Very nice presentation of vital issues of bicycles of the mind — I have two significant points to add.

(This is brief, belatedly seeing this as I prepare for your RENDER event tomorrow).

First, on the profound history of bicycles for the mind:

That is a great metaphor from Jobs, but he draws on earlier giants that did not become billionaires, but pioneered their vision in the 1960s: Doug Engelbart and Ted Nelson. They largely invented the Web and hypermedia, and were huge influences on Jobs. Engelbart’s vision was Augmenting Human Intellect. What we need more than artificial intelligence is augmentation of human intelligence. This idea of augmented intelligence has gained a bit of a resurgence, but still remains mostly at the fringes. Nelson had related ideas, and had a vision for an open Web with rich features for tracking and monetization of creative contributions for a world in which everything is “deeply intertwingled.” (He is reprinting his influential 1974 Computer Lib/Dream Machines, a bargain at $99 for anyone who cares.)

Second, on the future of new and more human business models that can change everything:

The major cause of the problems you enumerate are due to short-sighted business models. The problem is not the profit motive of corporations, but how they are blinded by narrow concepts of CLV, without understanding how they can create win-win models that are more profitable. The abundance of digital services breaks down the invisible hand, and instead of the lose-lose models of artificial scarcity and expropriation of data and attention, we can leverage that abundance to create more value for businesses and their users. We can shift back to the cooperative model of market-based economic exchange that was traditional before the alienation of business from customers of the past century and a half. (The shortest introduction is in my Techonomy article, Information Wants to be Free; Consumers May Want to Pay; more is on my blog.)

Such win-win models enable the vision of Engelbart and Nelson to be profitably realized, with a more human market capitalism. CLV is just part of the picture — the lifetime value of outcomes to the customer (Vendor Lifetime Value) is the missing part that closes the circle. By maximizing both in unison, businesses will make more money, serving more users, and creating more value for all of us.