Social Engineering

An engineer, just like any human being, sees the world through a filtered lens.  And while many an engineer act as if they have no bias, using only the purest of logic and reasoning to view all things, it is guaren-damn-teed that engineers are humans too.  With this thought in mind, I often consider the various distortions I give reality, the intricacies and subtle features I select as important to note and interesting to ponder.  And of course, as an engineer I often find myself resorting to what I find comfortable: a systems approach to abstract and often complicated interactions.

Recently I was at a very interesting talk by an IDEO designer who works on business culture.  IDEO has a location in Central Square just north of MIT, and my entrepreneurship course 6.976 headed up there to hear a few talks.  I had always considered designers very “floofy” and lacking in some hard discipline, but man oh man did this guy deliver.

His talk centered around the idea of the transition to an experience economy and how this should shape the work you do.  He began by giving a history of our evolving economical structure, stating that to begin with we were a communal economy, sharing our goods to survive.  However, as we became more wealthy we moved to a goods economy, where we fought for goods to satisfy everyone.  Eventually we became too wealthy for even this, and goods no longer represented us individually.  We began to transition to a service economy,where we purchased services to make our lives easier and happier.  Finally, he said, we have moved now into an experience economy, where services were no longer enough, and we now buy into an experience or an image to represent ourselves better.

This was all explained with a coffee example, stating that we used to grow the beans as a community and share them.  Then we started getting beans ourselves from someone who grew them.  Once this became universal, people bought ground beans from Folder’s.  After this, people bought into Starbucks and the experience they sold.  More examples of the experience economy were offered, showing updates people give on flickr or blog posts about the experiences they’ve had and their attempt to share this with you, which he claims is a further attempt to utilize services to spread these experiences.

I found this all to be incredible.  The ability of this designer to so quickly put his finger on a large, synthesized amount of data and convey accuracy and insight into the situation left me stunned and wanting for more.  Which was quickly delivered.

The designer spoke more about how at IDEO they want to know what’s coming next, after this experience economy.  His claim was to the shared experience that pops up in so many avenues.  He looks at events like flash mobs and communities like twitter wherein every user not only makes the experience better but is essential to the existence of the experience.  Websites like groupon.com also utilize this idea, and very successfully at that.

Again I was shocked at how well he looked at the world around him and observed a realizable and interesting insight.  I came to really respect this IDEO designer as a true Social Engineer, one who is able to observe complex systems and deduce ways to manipulate them to interesting and useful ends.  While I had always considered myself a fine Social Engineer, never failing (ahem) to network and information manage successfully with friends and cohorts, this man put me to shame with sheer talent at the discipline, going far beyond what I had considered and tapping into large scale implications and ramifications.  Inspiring, to be sure, and I’m left with many thoughts on how to better socially engineer a business or venture to be more successful by carefully feeling the market and people involved with the experience.

How do you utilize social engineering in your pieces?  I’ve always been wrapped up in the construction and implementation side, but never the use or experience.  Maybe that’ll be one of the last great skills I’ll wrap up in my career at MIT.  Moving beyond social dynamics engineering and into nonlinear social mechanics.  Too many engineers do forget the people involved in all this work, and now is as good as ever to step up and do some fun things with people.