The Commercial Intelligence Panopticon

[Joseph di Candeloro]

The CI community seems to have mixed feelings about its future given the fact that technology threatens to make access to "intelligence" an un-exclusive virtual free for all. I shall explore some possibilities here, and attempt to locate my own place with the winning team of the future in the bargain as well.

Here is the issue: Technology and the "Intelligence 2.0" phenomenon are poised to present to industry a kind of Commercial Intelligence Panopticon (hereafter CIP).

First of all--and this is a great concern to all of us--that CIP should become the basis for industrial success surely recommends to industry itself that it become further absorbed into government, and vice versa. I'm thinking of the US, and well beyond. Should governments become part of the CIP, then private, civilian intelligence may not be able to meet the challenge, governments having instant access to a truly mind-bending range of data. Food for thought. The 21st century may be a dangerous season for free enterprise. I doubt it, myself, but one likes to see around every corner... even that dark, nasty, hooked one on the left at the bottom of the hill.

Now for the fun stuff. The advent of a CIP will usher in an era of universal intelligence (or so it would seem). With this would come, among "progressive," i.e. homogenistically and generically inclined businessfolk, a certain utopianism (even "ecstasy" maybe? Help me out Eric Garland!). This is what we want, for there is no moment at which systems and structures are more vulnerable to their own weaknesses than in moments of exalted irrationality; and no moment is more irrational than the utopian moment.

In the CIP utopia a feeling of universalism will develop within the human part of that system (which will also extend to the general public and thus generate a highly pervasive "folklore" about the CIP itself). Now the moral effect of universalism generally is that it fosters an atmosphere in which the definitions of "friend" and "truth" may be--and very, very often ARE--radically oversimplified. It is a situation in which the old threats to all those romantically cherished "possibilities" seem to be neutralized, and all the big, mean monsters are gone for good. Yeah, keep dreaming Goldie Locks!

If "friend" and "truth" are anything deemed enclosed within the universal system, then the functions of "enemy" and "lie" attach to that individual, organization, locality, or region which resists the utopian bliss of that presumably universal system... To that entity, three options present themselves:

1) Join the self-justified yet no less doomed universalism;

2) Be a gadfly to the universal system, but nonetheless exist within it by default;

or 3) Exploit the weaknesses of the system, and so get rich.

I would angle for #3, personally. Shameless, I know. Yet most ambitious people feel this way too as soon as they get an opportunity to make it work. Will China go the way of the USSR? Well, hasn't it begun to do so already? But I digress...

Whether a generic version of Competitive Intelligence is assimilated into [increasingly generic] corporate structures, or whether good CI professionalism wins the day, the Commercial Intelligence Panopticon will be a major deciding factor in success from now on. ..... You know, and maybe Jarvis will diversify to become a kind of intelligence Super Wal-Mart, or start selling intelligence franchises, in which case market complexities for CI will increase further yet as it competes against itself for market share. Just kidding, Jarvis. You're awesome.

In my next blog entry, "Intelligences' Future", I plan to explore a few ideas about how CI professionals might attempt to wrangle with the elephantine reality of the Commercial Intelligence Panopticon.