Breaking news! Digital transformation needs data! So sayeth the sages at Forbes. In other news, water is wet and the sky's still blue. Now, that you’ve had a moment to recover from that shock, let’s actually spend some time thinking about this.
The first thing to note is that digital transformation is something that’s been going on for decades at this point, just not by that name. Digital transformation is just another buzzword that the corporate world likes to invent and throw around to sound smarter than they are. So, what is it? When we strip away the corporate sheik and the buzzwords, what is this process that has been going for so long and how is data involved?
The process is simply that of moving from an analog to a digital world. The first calculators were a part of the transformation, emailing another, as well as the move to HDTV. One of the most impressive part of society’s ongoing digital transformation is the rise of the humble mp3. Due to the digitization of music it has become available virtually anywhere streaming over your phone. A whole generation has already grown up never having heard and maybe never having seen an analog cassette tape. About the only analog music you can find in the stores now is an old turntable.
Now, that all seems fairly mundane. But it only seems that way. Every one of those innovations reveals another or was made possible by another. Streaming mp3s are only possible due to the internet and massive servers storing music files, which represents a significant shift from physical to digital media.
There are also a variety of corporations still working on making better use of their digital assets, using sensors throughout their facilities to track the production and movement of products and make the process more efficient. Naturally, every single sensor is putting out data that is stored in a server and then analyzed. The process of analysis has also undergone a digital transformation. Once, it was all done by people. Now, there are complex algorithms that can handle the simpler kinds of statistical analysis.
The digital world is taking over in others ways as well. There are already automated semi trucks on the road, bringing loads of goods and material to different locations in the country. Some of the simpler articles online are now written by a computer rather than a reporter. In some places, even retail stores are getting automated. Amazon for example has set up retail stores in New York where you never have to go through a checkout line. The store tracks what you get off the shelf and bills your account accordingly. In Japan, convenience stores are moving in the same direction. And even in small towns in the US department stores are letting people scan their purchases with their phones and heading out of the store.
To bring things back to data, all these moves were data driven, data that at least suggested that products could be delivered more efficiently by moving further into the digital world. An unfortunate aspect of the transformation is that it is largely driven by a desire to increase profits. Of course, there are still numerous benefits that derive from that motivation, but what if the desire to help people was the real driver? What if we gathered analyzed data and then applied it with profit as the secondary goal and creating a better world first? Is it even possible?
The answer to that is ‘yes’. As someone wise once said “put first things first and the secondary things will follow.” This is what TARTLE is trying to accomplish, to harness our continual digital transformation not to merely drive the bottom line but to help people and give them the freedom to develop themselves and reach their full potential. That is why we want to give you control of your data. By being in control again, you are also an active part of the process with the freedom to decide where and how much you even want to participate in the digital transformation. You get to decide how much you and your data will be involved, not a faceless government or corporations.
What’s your data worth? Sign up and join the TARTLE Marketplace with this link here.
The first thing to note is that digital transformation is something that’s been going on for decades at this point, just not by that name. Digital transformation is just another buzzword that the corporate world likes to invent and throw around to sound smarter than they are.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
Welcome to TARTLEcast, with your hosts Alexander McCaig and Jason Rigby, where humanity steps into the future and Source data defines the path.
Alexander McCaig (00:25):
Hey, Jason.
Jason Rigby (00:26):
Yes, Alex?
Alexander McCaig (00:28):
I just had another sip of that coffee. That is like tar.
Jason Rigby (00:32):
It's some heavy duty French press.
Alexander McCaig (00:34):
Yeah, and I moved it now, so I don't knock over the crystals like we were doing on the other episode.
Jason Rigby (00:39):
On the other, yeah, yeah. I don't know if that's bad karma or not.
Alexander McCaig (00:41):
We don't want any bad juju.
Jason Rigby (00:42):
Got to talk to the crystal guy. We actually know a guy named The Crystal Guy.
Alexander McCaig (00:48):
The Crystal Guy. Shout out to him on YouTube.
Jason Rigby (00:50):
So I want to talk about an article that was in Forbes. We used to call it Forbes magazine, but I think it's just forbes.com now.
Alexander McCaig (00:57):
Yeah. Remember when it was The Facebook?
Jason Rigby (00:59):
Yes. Yeah.
Alexander McCaig (00:59):
And then it's Facebook.
Jason Rigby (01:00):
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So this is the same thing. So it's just Forbes, which is a person's last name.
Alexander McCaig (01:07):
Egotistical, huh? Only slightly.
Jason Rigby (01:11):
Was it Steve Forbes?
Alexander McCaig (01:13):
Oh, I don't remember.
Jason Rigby (01:13):
I think so, yeah. Data is Essential to Digital Transformation.
Alexander McCaig (01:18):
Duh. Please Forbes, tell me something obvious.
Jason Rigby (01:22):
The whole, that was the article.
Alexander McCaig (01:25):
Stupid. What a ridiculous title, you know?
Jason Rigby (01:28):
It's almost as controversial as Bohemian Grove.
Alexander McCaig (01:37):
We got to get Alex Jones over here to figure out what's going on over at the Forbes council.
Jason Rigby (01:41):
Exactly. No, think about that. Data is essential to digital transformation.
Alexander McCaig (01:47):
Yeah. Of course it is, right. So digital transformation is like, we're going to move your business. We're going to take paper processes, we're going to automate them. We're going to buy new computer systems and we're going to tie those things into IOT devices so that our sensors tell us what's going on in our factory. What do the sensors output? Right. Data, obviously.
Jason Rigby (02:10):
It's huge datasets.
Alexander McCaig (02:12):
Listen, we're not doing anything new. Digital transformation, again, is another buzz word for things we've been doing forever since the industrial revolution. Okay? Back then it was just like, "How do we automate these processes?" And now it's like, "How do we take information that was in a paper process and make it digital?"
Jason Rigby (02:28):
It's not articles, then.
Alexander McCaig (02:31):
Yeah, I guess.
Jason Rigby (02:35):
I do like they used the word hyperconnected ecosystem, and then they're basing hyper-
Alexander McCaig (02:40):
Hyper. Not just regular connected-
Jason Rigby (02:42):
But hyper.
Alexander McCaig (02:42):
Hyperconnected. The idea is that you touch one thing and then that generates all this data within multiple data sets in multiple places.
Jason Rigby (02:51):
Which is interesting when you begin to think about in every aspect of our lives, while we're moving and just living life, how much data we're creating.
Alexander McCaig (03:00):
Yeah. We had done an episode on the touch points of data, and just basic interactions with everything that we do, whether it's online shopping, walking into a store, filling up at a gas station. All that processing that's happening between your credit card, the card processor, the gas station, the telecommunications line.
Jason Rigby (03:18):
The meters, and yeah.
Alexander McCaig (03:19):
The meters, literally all that stuff. You don't realize that it's just generating so much information off of one little swipe so you can put 20 bucks worth of gas in the car. You know?
Jason Rigby (03:26):
Right, yeah. And then you stop, and you go to the front and you buy, like for me, I'll buy like an energy drink or something like that. Well, that just said, "So in the southwest, they're purchasing you know."
Alexander McCaig (03:37):
Yeah. You just told Circle K that we need more of these energy drinks, because Jason keeps coming in there and he needs to stop drinking them, but he buys them anyway.
Jason Rigby (03:46):
Yeah. But I mean, when you think about it, with the datasets that you're creating, and I think this is important because a lot of people, especially in our TikTok videos, I've been looking at some of the comments and stuff like that. They're like, "Well, I don't do a lot online." They're like, "I'm a nobody." This is kind of philosophical, but they're associating themselves and their self-worth with their data.
Alexander McCaig (04:10):
Yeah, and honestly that is. Your data is you, but they don't realize the extent of that data.
Jason Rigby (04:19):
No, I got shitty data.
Alexander McCaig (04:20):
Yeah. They think, yeah. They think that the minimal amount of time they put it online, they don't have anything important to say. It's not really about what you say, it's about what you do. Actions speak louder than words. Well, the same thing goes for companies that are going through periods of digital transformation.
Jason Rigby (04:36):
Why are you laughing?
Alexander McCaig (04:42):
Why are you laughing?
Jason Rigby (04:44):
No, I'm thinking because we keep using the word digital transformation. It's in the article.
Alexander McCaig (04:49):
I don't like it. I don't like using it.
Jason Rigby (04:50):
No, but I was like, "He just used it again. He just used it again." There we go. We need somebody to count all the times we said digital transformation.
Alexander McCaig (04:59):
There's another two right there.
Jason Rigby (05:00):
Yeah, exactly.
Alexander McCaig (05:01):
But the point is, digitally transforming businesses in disguise, if you get what I'm saying. All of that information, even regular businesses don't even realize the value that they generate in all the information just through regular processes and operations throughout the day.
Jason Rigby (05:18):
But do you think this whole thing-
Alexander McCaig (05:20):
Don't say digital transformation.
Jason Rigby (05:21):
I know. Do you think, especially when it comes to these data sets that people are creating, that the company's wanting people not to feel that it's very valuable?
Alexander McCaig (05:33):
Well, yeah, because you want to hold onto stuff. Remember the Gold Rush? I want to hold onto as much as possible. This is mine.
Jason Rigby (05:42):
Well, where'd you get this at? Oh, I got it a hundred miles away.
Alexander McCaig (05:44):
But you can't go in there. I own the rights to that mine. Well, I own the rights to these servers. You know what I mean? So they're thinking, "This is all my stuff and then I'm going to monetize it when I choose to do so." Well, let's think about this. Did you put the labor? No. You hired a bunch of Chinese slave labor to actually go in and mine that gold for you out of California, and then you put them in internment camps.
Jason Rigby (06:06):
That's the truth.
Alexander McCaig (06:08):
Okay. And then over here we have our own, it was like data internment, right? You're locked into using these applications, but your for use of it means that these people get to do whatever they want with your data.
Jason Rigby (06:19):
And also a lot of people don't realize this is all slave labor.
Alexander McCaig (06:23):
The whole thing.
Jason Rigby (06:23):
This Apple phone.
Alexander McCaig (06:25):
Well, think about it. Let's talk about digital transformation.
Jason Rigby (06:28):
What's the stuff that they needed from the ground?
Alexander McCaig (06:33):
Lithium? Don't say uranium.
Jason Rigby (06:34):
Yeah, uranium in this. No, but lithium is that slave mine.
Alexander McCaig (06:40):
Yeah. Big lithium mining. But think about digital transformation. Facebook digitally transformed the Philippines.
Jason Rigby (06:46):
Yes.
Alexander McCaig (06:47):
How did they do that? They offer what, SIM cards?
Jason Rigby (06:50):
Yes.
Alexander McCaig (06:50):
So they'll allow you to use their messaging system and Facebook through their SIM card that they offer you, as long as you give them your data through the use of their systems, and that allows you to be connected online.
Jason Rigby (07:05):
Yeah, and how much does the SIM card cost them?
Alexander McCaig (07:07):
Isn't it free over there?
Jason Rigby (07:08):
I mean that, I'm just saying Facebook, yeah.
Alexander McCaig (07:10):
Oh, what does it cost Facebook? Nothing.
Jason Rigby (07:11):
Yeah, exactly.
Alexander McCaig (07:12):
It costs them nothing.
Jason Rigby (07:12):
And the data that the people are using is.
Alexander McCaig (07:14):
So it forces these people to be a lifetime customer. So they're digitally transforming a country and forcing them to use their systems. That sort of structure is the unethical approach to getting people to use a tool that gets us into a lot of trouble.
Jason Rigby (07:31):
I know in Africa they're experimenting with that too, because Mark Zuckerberg had that whole push, I think it's internet.com or whatever where he wants to have the internet all over the world, which is awesome.
Alexander McCaig (07:41):
Of course. But that builds his own brand.
Jason Rigby (07:44):
Right, yes.
Alexander McCaig (07:45):
Obviously that's big value for him. You got to be wary, or at least pay attention. When someone's handing you something for free like that but asking to be connected, you're getting tracked all the time. I know it sounds all well and good, but that's taking advantage of lower socioeconomic profiles.
Jason Rigby (08:02):
So let's say someone's in the Philippines and they're listening to this, and they have that SIM card and they're using it with Facebook messenger and they want to sign up for TARTLE.
Alexander McCaig (08:09):
Yeah. Hopefully that's not blocked through the Facebook internet service over there.
Jason Rigby (08:14):
Yeah, tartle.co. But if they wanted to sign up for tartle.co and they do that, they could sell that, their social media packets.
Alexander McCaig (08:22):
They get all that data that they're generating using Facebook, they can earn off of that. Just like Facebook's been earning off of them for using their system, they can start to get their cut of that pie as they should. Because then you're fairly compensating people for labor.
Jason Rigby (08:41):
Yeah. 110 million people in the Philippines.
Alexander McCaig (08:43):
But that's digital transformation of a country, right? You can digitally transform a business. You can digitally transform yourself. Just as an obvious point in case, if you walk into a gas station, you know the terminal, your POS terminal, the point of sale, put your credit card in? You've watched over the years, they're constantly upgrading those because the way our payments have been changing. You as a person come in and be like, "Oh, and now it's got a screen on it. That little thing shows me exactly the tallies right there." That just blows your mind.
Jason Rigby (09:11):
Yeah. The stripe, or I'm not sure. Is it a-
Alexander McCaig (09:13):
Stripe, square?
Jason Rigby (09:14):
Is that square? The square ones like when we go over to the coffee place-
Alexander McCaig (09:17):
Ingenico?
Jason Rigby (09:18):
They can turn, and then it's just so simple.
Alexander McCaig (09:21):
Yeah, Toast. They got the other one called Toast.
Jason Rigby (09:23):
It's almost like you don't even need anyone there.
Alexander McCaig (09:25):
No, you don't. If you look at that, that sort of transformation in and of itself, just even at a gas station, they're slowly removing the person behind the counter.
Jason Rigby (09:33):
Yes.
Alexander McCaig (09:34):
And in places in Japan, you just walk into a store, grab the thing, walk out. It just bills you.
Jason Rigby (09:38):
Yeah, automatically. Amazon has tried that with some stores here.
Alexander McCaig (09:41):
You had things in subways, back in the early 2000s in Japan, they had QR codes and it was just pictures of the items. You'd scan it and then it would just get delivered to your apartment.
Jason Rigby (09:51):
Yeah. See, that's perfect. Yeah.
Alexander McCaig (09:52):
That's my shopping. I'm shopping off a picture and then it just shows up. But that's digital transformation. It can go beyond just moving your factory from pen and paper to putting it on hard stack servers. This digital transformation is happening regularly with everything in our lives, and all of our touch points and interactions.
Jason Rigby (10:09):
Yeah. I think it's because of, everybody's usually looking at it as cost savings efficiency.
Alexander McCaig (10:14):
Yeah. Everything's about cost savings and efficiency. I think that when we look at digital transformation, we should look at it for how does it actually benefit the evolution of a human being? Actually going through those touch points rather than just looking at them, how do we make money off of them, and how do we make this more efficient?
Jason Rigby (10:28):
Yeah. I agree 100% Awesome.
Alexander McCaig (10:31):
Thanks for the digital transformation.
Jason Rigby (10:31):
Digital transformation.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
Thank you for listening to TARTLEcast with your hosts Alexander McCaig and Jason Rigby, where humanity steps into the future and Source data defines the path. What's your data worth?
