity
There is a trick theory to improve the pursuit of well-being which strikes us, at Placement Loop, as especially agitating. It is the theory of identity in the context of data. Let’s call it the data-first theory. Currently, the web is being used by companies to control the identity relationship with customers. In essence, they’re using the web to capture data, infer an identity of people and their intent, and leverage that. The inference, of course, is based on a falsehood. Let me explain.
In real life, identity has depth; it is not flat. We start as strangers in a crowd, a location in space and time, and gradually we expose parts of our identity depending on the crowd and the objects we are interacting with. So, different crowds, locations, and surrounding objects are different worlds. And the easier it is to broadcast a persona at various times, the freedom we want on the web, just like we want in our physical lives.
However, when inferred identity is the starting point for enabling interactions, as currently happens on the web, the results are, to say the least, irritating. Essentially, who we are and how we wish to be perceived by others in context receives little respect on today’s web. This is to say that, as individuals, we bring more to markets than fits into the scope of any company’s systems, which accept only a small range of signals from us.
Therefore, an intent-first theory is more effective and feasible in supplier relationship management (SRM), the conceptual counterpart of customer relationship management (CRM), which companies use to infer a persona and users’ intent. SRM is about tools that enable individuals to create more value in their relationships with suppliers, whereas CRM is software designed to help suppliers extract more profit from each customer. SRM comes from consumer preferences to have full agency of themselves and/or to employ agents to whom they have granted full or partial agency.
Explicit intent (not big data) should reveal the desire to construct potential. That is, not to become more and more what one is, but to become everything that someone is capable of becoming. This is the essence of improving a person’s well-being, as there is an extreme distance between data and wisdom, i.e., knowing the right thing to do. In this sense, identity is more than inferred; it is explicit intent.
