Contextivity
Contextivity – Contexting people in the attention Economy
Context is king!
Using the web as an integral part of how we live – a web of life, overwhelms. Deciding what to choose to interact with is increasingly a challenge. All is a click away. I can go anywhere, anytime, it’s all there. Searching for it, consuming it, interacting with it, and using it for my socializing, for my work, e-mail, instant messaging, social networks, forums, blogs, communities…
Endless availability makes it difficult to sort out the noise. Information seeking becomes a finding a needle in a haystack web experience. My attention management is still limited to 24 hours a day.
Relevance is the difference between searchability and findability, between an avalanche of information and a manageable portion where I have my attention focused on what is really of value to me and where I can selectively communicate with people.
Allowing personal context to become the prismatic angle through which I interact with the digital world, turns the overwhelming overpour of web interactions into a humanizing selective experience.
From personalization to contexting people
Context is subjective. By contextualizing my interactions they become relevant for me. It’s mine, about me. Yet for providers my personal context is a competitive advantage asset in the marketing wars. In terms of user stickiness my context means my money repeatedly spent on their sites. They call it personalizing the experience for me. It is fragmented, limited, I depend on them for personalization and in fact my context is held hostage in the walled gardens. They own it. Like a free bird caged with a broken wing, I am tied down to the boundaries of the platforms and sites that offer me that relevance. They make sure that it is only good within their premises. I can’t take it freely to where I go and it only reflects me through my interactions in their courts.
Same goes for my social interactions. I may have 170 friends in Facebook, 50 contacts in LinkedIn….. But I want to be able to intuitively choose what I share with whom, when and why.
Icentered is taking a holistic approach of contexting people and not just the content they interact with. Contextivity is about MY Context all through, across platforms, providers and predefined issues. In an Icentered world, imprisoned, fragmented personalization is turned into contextivity – a harmonized experience that meshes my context with connectivity . It makes my digital choices and interactions natural, intuitive , gives it my personal colors. It is a selective context lens, relevant to a specific exchange, transcending boundaries of providers and platforms – a true personal experience.
Contextivity is humanizing. I am in the center and my dynamic personal context is a guiding principle for a new level of conversations. It turns 6 degrees of separation into 6 degrees of connectedness.
The shift from personalization to contextivity must be accompanies with a shift in my data ownership. Mastering contextual personalization must be in the hands of the only one who should know all about me in order to draw my context – and that is me!
