Hacking Happiness (4 page)

Are you beginning to see the future I envisioned during my epiphany with Klout? Like the GDP’s singular focus on wealth creation to determine value, Internet economics will continue to be driven by the accelerated exploitation of consumer data if a newer model isn’t adopted soon. Behavioral targeting via passive tracking
means the intimate measure of all your actions can more easily be utilized for sale. The data economy is more personal than ever, and if things don’t change, our identities will be determined by algorithms controlled by someone else.

The H(app)y Hypothesis

Socrates said that the unexamined life is not worth living. The bad news is, your examined life, in the form of data, is worth
selling
. So if you want a say in the future of your identity in the Connected World, complacency is not an option. It’s time to take action.

Here are the three parts of
Hacking H(app)iness
:

• A—be Accountable
  
• P—be a Provider
  
• P—be Proactive
  

PART 1: BE ACCOUNTABLE (IDENTITY AND MEASUREMENT IN THE CONNECTED WORLD)

The first part of living an examined life in the digital world is to understand how you’re represented within it. In Part 1 we’ll discuss the nature of connected identity and compare the trend of social influence (Klout, or “word-based sentiment analysis”) to accountability-based influence (digital representations of action and trust). We’ll explore how the emerging field of personal identity management provides a way for consumers to protect their data while maintaining flexibility in how they want to project their digital identity.

Then we’ll get our geek on and explore the role of sensors, quantified self, the Internet of Things, and artificial intelligence as they relate to identity and happiness. We’ll spend some time discussing the effects of machine-learning algorithms and how they relate to our digital future, and conclude by reviewing how our
actions reflected in the connected world reveal a clearer portrait of identity than our words alone.

PART 2: BE A PROVIDER (BROADCASTING VALUE IN THE PERSONAL DATA ECONOMY)

There’s a relationship created when we think of ourselves as consumers—while the word reflects the fact that we live in a transactional society, is it the primary identity we want for ourselves? A primary way to escape exploitative practices (like our tracked behavior being used primarily to enhance advertising models) is to change the vocabulary around an established idea.

In this section, we’ll discuss how the concepts of shared value and conscious capitalism relate to the connected world. Where people’s data is seen as commerce, its value should be distributed. In the personal data economy that will be made visible by augmented reality, we can inspire innovation while honoring privacy.

Rather than worrying about strangers filming and tagging without permission, people can broadcast their identities in public while notifying how they’d like to interact with the world. If you’re at Starbucks and someone looks at you wearing Google Glass, your digital avatar could appear in their vision and say, “If you’d like to record and I’m in your shot, my face will appear blurry and I can’t be tagged without my permission. If you’re tagging me for commercial purposes, please text me the specifics of how I’ll be compensated for the use of my personal data.”

This type of scenario, outside of the technical aspects, represents the rapidly emerging practice of virtual currency. Within a trusted framework, people can pay each other in the form of specie (money), products (swapping), or skills (time). This avoids the echo chamber of privacy discussions mired in policy in favor of positive economic exchange. This is also a vision of how we can shift the model of selling people’s data without their knowledge. We can shift this practice from being exploitative to being inclusive by
providing transparent means of identity sharing and virtual commerce. Then people can see themselves as providers of content or data, where they are actively involved in a consensual transaction. The notion of being a consumer, defined primarily by what and how much is purchased, will erode and allow people to see their value in a wider dimension.

Geekery in this section will involve the evolution and future of augmented reality, a definition of Big Data, and how providing content and value to others can liberate your identity through creativity and commerce.

PART 3: BE PROACTIVE (PROMOTING PERSONAL AND PUBLIC WELL-BEING)

Many times, happiness is an output of action versus a momentary mood. Social scientists make the distinction between short-term or “hedonic” happiness and eudaimonia—a Greek term associated with Aristotle, roughly translated as “well-being.” A new outfit may produce a momentary increase in positive mood, but if you rely on retail therapy for happiness you may experience what’s known as the “hedonic treadmill.”

Altruism also has proven benefits toward the increase of happiness. As Sonja Lyubomirsky, a leading mind in the field of positive psychology, notes in her book
The How of Happiness
, one of the less-noted aspects of kindness is its benefits regarding self-perception. The more acts of compassion you perform, the more you view yourself as altruistic. Eventually, the way you view your own identity may evolve to the point at which your confidence and happiness increase as a result.

Sharing value in the connected world leads to happiness. Also, the alternative isn’t great—if you’re a jerk, your actions may get quantified in a way to let others know that before you even speak to them. I wrote about this potential culture clash in my Mashable piece “The Impending Social Consequences of Augmented Reality.”
Private data revealed in a digital context via technologies like augmented reality is going to lead to a lot of awkward situations:

Ford’s MyKey technology, available since January 2011, lets parents program cars for teens so they can’t go over 80 mph or listen to the stereo until all seat belts are engaged. While the features were originally designed for teen safety, the technical framework could certainly be utilized in a different context . . . for instance, to vet whether or not a parent is worthy of driving children in a car pool. If via my “You Drive Like an Asshat” app I see you score a two out of ten on safety, my kid doesn’t get in your car.
¹⁴

This example demonstrates how accountability-based influence could become a key driver of identity and behavior in the future. In one sense, we’ll start labeling other people the same way we rate restaurants right now in a Yelp review. And if no ethical or cultural frameworks around privacy or etiquette exist, data taken out of context will become almost a daily occurrence. That’s why, in this section, we’ll also be discussing the idea of “regard,” or why it’s so important not only to put your device away when speaking to someone face-to-face but to study how our interactions are different in the real and virtual worlds. Both have their benefits, but research on the longitudinal results of Facebook and other social network usage are showing negative effects that can be minimized by unplugging the connected side of your identity once in a while.

We’ll examine thinkers from the world of positive psychology, focusing on how action, or “flow,” as Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (pronounced “cheek-sent-me-hi-ee”) describes it in his seminal book
Flow
, can produce “optimal experience” in a person’s life. By identifying the activities that drive your intrinsic well-being, you can optimize and improve the quality of your happiness.

Last, we’ll focus on the emerging economic metrics of happiness
indicators as demonstrated by Bhutan’s Gross National Happiness Index. Other countries around the world, including the United Kingdom, Brazil, and the United States, are beginning to implement subjective and quantitative elements of policy based on measuring well-being.

I’ll point out multiple examples of how the GDP isn’t working as a measure of happiness, such as Shirley S. Wang’s article “Is Happiness Overrated?” where she cites a 2010 statistics report in
Clinical Psychology Review
by researchers at San Diego State University, who noted that depression and paranoia had increased in college students from 1938 to 2007 and comments, “The analysis pointed to increasing cultural emphasis in the U.S. on materialism and status, which emphasize hedonic happiness, and decreasing attention to community and meaning in life, as possible explanations.”
¹⁵
The popular book
Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking
by Susan Cain touches on similar trends, showing how America has moved from a culture of character to one of personality. Our need to demonstrate extrovert characteristics has made us into a nation of salespeople, focused on self-aggrandizement over the benefit of others.

I’ll also show the connection between the digital metrics of quantified self and the Internet of Things and the economic measures of Gross National Happiness. In this way, people can better connect their personal actions with a new global paradigm of value that’s not based solely on wealth. Sharing value, done proactively, can provide individual happiness while changing the world for good.

The measurement of life based solely on fiscal wealth, or ever-increasing production or consumption, limits who we are. We aren’t just creatures put on the earth to amass stuff or work ourselves to death. The economic measure of gross domestic product has influenced our lives to the deepest level of our global identity. Sadly, the existing data economy reinforces the fundamental tenets
of GDP’s focus on increased productivity at all costs (pun intended). When our lives are measured primarily as a marketing algorithm, we stop valuing actions that don’t add up to a fiscal bottom line. We can’t give ourselves permission to deeply reflect on what brings our lives meaning, or put others first when they need help.

But here’s some great news—this primary measure of value the world has agreed on for more than fifty years is beginning to crumble. While the GDP, on one hand, is simply a metric to gauge the health of a country, it has so influenced our collective lives that most of us gauge our work not by its value but by its volume. We’re not encouraged to take the time to see all the areas of our lives that can bring ourselves and others joy. We’re not leveraging our full resources as humans and suffering due to the deficit.

But around the world countries are beginning to measure their citizens’ lives and governmental actions via a wider lens. Multiple factors beyond financial metrics are being evaluated to see how people can live balanced lives beyond solely monetary measures. And when people gain perspective on all the ways their lives bring value beyond money, they’ll also justify taking time to optimize their own lives or help others. They’ll be motivated to take actions to increase their well-being in ways they haven’t considered since the invention of the GDP.

My Background in Measurement

Bullies made it easy for me, a fat kid growing up in a suburb of Boston, to begin a life of self-examination. Early on, I became part of a playground hierarchy that had a set of sacred measures. Being overweight meant you were bullied. Fat equaled bad. Pretty simple. I wasn’t happy about the situation, but I couldn’t control it. So I studied it.

I learned that words don’t often mirror action or character. For instance, the bullies who threatened were typically the last ones to
act. I also became intimately aware of the concept of morals—I felt it was wrong that I was bullied. It wasn’t fair. Nobody asked my permission but I still got cast in a John Hughes movie where roles were defined by somebody else before I even entered the picture.

I bring this up in regard to my experience with Klout to demonstrate how often we find ourselves in situations where someone has developed rules for a game we didn’t know we were playing. And a typical human response is to try and win at a game without even asking whether it makes sense. That’s what I mean by the challenge of measurement. We tend to look at the world through the lens we’re given, never asking how the glass is focused. Questions of comparison are only applied to an existing perception of the world, versus one that may not be seen.

I was exposed to other ideas about examining life at a young age because of my family. My dad was a psychiatrist in the 1970s, when the term “shrink” was still applied in a pejorative sense. People tend to forget psychoanalysis is a relatively new field, having gotten its start from Freud in the early 1900s. When I moved to Needham, Massachusetts, as a boy, no neighbors brought us pies until they saw my dad gently spank me on the butt and realized he was mortal.

While he wasn’t allowed to talk about his work with me, I knew my dad’s job was to listen to people and help them hurt less. His private practice ran for about forty years in which he spent at least fifty hours a week, fifty weeks a year, helping patients—and that’s a low estimate. Do the math and that’s over one hundred thousand hours helping others examine their lives to find happiness.

Heroes come in all sizes. I come from good stock.

I went to college thinking I was going to be a minister, having examined a number of spiritual issues and thinking I could best help the world from the pulpit. But an influential acting teacher told me to follow my bliss, and I ended up going to New York City in 1992. (As it turns out, my mom wound up becoming a pastor.) I
was a professional actor for more than fifteen years, appearing in principal roles on Broadway, on TV, and in film. During my time as an actor, I did a lot of corporate videos and started getting asked to rewrite scripts to make them funnier. I said, “Yes, if you pay me,” and my writing career was born.

After multiple scripts, articles, and books, I landed a job writing the first About.com Guide to Podcasting in 2005 before social media became mainstream. I interviewed hundreds of thought leaders in business and technology before shifting to consulting to leverage my expertise toward business development for a few start-ups, like Blog Talk Radio. I ran two open-source tech conferences in New York City (two thousand participants, over two hundred speakers) and eventually ran the social media practice of a top-ten global PR firm. It was at that time my business career got two giant boosts—I became a contributing writer for Mashable.com, and traditionally published my first book,
Tactical Transparency: How Leaders Can Leverage Social Media to Maximize Value and Build Their Brand
(Hoboken, NJ: Jossey-Bass/John Wiley, 2008).