I put some thought today into what digital communication and “the web” really is. And I’m certain about one thing. It’s not a technology. It’s is less so for each day. When the first car was just a prototype in the lab, it was all technology. Today it’s a lifestyle accessoary. When the computer was first invented it was a high tech laboratory building in itself. Today it is the glue of society.
This shouldn’t be surprising to anybody. This is what civilization is; moving more and more levels of specialization below the threshold of our conciousness and spending more time at the higher levels of abstraction. That’s what civilization always has been trying to do. You don’t consider who’s harvested the tomatoes that became the ketchup on your take-out burger, you just bought the super meal. Super meals just are. And technology just is. Like air.
The Internet is getting there fast. Soon it will be like air. But for agencies as well, more and more technology can be bought of the shelf. Or well, actually, most of it is free. People don’t care about technology, they care about experience.
The future is in content, friends. Embrace it.
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Hey Walter. Good point and really an interesting text. However I think that the Internet already has been fully adapted in all sorts of ways. People dont really give a damn about binary numbers and how websites like YouTube are built. They only care about one thing. And that is deliverance, fast deliverace. But it’s true as you say; If there is no experience, you have no chance of survival.
And this is the path I think all types of advertising should be heading towards, wether digital or not. Deliver experience, something the target audience can talk about and share with each other. The bigger the idea the better.
Isn’t this why there is a thing called Internet? So that we can share things, and communicate with each other faster and more effective. Humans are really simple. All we want in life is acknowledgement. And this mean that we are eager to share things we think that the receiver will like.
Thanks for your comment Jeremy. Though I’m perhaps not prepared to agree that acknowledgement is ALL we want, I am definitely ready to agree that It’s a super potent incentive. And I think you’re absolutely right about the Internet being no more than an extremely swift infrastructure for sharing things and recieving acknowledgement.
Technology is becoming less and less visible. Just as it should. According to the laws of civilization.
Hey Walter. Thanks for replying and you’re right. Acknowledgement is probably not the only incentive that drives us (but it made me comment on your blog didn’t it?)
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I sometimes have a tendency to describe things as “black or white”. Makes it easier to be extremist when making a point. But you’re right. There are all sorts of things that drives us, but what are they really?(Probably that’s why Micael Dahléns blog is so interesting (yet strange)).
We’re heading towards an exciting time though where “People 2.0-insight” is the biggest challenge. What do we want, and how do we want it? Aspecially in the notion of sharing/ experience/consuming a brand.
Seems as it will be a interesting time ahead for me as a student. I do graduate in a year and im both excited and scared. Our world and its technology is evolving fastly and so should our advertising. I hope that the people in charge of global companies get that.
/Jeremy