Majority report: looking through the digital hype
24th January 12
Posted in transformational change
This post originally appeared as an article in Viewpoint at the end of 2011. Briefed to one of BBH London’s smartest strategists, Ed Booty, as a deliberate polemic, it’s a provocative argument designed to question our assumptions about the constant pace of change. We like being challenged (we enjoyed Matt Edgar’s post last year along similar lines) – please let us know what you think in the comments.
Author: Ed Booty, Strategy Director, BBH London
Image: Seattle Space Needle, by Patricia Kranenberg (via Flickr under a Creative Commons licence)
It is commonly accepted that a digital revolution is afoot. We have entered a brave new networked world. Individuals are empowered, social movements cannot remain contained and knowledge is free to all. Data is making our world more intuitive, bespoke and rewarding. We are mobile, always on, always entertained and hyper-social.
Things appear to be going swimmingly and never has the future been so clearly mapped out for us. It’s sexy, creative, inclusive and exciting. It’s one big SXSW festival.
Nothing new so far, and it does all sound rather good.
Maybe it’s too good to be true?
Unfortunately it is.
Advance apologies to neophytes, digital evangelists and west coast entrepreneurs. It’s time for a reality check. The speed, scale and depth of the so-called digital revolution has been wildly exaggerated.
What has caused this mirage of revolution?
Behind the hype, what might a more realistic vision of a digital world be?This isn’t a luddite’s defence of an endangered way of life, but instead an attempt to rationalise and reconsider some big digital assumptions. Only by realistically appraising the present can we begin to discern what the future might look like.
Digital media is undoubtedly the defining technology of our age. It has already reshaped entire industries, created empires and billionaires. There is little to debate over its reach and integration. Everything is now digital, from TVs and books to shopping. The important question is therefore not ‘How digital is the world?’, but ‘How different is life in this digital world?’.
For me personally, there has never been a more exciting time to be in the business of creative communication. Digital media offers us massive opportunities; new ways of interacting with content, of bringing to life ideas, and of making brands relevant and useful, far beyond traditional advertising.
It’s so new and exciting that it’s easy to confuse its potential with reality. As we’ve explored and embraced the bewildering possibilities, we’ve increasingly convinced ourselves that a revolution is here. Meanwhile real peoples’ lives and needs simply aren’t changing at the same pace. What is possible is growing at an exponential rate, but how people actually live and use technologies has changed very little. This gap between the myth and reality is ever-widening.
20 years ago the average Brit watched 4 hours of TV a day [1 - see footnotes]. Their favorite show was a soap. The most popular news source was The Sun[2]. The number one brand was Coca Cola[3]. The best selling car was a Ford Fiesta[4]. The two biggest issues in people’s lives were the economy and the NHS[5]. 20% of people enjoyed a night at the pub. 27% were always improving their home. 11% rarely had a family meal. 23% enjoyed clothes shopping. 17% hated housework[6].
This is all also true in 2011. Life is fundamentally much the same.
Of course there have been changes. Mobile phones are ubiquitous, the internet is in 3/4 of homes[7], digital TV in 93%[8]. Facebook has 31m monthly users[9]-numbers regularly cited as irrefutable evidence for the radical shift in how we live. Despite their scale, their actual impact has been overstated.
Purchase is too often confused with adoption. People do often buy and subscribe to new technologies. They then infrequently (if ever) use them. Only 20% of the average smartphone’s capacity is ever used.[10] Of the 20% people willing to pay for TVs with internet connectivity[11], under half of them even connect it[12], let alone find it useful.
Even where a new medium is being used, it is primarily facilitating old behaviours. Despite the breadth of user-generated content, 98% of the UK’s viewing is of professionally produced film content[13]. The UK’s most popular news website is the BBC. The vast majority of people remain passive recipients of the same content they have always liked. Only 2% of web users actively create and contribute[14]. Even within Twitter subscribers, 83% have not sent a tweet in the last month[15]. However, the illusion of revolution is so convincing that it affects how people perceive their own behaviour. On average PVR owners believe they watch over 70% of their TV on demand. The real figure is 14%. 86% of their viewing is traditional real-time broadcast. This ratio is not changing.
Despite having it at their fingertips, people are just not making use of the richness of the technology that is available to them. They aren’t living the digital lives they should be. What’s going on? Surely they should be as excited as we are? Are they just laggards who will eventually embrace the glistening and inevitable digital future? Or, perhaps it’s us who’ve missed the point?
We have bought our own hype. So desirable is the digital dream that we have mistaken its potential for reality. This delusion has been driven by an unprecedented bubble of hype, driven by the media, digital advocates and technology brands. They have created, believe and propagate the myth that life has changed irrevocably.
Journalists, whose own industry has been heavily affected by digital media, give it disproportionate coverage and importance; seamlessly suggesting causal relationships between the advent of technologies and real life events. Twitter caused the Arab spring. Blackberrys were the London rioter’s secret weapon. Elections are now won and lost on Facebook. No story is complete without an unquantified reference to the impact of digital media.
Under 8% of Britons have ever used twitter, 1.9% use it regularly[16]. It’s only the UK’s 27th most popular site[17], but is the most mentioned- with an average of 1,446 times per month in the national press alone.
The cult of technology has also been passionately advocated from within; by a minority with disproportionate influence. The web is an ‘echo-chamber’ where digital enthusiasts have their beliefs reinforced and re-tweeted. This creates a self-referential cycle of self importance. The web’s favourite subject is unsurprisingly ‘computers and the web’. It accounts for over 34% of site visits (versus just 12% for social media and forums)[18]. These self-proclaimed ‘early adopters’’ assumption is that the rest of society is simply yet to catch up[19]. This is rarely the case. Real people more often than not, have better things to do, like watch Eastenders.
The myth of radical change is furthered by technology brands. They are a powerful influence, representing over 10% of all bought advertising[20] (ironically, the majority of it in traditional media[21]). With ambitious sales targets and consumers that have literally got more technology than they know what to do with, communicating marginal innovations will not suffice. Every new technology or product is promoted as revolutionary; a life-changing breakthrough.
Who wouldn’t want to get involved?
In this era of economic uncertainty, in contrast to the zeitgeist, technology has become a beacon of hope. It’s cool, synonymous with success and promises to enhance life. Like alchemy in the Renaissance, technology brands offer a potent combination of wonderment, distraction and optimism. Their CEOs are evangelistic figures; revered and admired. They promise a brighter future on a rainy day and we believe it because we want it to be true. They show us what is possible. Herein however, is the crux of the problem. Technology is tech-centric. There is the assumption that because something can be done, it will be popular, important and useful. However, ‘We are now able to…’ is not the same as ‘People now want to…’. Possibility is mistaken for demand.
The dotcom crash of the late 1990s was driven by the same misunderstanding. Price/earnings ratios were overlooked and belief placed in technological advancements. A decade later mobile networks paid over inflated prices for 3G licenses to facilitate video calling. Not because there was demand, but because it became possible.
Too little attention is given to what will be required and what will actually be useful.
Rather than thinking about the future in terms of what technology that will be available, a better method may be to ask what will people want in the future; what will actually improve how they live?
While a minority excite themselves and propagate the belief that the future is here, it is real ‘consumers’ that will dictate the pace of change and ultimately have the final say in what the future really looks like.
That’s why there is no Digital Revolution. Cultural revolutions are not created in R&D labs.
They represent radical changes in how people live and society operates. The agricultural and industrial revolutions changed the fundamental shape of society. Digital media has barely scratched the surface. As Steve Jobs was visionary enough to acknowledge:
“This stuff doesn’t change the world. It really doesn’t… it’s a disservice to constantly put things in this radical new light — that it’s going to change everything.”
The early impact of digital media has then been wildly overemphasised.
This does then beg the question famously voiced by Roy Amara: What are the long-term impacts we simultaneously under-estimate? That’s a topic for another day. But its an important one, because they’re going to be fundamental, dare I say ‘revolutionary’…
Nicely provocative. When the Henley Centre still existed they did some research that contrasted the engineering / financial (i.e. tech) development cycle with the technology adoption cycle. 18 months for the former, 7 years for the latter. Which neatly explains why we all froth about new stuff but don’t use it en masse for some time. Henley’s data also explains the Gartner hype cycle, with its ‘peak of inflated expectations’ and ‘trough of disillusionment’. That said, brands should still get involved early so they can figure how to market via the new new stuff before their failures become failures at a mass scale.
[...] 45 years and exactly six Moon landings into McLuhan’s future, this from Ed Booty of BBH London… As we’ve explored and embraced the bewildering possibilities, [...]
20 years ago you probably didn’t have a computer
[...] I’ve been combining busy-ness with laziness for a few months. But the article ‘Majority Report: Looking through the digital hype‘ by BBH’s Strategy Director Ed Booty, has jolted me into writing [...]
Thought provoking! I sort of agree but technology has changed so very much of what we do in a more mundane, less life-changing way. I agree with the commenter who says brands have to keep up and keep trying. There’s a lot of areas they are already successful in too.
Very interesting article. I’ve had some similar thoughts that I posted about http://www.upinmyattic.com/?p=121. What I wonder, though, is whether it’s even just about a lag in change. I feel like in many cases, what you see is a step towards the adoption of change and then a step back to older methods of behavior. Consequently, we’ll see advances in technology in some areas that will either not catch on ever or will but eventually have masses against it. One easily identifiable example is the mass production of food and agriculture now being combated by supporters of local, organic, even home-grown foods.
A refreshingly brave and reasonable article. Which I disagree with a little bit.
I completely agree there is media and cultural hype around our perceptions of the effect of technology on our lives. There always has been. The question is just ‘how much hype is there’?
I think the answer is ‘less than you stated in your article but more than most people probably recognize’.
I think if history is anything to go by, the only thing that has changed in human beings in the last 40,000 years is our technology. Our basic drives, intellectual potential and physical needs have hardly changed.
The Gutenberg Press probably didn’t impact the AVERAGE persons daily lives. People still went to church and grew crops. But it affected a small minority of people who wanted to communicate and question order and discuss ideas.
As these new ideas took root, they affected everybody else fundamentally. They just took a while.
Very glad to read that kind of post. I cannot find it so provocative. Here’s why. This article talks about how we think technology. As stated, we think it in terms of revolution (Gutenberg, electricity, etc.). And indeed real changes are driven by innovation. But there are differences in the paces between the way technology evolves, the way people use it and the representations (dreams, nightmares, etc.) technology conveys. I don’t really think that one should criticize the digital hype or undermine the social “impacts” of digital technologies – and to my point of view, this article doesn’t. But it is crucial to understand how people appropriate digital technologies, and technology in general. The technique is not independent of us. We, as a society, shape it. At one end of the spectrum, some of us create it (very quickly), on the other end, some of us accept it as such, bypasses it, or transforms it (and this can take time).
love this Ed. Thanks for writing and starting a fresher conversation in the digital space than most.
In many ways I agree with you: over the past few months I’ve become acutely aware at how different the use of tech is by those in the heart of the digital conversation versus most people out there. and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with the fact that most people don’t tweet or have 70 apps on their phone that they’re obsessively tending to. These things just don’t have value for a lot of people and I certainly don’t think that that makes them Luddites.
But I don’t agree with your overall stance, and it’s because I don’t personally think that the digital revolution is about Twitter adoption or Internet TV. It’s much more complex, powerful and interesting than that in my mind.
Revolution is a funny word isn’t it? It brings to mind the storming of walls, the overnight obliteration of norms and a very stark ability to see then and now. But in contrast, back when I used to roam the halls of Google, there was a statement that was often repeated and that has stuck with me: “we are ten years into the 100 year revolution”. so to David’s point, I do think we are in the midst of a step-change in culture and society, but it still has a long way to go before being fully realized.
The two big things that I see is the democratization of power and the resulting paradigm shift and how the utilitarian web is going to change the rhythms, efficiency and consumption of society. (I’m sure someone much smarter than me will point out three or four more).
Right now it’s all very opt-in and people have to care to get involved: I care about political issues so I’m on Twitter and that propels real world action (and the Arab Spring). I care about my small business so I’m going to rustle up a suite of tools on the web that will get more people buying my stuff. BofA’s fees are stupid so we’re all going to revolt (and have them back down from them). I want to learn Algebra so I’m going to watch the Khan Academy.
What is revolutionary about the above examples is how the web democratized entry and participation within the conversation. The web is getting closer to ubiquity, the portals to it are getting cheaper to own and the tools in it are much cheaper or free. So you don’t have to have a huge budget anymore to reach customers all over the world. You don’t have to have a huge amount of money to spread your ideas. You don’t need school books or a big tuition. Those with raw, human drive will take advantage of this democratization regardless of money or class which will change the power paradigm. And I only see that happening more, not less, as time goes forward.
Where I think another real step change is coming is when we start really empowering the utilitarian web at a societal level. Apartment complexes and communities where the web is baked in to help regulate energy use. Health care systems that have the efficiency and knowledge of a digitally-based system (God knows the US could use a little of that). Cities that are smarter about traffic patterns (and therefore pollution) because of the constant data coming in from the streets. The examples go on and on and get enough of them, and our lives start looking really different. Society and it’s rhythms start to change. And I find that terribly cool, real and interesting.
So yes, I totally agree with you, this grand potential that gets celebrated and today’s reality is very far apart right now. And we get up our own asses and we make digital crap in the name of our brands thinking that people are engaging and care more than they do. I hate that.
But I wonder what it’s going to look like in 50 years. And as much I’m not looking forward to my creaking bones and jowls that will inevitably melt into my neck when I’m that age, I really hope I’m around to see it. Because I think it’s going to be a much different world than the one I was born into.
Well said……
So yes, I totally agree with you, this grand potential that gets celebrated and today’s reality is very far apart right now. And we get up our own asses and we make digital crap in the name of our brands thinking that people are engaging and care more than they do. I hate that.
There is great potential and certain discoveries and acheivements should be put on a pedestal but more focus should be placed on creating projects, ideas, initiatives with current technologies that can benefit and be enjoyed on a wider scale. Not just to get out in front and win some awards. Make technology functional, education, and fun and your user base will adopt and grow exponentially.
+1 to what Heidi says. Agree with nearly all of it.
yes. what heidi said. agree completely.
True on one hand:
There are only 15 million people on Foursquare.
Gen Y still watches TV.
False on another:
See this:
http://bit.ly/xsKQK2
The phenomenon of digital sharing alone, even if only done by a minority, is disrupting enough other business models to prove its impact. Percentages of users does not always equate to impact.
Great great post by the way.
I agree that there is a gap between technological ability and widespread adoption, and I like the point about the re-inforcement of self-importance on the web by the technology evangelists, I definitely think there is some truth there.
However, the article glosses over some of the technologies that have been widely adopted. No-one had a mobile phone 20 years ago and could only be reached at home. Now everyone can be contacted on the phone anywhere. That is major adoption. Facebook is also widely used by the masses – not just technology fans.
You’re right that currently the tech world looks appealing and healthy, but you’re looking at the implications wrong in my opinion. No-one is expecting all of these technologies to become mainstream. The companies will compete, the users will decide and eventually it will get wittled down to just a few core services we use. E.g. there are hundreds of social sharing apps now for photos and geo-tagging, but they won’t last. Just like the dotcom burst, we will end up with a core set of online services that will be widely adopted, just like Facebook has been. Then there will be a gap where we all try to figure out what the next technology revolution will be.
There are a few other subtle differences you don’t point out. You say that despite having PVR TV sets, we still mainly watch terrestrial channels. But what about the built-in TV guide? I’d bet that well over 90% of users use the PVR’s TV guide to get to that TV channel. That is another example of widespread adoption, its just not as obvious. How about browsing the web at home? That’s been adopted widespread now we all have broadband at home.
In summary, I don’t expect any revolution, but the bubble of technology enthusiasts helps to steer the way and encourages innovation. The companies that get it right are rewarded with the adoption of the masses, and the competitors quickly fall by the wayside. This isn’t a revolution, or even a failure of a revolution, its just the predictable evolution of progress.
Here’s a related article I read the other day that I thought was interesting…
http://garethjones.me/2012/01/23/the-next-big-thing/
Great post. Yes, there’s far too much evangelism about digital tech. Yes, our lives haven’t changed that much in 20 years. But… mobile phones HAVE changed the way we live. Having the Internet at home is actually a big deal. Google and Facebook really have impacted on the way we relate to each other and the wider world.
Just because things don’t change as quickly as we hoped or expected, doesn’t mean they’re not changing. I think of it as the law of unrealistic expectations – and the advertising industry is especially prone to it. Our enthusiasm for the new is exaggerated and misplaced. Then when whatever it is fails to deliver, we get all disappointed and negative. Silly really.
I thought your last paragraph was spot on. Much harder to spot the under-estimated stuff. And this is often the stuff that has the big impact.
A useful injection of common sense before we all hurl ourselves off the latest fashionable cliff. Good stuff.
I love this, even though I may disagree with the main point. It’s rare that you read anything level-headed about changes in media habits, especially in advertising.
It’s important to note that we’re talking a lot about media consumption of technologies that have been around for less than five years. Five years after the TV was invented people were still listening to the radio more yet TV was still the most disruptive media event of the century. There is certainly a lot over-promising in regards to digital media, particularly emerging media, but the opportunity for brands and communicators is unparalleled. Industries like automobiles and consumer electronics have known for decades that word-of-mouth is their #1 driver of sales yet they’ve been forced to dump money into passive media that never touches this behavior. It hasn’t reached critical mass yet but digital media is getting closer than any other form of media to answering one of the biggest marketing conundrums of our time.
Social shopping, widespread peer-to-peer content sharing, semantic aggregation and all the other technologies that are claiming to change the world may not be changing anything yet but the shift from passive to interactive media, however slow, will still end up being the biggest cultural transition of our lifetimes.
Larry Page talks about this in a simple way that’s always made sense to me (and he riffs off Amara’s Law in doing so):
People tend to dramatically overestimate the effects of technology over the next 12 months but dramatically underestimate the effects of technology over the next 5 years.
Maybe it’s as much about our horizons – and ambitions – as about anything else?
Good thread here.
Nice article and I’d agree that its a more or less accurate snap shot of the ‘now’ but its a stretch to surmise that the ‘reality gap’ is really that wide and will stay that way. There are countless dynamics at play, just one for example, most people alive today were not born with interpolated technology so of course there will be a huge proportion who stick to what they grew up with. A more accurate reading of the so called ‘reality gap’ would be a targeted measure of people who grew up with the internet.
The ‘Real Life’ line is not locked nor static its dynamic and could swing up at any point and is set to do so. If the (respected) futurists are even remotely accurate then we are on the cusp of a technological leap into the unknown. Right now its bubbling so yes real world lives are comparable to the recent past but as we progress a whole new set of dynamics will come into play. The ‘Singularity’ may take a lot longer as will the real world use of Craig Venter’s “Artificial Life”, AI, “The Web Of Things” etc etc but they are coming and will bring potentially radical changes and unknown externalities across the board. In terms of digital, we are just laying the pipes, nothing is really connected yet but it will be and when it is people will use it like they use Google today.
The speed of change could hit so rapidly that holding this premise is of little use, it would be like analyzing the state of things through the lens of a horse and cart when cars are being tinkered with in the sheds.
Gone will be the quaint days of consumers having the final say… they won’t really have a choice (in many cases) because of the added layers of dynamics, like teenagers of today and social media.
For any kind of revolution, there will be two kinds of people. Those who welcome it foreseeing it’s potential
And there will be those who will adopt very slowly.
For the web in particular, there are those who make use of internet to make lives simple. They are early adopters. And those who think life is much simpler without change.
So the reality gap is proportional to the rate of adoption.
Also, I think, revolution of any kind has to merge with biological evolution over time to be fruitful and not become a mirage.
Most of us are born programmed to adopt to changes slowly as it was how our genes have been developing over ages.
From the man who made fire to the man who invented wheel, there was a gap of thousands of years. So the genes must have been slow learners.
Now, everyday there is an innovation, so some of our genes can’t catch up.
The rate at which technology is growing is immense.
In future adoption rate would be much quicker. So much so that the technology would have to catch up with our adoption rate.
Meaning, the genes of those who have already adopted will be transferred to the next generation, (biologically, culturally) making it much smarter and quicker in adopting.
That means, the next big thing to the Internet will be adopted much quickly, since the genes would be better instructed to do so.
[...] Interesting post from @bbhlabs about the digital revolution & whether we’ve overstated its impact - http://bit.ly/w4bFSJ [...]
[...] The Digital Revolution is Over-Hyped BBH Labs take a contrarian view on the much ballyhooed digital revolution and says the emperor has no clothes. [...]
Nice article Ed, thanks. I like the change/time/ reality gap diagram. It makes your point well. Only on reflection, I’m not sure it’s right. I’m not sure the “gap between the myth and reality is ever-widening”. No evidence for that of course, but in my daily life I sense an increasingly clear-eyed appraisal of what’s possible and what’s just froth. Your article is (ironically) a good indicator of that point.
We always tend to grossly overestimate the short-term impact of innovation and while simultaneously grossly underestimating its long-term impact.
[...] Ed Booty sieht durch den digitalen Hype hindurch [...]
[...] Majority report: looking through the digital hype « BBH Labs – its the Bill Gates quote “technology doesn’t change things as much as you think in the short term, and we underestimate the rate of technological change in the long term” [...]
Fascinating post, Ed and Mel. A few thoughts that might help make sense of the debate in your post and the thread:
First, you’re making a classic ‘argument against interest’. There have been plenty of commentators questioning the Internet’s influence on everyday life: few come from the sharp end of digital marketing like BBH Labs, which makes your position all the more worthy of consideration.
The post also gets to the heart of the communication business. Fundamentally, the value of BBH and other agencies is the understanding of how to connect with audiences. What they’re not doing is just as important as what they’re doing. Nike’s Trevor Edwards said: “we’re not in the business of keeping media companies alive, we’re in the business of connecting with consumers.” That’s as true for Twitter as it is for TV.
At the same time, Majority Report underestimates where the Internet is making real change in people’s lives. Maybe it hasn’t changed the brands we buy. It has certainly changed business and people’s work lives. People working in retail and services might still drive home in a Fiesta and watch Eastenders but they’re working in a very different world and under very different competitive conditions.
And it has changed how people form opinions. The ecosystem of public opinion is very different today, from the reactions to the BP oil spill to Trafigura’s attempts to censor the press. To lift a phrase from my boss David Jones, it’s changing how people will change the world.
Finally, a thought about the absolute numbers.If you’re working with what Edelman call The Informed Public, you can’t overstate its importance. The 8% of British people who use Twitter includes close to 50% of MPs. (Source: Tweetminster.) A significant slice of IBM’s digital marketing budget goes on helping its 425,000 workforce communicate the company’s story on social media. That kind of marketing is a value rather than a volume business. You can’t explain the disproportionate importance of the networked world without remembering that. Warren Buffett defended his purchase of Wrigley shares at the height of the dot com boom by stating that the Internet wouldn’t change the way people chew gum. Look higher than chewing gum and there’s a whole lot more change.
Thanks for all your thoughts.
I am glad this article has started a bit of a debate.
It is a knowingly one-sided account of things and is only a snapshot of the present rather than a vision of the future.
In reality, the adoption curve certainly does account for some of the data I mention.
In honesty, I had planned the original article to continue on to outline a more realistic (and indeed fundamental) set of changes that the digital ‘revolution’ will cause in the future.
Unfortunately the editor didn’t afford me any more words.
However, in a serendipitous act of transatlantic clairvoyant collaboration, Heidi has succinctly covered some important points that I might hopefully have gone on to make.
All that said, I do think that it’s the first half of the argument that is under-voiced.
Evidently the readers of this blog are abnormally reasonable, considered and informed on the subjects of technology and futurology. However, elsewhere I consistently see accounts of technology’s impact and adoption misrepresented and overinflated.
Similarly I feel that too many communications agencies unwittingly (or perhaps knowingly) chase what is possible and ‘futuristic’ over and above what is the right and effective solution for their clients.
Of course it’s exciting, important and in some sense our duty to look to the future and to advocate the emerging importance of digital media. Mainstream change has always relied on a vanguard willing to explore and embrace the new. Just so long as we remember to keep one eye on reality, even if it’s not quite as exciting.
Technology is always adopted more slowly than projected. It’s only agencies that tell it is faster. Some changes do happen quickly though. Witness online shopping, its rise and the changes it has wrought already on the high street (admittedly in combination with a recession)
Change causes more change. Start with the plough, you get irrigation, pottery, craftsmen, civilization and writing, mathematics, a calendar to predict floods, empires, and ultimately a modern world where change happens so rapidly you can’t keep up.
Tech change is happening generationally – it takes about 20 – 25 years for the effects to be truly felt.
Change is unpredictable because it’s chaotic in the mathematical sense. If agancies truly want to server their clients in the future they should employ anthropologists and mathematicians.
I think of the noise we make in this business like the work a tunnel digger does. Ever seen one of those? Here’s a picture:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunnel_boring_machine
We churn up a bunch of dust, throw sparks and make a mess, but without all of that noise and dust there would be no way forward.
One of the only things I carry with me at work from my Anthro degree is Stephen Jay Gould’s theory of punctuated equilibrium. Admittedly, his theory relates to evolutionary biology, but it’s a very powerful metaphor. “When significant evolutionary change occurs, the theory proposes that it is generally restricted to rare and … rapid events.” As opposed to how things are more commonly understood to evolve, in a “generally smooth and continuous” manner.
Because we make noise and dust everyday, we expect change to happen everyday. Everywhere. Continuously. But that’s not how it works.
And even if it did, there’s very little chance we’d be able to see it as it happened.
Anyway, back to digging.
More on punctuated equilibrium here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punctuated_equilibrium
This is a great discussion – I disagreed with much of the original post but Heidi and some of the other posters have taken it further with clarity. I think there are two key details…
“Evolution not revolution”
Semantics really: although the changes we’re experiencing are huge, for many they are generational – as Paul Saffo noted 10+ years ago, “Changes happen not at the speed of tech, but at the speed of habit.”
More significantly,
“Context not content’
What we do stays pretty similar for now, but how we do it has been the proverbial paradigm shift. Over time, how we do it has a direct affect on what we do.
For the sake of argument: where I think this is relevant to our field, is that if as Ed says, we believe that the tech industry has hyped the “speed, scale and depth of the so-called digital revolution”, then I’d also suggest that the advertising industry (I’m generalising for the sake of argument) has understated the evolution through similar levels of inertia and denial – traces of which are inherent in the original post.
Heidi notes that “Those with raw, human drive will take advantage of this democratization…” and it’s the democratisation of how we consume content that ‘Advertising’ has been slow to absorb. While other industries have generally assimilated a new digital context (retail, banking, etc…), we have often stood around consoling ourselves from a content perspective, ‘…it’s king you know?’ or ‘we’ll always need big ideas’ – this of course is true, but irrelevant: like saying retail is all about sales. It’s the context that’s changed and that will, through evolution, change content and consumption.
Coming very late to this particular party. It’s certainly refreshing to see someone trying to be critical on the subject of how technology is influencing our lives (or not). And it’s certainly true that 99% of chatter around the pace of technological change (and its impact) is tediously uncritical and typically self-serving.
But I have to take issue with the central proposition that nothing has changed. Of course life is fundamentally the same as it was 20 years ago, but then you could just as easily argue that life has stayed pretty much the same for centuries, if you want to get down to the fundamentals.
But how we live those lives, how we go about trying to understand the world and our place within it, how we relate to one another and the broader power structures at play have undoubtedly changed, and fundamentally. Those changes have been driven by technology, to be sure, but also by how we use it. It’s a two-way street.
Maybe I’d have felt more comfortable with your argument if I hadn’t felt like you were playing quite so fast and loose with the stats to support them. It’s no good citing sources only to deprive me of the links (or even the details) that enable me to interrogate them for myself (this being just one of the many ways in which expectations and conventions have been changed by the web).
Let’s take this one, for example: “Only 2% of web users actively create and contribute.” Your source? (And I quote) “eg. Wikipedia” Hardly unimpeachable! Or hardly representative, if you used it not as your source, but rather as being a benchmark for all participatory behaviour.
Or this: “Only 20% of the average smartphone’s capacity is ever used.” What does this even mean? Given that most smartphones are effectively universal machines, and therefore capable of performing an infinite number of tasks, I’m not even sure how or where you would begin to calculate something like that. Statistical pedantry aside, and more to the point, the latest Ofcom report detailing how people actually use them suggests quite the opposite (http://goo.gl/3QJrh).
Anyway, thanks for trying to shake things up. It’s genuinely appreciated (and much needed). But a little more transparency might make it easier for us all to move things forward and create compelling experiences, that touch real people, using not technology, but magic
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You have missed however, the disproportionate effect it has had on a) business processes b) job creation c) the travel, publishing, music and entertainment industries and d) retail sales.
Meanwhile, the mobile revolution has fundamentally shifted the way we maintain relationships and communicate with each other. It has consequently aided in the migration of families further afield.
Also consider your own purchase behaviour. How much cash do you use to buy goods versus cards? Card payments are a result of the digital revolution.
Your article seems to skip these realities. Then also consider manufacturing (where 3D printers enable companies to manufacturer shapes such as Toroids that are otherwise impossible to make using traditional engineering). Modern automative engineering efficiency gains would have been impossible without its use, along with that of computer modelling and simulations.
The digital revolution is not a media or channel revolution. In this very narrow definition of the revolution, you are correct. Media behaviours are shifting slowly. But this is also a cause/effect issue where media has been very slow to take up digital technologies. Media alone however, is a very narrow view of the revolution.
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[Don't read this - read Heidi, or Ben, or Betty above - smarter saner, nicer people. Great comments people, great comments...]
Hi Ed,
I guess enough people have said (extremely nicely) what they take issue with in your hypothesis – but I think you get off kind of lightly – it reads like flame bait to me. Naughty naughty.
You’re right, my dad still does the same crossword, but on an ipad. I love that there is a generation now below me who aren’t even pre-mobile, let alone pre-PC, and that there’s a touchscreen generation below them, so when you use the phrase “20 years ago” (which is somewhat arbitrary) you are talking about ‘normal’ people who didn’t type, who looked up facts in encyclopedias, queued with cheques in banks, were restricted to their choice of books by the size of their local bookshop, had hardcopies of photos, records, music, planned a holiday by going to a shop that sold flights, arranged a time and place to meet people – and then had to stick to it. THey wrote letters! They hadn’t even heard of sushi, spam was still served as a meal and yet the ‘internet’ had 1m host machines. So that ‘revolution’ was well underway.
What about 30 years ago when the first home computer arrived?
Or 40 when the first computer games were invented [Pong]?
(Can’t believe you completely ignore gaming)
“how people actually live and use technologies has changed very little” – umm. Your frame of reference may just be too short. As Betty says, it doesn’t work like that – you are immersed in that froth. But it is changing. Profoundly.
Behaviour isn’t just running numbers on what people did and what mattered to them, it’s how they go about it.
And then you get to Heidi’s points about the future. Which rock.
So really I just wanted to shout out to everyone – Hello everyone! – You all live in an echo chamber! Get out more!
Best from Sydney
T