Everyone wants to know what “The Next Google” is.  From WIKiD Tools, the answer should be obvious:  Google is an information company.  Their stated objective is to organize the World’s information.  The next element up the human development ladder from the Information Economics rung is Knowledge Economics rung. Therefore, the next “Google” will deploy technology that can organize the World’s knowledge.

A State of Mind

Unfortunately, knowledge can only exist inside the minds of people, so consequently, “The Next Google” must also engage in the messy task of organizing the World’s people as well as the knowledge contained in each one of them.  Not an easy task in dog-eat-dog Global Market Capitalism.

The Facebookie

At first, it seems that Facebook may be converging on this – they are certainly trying.  The problem with Facebook’s approach is that they continue to  insist that Market Capitalism is valid (obviously preparing for the killer IPO) when they should be pioneering the hedge fund called “Social Capitalism”.  Facebook continues to bank on the suggestion that people really really want to share  their personal details and will tolerate invasion by armies of anonymous data miners in order to do so.  Facebook’s best shot may be for one of their gaming currencies to become a black market currency so that when the dollar collapses,  people would gladly sell their privacy in exchange for food.

Since a gaming currency can only be created by people performing frivolous tasks, at best, gaming currencies – phenomenal growth or not – are no more robust than the dollars it seeks to displace.   Sustainability? Uh, no.

Anonymity rules

Think about it this way.  Real human productivity is stored in a dollar bill; otherwise nobody would “work” for it.  The recipient does not know or care if the dollar bill was last used by someone to buy cigarettes or Girl Scout cookies.   The dollar bill is completely anonymous.  Likewise, value is stored in the brains of every living person – there is no need to know who they are until the transaction is exercised and profits are distributed.  Everything else is unnecessary invasion of privacy and certainly not something to build a currency around let alone the next economic paradigm.  The Next Google will treat people like the currency, not ‘like’ the Girls Scout Cookies.

The “Next Google” will be a percentile search engine that will return odds – or probabilities – based on an anonymized public knowledge inventory. Search results will predict the likelihood that any combination of knowledge assets can produce or execute any combination of products or services at a known cost based on the supply and demand for those known knowledge assets.  End of mystery.

Everyone can now make their bets and play their games with real productivity because, in effect, the percentile search engine will match most worthy knowledge deficit with most worthy knowledge surplus and throw the rest of it in the trash bin.

The only thing people want to know is what they want to know, and nothing else.  Now that’s what real productivity is made of, that is what real money is made of.

Please Vote for The Ingenesist Project to present at SXSW 2011

The Ingenesist Project specifies an Innovation Economy built on a platform of social media as the next economic paradigm.  60 minute solo presentation in the advanced technical track.  Your help is deeply appreciated. All comments welcome.  Material based on video series here