Essay: Is our moving world moving too quickly?
Some of my fondest memories as a child are of me sitting in the back seat of my fathers car, captivated by the world outside my window, comforted by the warmth of being inside and the security of my seat belt.
The people, buildings, sign posts, roads and other cars were the actors and actresses, props and backdrops in my own private screening of the world around me. I could look up and see the sky imagine where the people on that plane were going to and had come from and I could return to street level and imagine where people were going and what they were doing - all within a blink of an eye.
This motion picture of the world was fast (approx 30-40mph if my dad was sticking to the limit) for the eyes and brain to constantly see > comprehend > assess > imagine and conclude before moving on to the next scene, but it was manageable.
Those days of being a back seat driver and a passenger to my imagination unfortunately no longer exist in that romantic, nostalgic form and it's not because I now have my own licence.
Our world moves and changes at a faster rate than ever before and whilst moving and changing is good, a part of me can't help but feel it is moving too quickly. One could legitimately argue that it isn't moving quick enough and instead it is me that has slowed down fatigued by my own juvenile desire to move on to the next BIG thing and the thing after that. I'm prepared to accept this fact. But before concluding at this juncture, consider how the life of an 80's child differs to that of a brat from the 00's (the naughties).
This isn't the bit where I compare my analogue toys (and TV for that matter) to today's digital equivalent. That would be too easy and to be fair, what point would that make other than the fact that technology has progressed and times have changed? Technology should have improved (as it has) and times have changed (naturally). Instead, I speak of our ability to truly connect to moments in our lives and the products that fuelled those experiences. To illustrate, my father would speak of the summer of '69 (as an example) when this song came out and he was at this school and had this teacher by this name, he was reading this book, saw this film and so on and so forth. There is no web-based timeline to scroll through, perhaps not even pictures to trigger such memories, this is simply a time stamped indelibly in his brain that he can recall with fondness. How? Why? I think because the world moved at a more manageable pace and the products that fuelled those experiences had greater opportunity to sit comfortably in our lives. Meaningful connections had the chance to move in to our memory banks and establish roots that have lasted up until today. It took time before the SLR print had been processed and was in our hand and that period of waiting for holiday snaps created an anticipation that is now lost in our Insta(nt)gram generation.
Mine, I feel, is the last generation where we actually remember our childhood with simplicity and fondness. We laugh at the NAFNAF CO 54 clothes and smile when someone hums the Biker Grove or Grange Hill theme tune. We got our music fix on Top of the Pops and buying just one record at Our Price on the weekend and playing it to death was a massive deal. We recall the, TV holding page, Channel 4 and ITV idents and reminisce with glee about the GameBoy, Atari Lynx, Master System et al. We had 4 channels and a joystick in our hand, but we appreciated what we had and had enough time to let those delights mean something to us and shape those innocent years.
What point am I trying to make? Well it is simply this; whereby an album would be played to death for months on end with the press stop > press rewind > and press play game you would play with your cassette player to repeat that song, now we have access to endless amounts of music at the scroll of a wheel and a click of button. Want to repeat? Just click back. Want to listen something similar? An automated algorithm generates a list of what else you might like. Simple, quick and all too easy. Whereas we would once be sure to be in front of the telly as a family by 8 on the dot to watch something together, now we watch the programmes at a time that suits us, with or without our loved ones on any of our many devices. We've partially replaced the pages of a good bedside book and its bookmark with a screen or skeuomorph replica on a tablet. The joy of receiving a hand written letter with stamps of origination has been declared extinct by the speed and ease of emails, IM's, Facebook walls and 140 character tweets and DMs. And to top it off, we now hold up retina display iPads at our loved ones so that those who couldn't be bothered to make the effort can 'join in' and 'be there' on that special day. OK so that last one is a bit cynical, but the accumulation of these digital shortcuts have contributed greatly to our inability to truly connect to and embrace the world around us and the rich experiences that such untainted, unadulterated interactions can bring.
I'm not being naive here, I know full well and accept too that in countless cases the digital world has indeed brought us closer than ever before, especially to ones that geographical distance would have otherwise meant very little or no contact at all. Advancements in technology have in many ways made our lives easier and enabled us to do things that were previously unheard of. I know this. I accept this. But there was something rewarding about the waiting, about the trying and about the experiencing before the digital world reduced time and increased 'convenience'.
Having said all this, maybe the reality is that the world isn't actually moving quickly enough and that our somewhat inability to collectively adapt to the potential rate of change is slowing us down. Maybe, I should just accept that the experiences that I had as a child of the 80's that enabled me to appreciate even small things more meaningfully were themselves as radical a change to my parents as the era of the 00's child are to me today. Maybe, I should get over myself and stop talking all this drivel - I don't know.
What I do know for sure, is that with all this in mind, the traditional business model and the formulaic branding methods have to change radically. Since our world IS moving so quickly, IS changing at a rate of knots, can businesses really expect to be continuously relevant? Can the creators of products, services and the experiences they generate REALLY expect to their creations to have a fixed place in our lives for a sustained period of time? Should businesses adopt a shorter life span approach and focus on a shorter period of relevancy and meaningfulness and be confident enough to move on when time is up (new MySpace springs to mind)? Is a permanent state of beta the new 'established'? Or is the quick pop-up here-today-gone-tomorrow structure a sharp sword to the makers, designers, thinkers and doers, making, designing, thinking up and doing anything of any real lasting value?
Indeed I find myself asking questions like, what will the next Facebook be, what will the next game changing iProduct be and what universal standard/platform will the Internet be replaced with? What will the world look like when my sons son is sitting comfortably in the back seat of their commuter spaceship watching the world go by and having his imagination tell him its own story? Or will his window too be replaced by some device force feeding his brain an artificial reality?
The world is moving and changing quickly but business and branding still tries to achieve the same impact that it had on us years ago. That can't continue. The goal posts have moved, the rules have changed and - whilst this might sound contradictory - the catch up is unsatisfactory. Our digital world has done this to us, it has altered and rewired our brains and even though individually we might sign out from time to time for some analogue fresh air, we've been reprogrammed to iOS infinity and it’s far too much of a wrench to go back.
When we look at our map app (providing it's the Google one) it's clear that we are firmly placed on a path of disruptive innovation and congested progression. Our destination? The future, but who knows what that even looks like. The world is bursting with closely networked creators that don't want to create the next big thing, but the next, next big things after that and unfortunately the result of this fast forward thinking simply means that we struggle to appreciate what we have now and how far we've come. We are forever unsatisfied, forever chasing tomorrow.
Whilst I won't dispute that chasing tomorrow is exciting, whilst I champion change and progression, I hope it never destroys the warmer sense of joy that I get when reminiscing about the backseat of my fathers car and the window to the world that seat gave me.