H(app)y

The Value of Well Being in a Digital Economy 

 

You may not realize it, but your Klout score, or lack thereof, is affecting how you're perceived by the world.  Your digital influence has become a calling card that allows others to decide if they'd like to hire, date, or even know you all at the click of a button.  And via emerging technologies poised to become standard on smartphones and the world around us, it won't make a difference if you aren't an avid user of social media channels.  People will quantify, rate, and judge you virtually before they even say hello. 


In H(app)y, John C. Havens (contributing writer for Mashable and author of the popular, Tactical Transparency, a book published in 2008 predicting the rise of and need for strategic openness in Social Media and business) explores the future of online influence and its effects on culture, business, and technology.  Based on his Mashable article, The Value of a Happiness Economy, he predicts how the rise of virtual identity will become of massive importance when the general public realizes how closely their money, prestige, and relationships are tied to the digital and social landscape. 


We're moving to a point where there are essentially two directions influence can turn -- metrics that reward thought leaders and cyberlebrities whose fame is built largely on their words and wit, or measures of action that overtly project your behavior to the world.  This Accountability Based Influence (ABI) will be reflected by everything from your health (Nike's Fuelband), your compassion (LinkedIn's new Volunteer section for your profile), and your civic responsibility (are you getting rewards for green behavior from Recyclebank yet?) These self-monitoring tools, reflected by the Quantified Self movement, will soon project your life portrait on a palette of digital information available in new virtual arenas like Augmented Reality and the data that's visible by things like Google Goggles.  Hope you've got your privacy settings set correctly, or that drunken photo from college can be projected on the side of a building or taped to your back in the imminently approaching digital world. 



Is there an alternative to this Digital Dystopia?  Havens posits that ABI should be used in encouraging and edifying ways to help people identify ways to improve their lives while virtually collaborating with their on and offline communities.  It's also possible to dovetail metrics of well-being like the ones created by Bhutan's Gross National Happiness to the massive wave of apps helping people shift behavior and telegraph their actions to their social graph.  By educating the general public about the importance and prevalence of ubiquitous data, identity, and influence, we have the chance to create a H(app)y future based on positive actions versus a constant quest for virtual voyeurism.