Howard Shultz, the founder of Starbucks, had a revelation that began his empire. He realized that people spent time in\u00a0three different classes of spaces. They cocooned in private spaces, like their homes, and offices. And they spent time in public places like plazas, streets, museums. But all the civilized cities of the world were also filled with third places that people loved. Not quite private, not quite public, these third places were intimate but open to anyone.\u00a0 Like settling down at a table at a cafe.\u00a0It felt like your space, but you were not the landlord. They were public, open spaces that you could “own” for a while. They were also uncommon in America. So he decided to make his coffee shops third places where people could walk in from the street and spend all day there if they wanted to in an intimate mode. His empire was built on a third way.<\/p>\n
There are lots of third\u00a0ways that can be alternatives to problems we have. Are Uber drivers employees or contractors? Well, Uber drivers are not quite self employed, and they are not quite employees either. They are a third thing. We shouldn’t try to use the laws and norms for employees or\u00a0self-proprietors with them. We need a new third category of work \u2014 something between \u201cemployee\u201d and \u201cnot an employee\u201d\u2014that encompasses digital gig laborers.\u00a0 AirBnB is neither a hotel, nor a private resident. It is a third thing, and we need to create a new category to deal with it.<\/p>\n
Huge monopolistic companies running platforms like Facebook and Amazon are not mere corporations, nor are they governments, even though they have many of the attributes of both government and corporations. They are a new third thing: platforms. We should not expect to regulate platforms like companies, nor expect them to behave like governments. We need a third category of rights and responsibilities for them.<\/p>\n
AI is not quite a dumb mechanical process that only does what we ask it to, and it is obviously not human either.\u00a0 We should not expect to relate to\u00a0AI and robots as machines, nor as a human.\u00a0Their\u00a0behavior and creation can’t be governed\u00a0with our existing categories, nor with existing laws.\u00a0\u00a0AI\/Robots\u00a0are a third thing.\u00a0 They need to\u00a0be treated in a\u00a0third\u00a0way.<\/p>\n
This is the era of the third way. With the advent of genetic engineering, and ever more AI, and crypto and blockchain for organizations, we will be producing third things all the time. New ideas, products and services that are neither this or that, but something new that needs the third way. The most difficult part of this onboarding is opening our minds to the\u00a0possibilities of a third way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Howard Shultz, the founder of Starbucks, had a revelation that began his empire. He realized that people spent time in\u00a0three different classes of spaces. They cocooned in private spaces, like their homes, and offices. And they spent time in public … Continue reading