SCREAM, DON’T SCREAM, EITHER WAY: WE’RE GOING FASTER

 

 

You’re
in it. I’m in it. We’re in it. Together. Riding this light cycle. VZUMMMM! And
you betcha, it’s a rush. Knuckles white. Eyes wide. Unblinking.

Only,
it’s not clear who’s driving... or indeed if anyone is.

 

Park
the metaphor. Curb the light bike. And what am I talking about? I’m talking
about CHANGE, and the state it’s in, accelerating, ever faster, zigging and zagging
like hell. I’m talking about our ‘HERE & NOW’, this revolution in our
lifetime, turbo-charged, where social, cultural and commercial change is
“technology-driven” and definition-destroying.

 

Boil
it down to its absolute binary simplicity, to its zeros and ones, and I’m
talking about this crazy pace and the place we all live in – the Digital State.

 

THEN...

 

Let’s
back it up, to when the cyber cycle was physical, petrol, pedals and all, a
tangible illustration of something pretty conventional to ride and collectively
understood. We once lived in a relatively fixed bearing world. The compass
points were set, meaning we could triangulate within the frame. Navigation, the
way ahead, was clear. “Conventions” were time-honoured because they worked, had
proven themselves, had stood the test
of time. “Practices” - formal and informal ways of doing things - came with a
comfortably predictable level of likely outcome. “Things” had names and
definitions that were commonly understood by all.  

 

THEN, EVERYTHING CHANGED.

 

Or
at least, that’s kind of how it felt.

 

We awoke one morning to a digital dawn where it felt, just a
little, like we’d arrived and were now eating breakfast in the future. We’d all
become Buck Rogers, stirred from cryogenic slumber, with “recent memory” suddenly appearing rather
greasy-lensed and sepia.

 

Because
“today” is a place where technology knows no bounds. And that’s the first big point:
technology isn't what it used to be. Isn't
what it once meant to people, to me, to you, to all of us.

 

“Technology”
was once a thing (mostly) confined to physical form. A top-loader. A set-top
box. Technology was wires and transistors on the inside, contained in metal or
plastic. Technology was something you could hold in your hand, could get your
head around: a VCR say, or the light bulb, each liberating, each causing lifestyle
changing ripples in their respective small and big ways, but simple and
tangible.

 

Then
Jobs and Dyson came along and made tech look
good, married higher function to curvy, desirable form. And suddenly technology
had sass and sex appeal, where having
and using it made you feel good. And that was a sizeable
evolutionary moment: when technology stopped being technical and contributed to
how it made us look on the outside and feel on the inside. Suddenly, we all
became technophiles. But that was only a precursor
to the Digital State, just a teaser trailer with an early advance poster.

 

BECAUSE THEN TECHNOLOGY
VANISHED.

 

Because
then... “technology” crossed the divide, went digital, became invisible. “Post
aesthetic”; a bigger evolutionary leap.

 

Technology
went from having a place and knowing its place, and became everyplace, disappearing
by virtue of ubiquity, becoming everywhere and nowhere. Our photos and films
and CD collections: now binary wisps of ephemera, where we feel reassured and take
thrill in the thought of our “content” being backed-up and cloud-based. Because
it sounds cool, our invisible stuff, living
in an invisible cloud, as if we’re the cool-cat citizens of Lando Calrissian’s
Disco City in the Sky. 

 

Now
that technology has broken free of its physical form, gone airborne, fully
mutated, it’s become a cultural contagion and a bug we've all been bitten by.

 

AND WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN?

 

It
means we now live in a DIGITAL STATE, this fusion of physical and digital worlds,
where we no longer do the simplest things the way we used to, where we no
longer jog the way we used to, socialise the way we used to, or even listen to
music the way we used to.

 

It
means the simplest words don’t mean
what they used to. Ever so quickly, let’s just consider three...

 

VIDEO: once a prefix for tape or cassette, but that we now
think of in terms of movie clips and YouTube, and where “Roll the tape” is a
nostalgic but ultimately nonsensical expression. Because, of course, there is
no tape.

 

TV: something that once described the physical box in the
corner of your sitting room... that still describes the flat panel perhaps
hanging on your wall... but that might as likely describe programme “CONTENT”
that you potentially watch on your... phone.

 

And this strange catch-all, shape-shifting noun - “CONTENT” –
promoted, career fast-tracked in a world under digital management, to encompass
so many meanings... where the challenge is for two people to sit down and talk
about content... and for them to both mean the same thing.

 

Three once simple words – VIDEO,
TV, CONTENT - now not so simple. Our words and our understanding of things and
our “ways of living”, they have all undergone radical change. Sitting behind
these three simple words are billion dollar global industries in massive flux. 

 

“There is nothing sacred about convention; the fact that a convention
exists simply indicates that a way of living has been devised capable of
maintaining itself.”  

George Santayana, philosopher, poet, novelist.  

 

We only have to flip Santayana’s observation around to
appreciate the implications and relevance to our “Right Now”. For businesses to
thrive, they can no longer behave the way they used to. They can no longer survive the way they used to. To maintain themselves, they must adapt.

 

Our digital age is only just entering its second act; now maturing,
again mutating, and demanding that we all get wiser about it and wiser with it.
For the commercial world, the “state” cannot be one of stasis or
procrastination, of self-imposed paralysis or sit-back-and-wait-and-see. Those
businesses that do will get left behind, out in the cold, stuck in the tar like
over-sized out-of-time dinosaurs. Stuck. Left. ‘The End’.

 

All businesses are now digital businesses, because we
all operate in a digital world. Originally, one would reflexively think of
“digital businesses” as tech start-ups. Social Media brands and apps companies
and outfits with a Mountain View zip code would jump to mind. But these new
entrants have in fact become keyholes, revealing the form and shape that all business must adopt. The adopted behaviour
is constant adaptation. Where those original “digital businesses” started off
with one vision and business plan, they quickly morphed into something else,
and they were happy to do so. And they will keep morphing. This is the game
they are in. This is now everyone’s game, where we are all a permanent work in
progress. I was talking to a friend the other day, Stewart Easterbrook
(CEO at SMG UK), who simply nailed it with: “It’s a world in beta.”

 

Vincent

Now we gotta make the best of it, improvise,
adapt to the environment. Darwin, shit happens, I Ching, whatever man, we gotta
roll with it.

Source: Collateral (2004)

 

The consensus in most boardrooms today is that whatever
industry vertical you’re in, your (current) industry is going to be unrecognisable
5 years from now. Our status quo is one of ‘status: shift’, a Darwin thing,
which has taken the form of a digital thing. And to quote an in-character Tom
Cruise, we all gotta learn how to roll with it.

Welcome to the Digital State.

SP.

 

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