I grew up in a house where TV was banned. Sugar cereal and candy were frowned upon, but television, especially Saturday morning cartoons, was the ultimate forbidden fruit. Prohibition rarely works and in my case that proved true; I begged for gum in the line at the supermarket, enjoyed orange-flavored aspirin a bit too much and looked longingly at lollipops dropped in parking lots. But nothing trumped TV. I remember waking early and sneaking downstairs to illicitly watch as the test pattern segued into Looney Toons. Yet my stealth was insufficient -- one day in 1975 my mother caught me and kicked a hole in the TV's screen. I'll never forget the days as the shattered set lay on the curb waiting for the garbage crew to haul it away.
Her logic was pretty simple (I think the words "rotting your brain in front of that wretched tube" may have been used). She wanted me to read, to love books, to learn in a particular way. Was she right? Well she may have been and today I'll explore the affect that the evolution that media is having on the stories we tell, how we think and the culture that we create.
Almost 1 year ago, I joined IPG to build an Emerging Media Lab in New York City. IPG Mediabrands' challenge was that with the evolution brought by digital media, planning had become more and more complex. Visualizing solutions was a necessity - it was the best way to show how we orchestrate thousands of touchpoints that can often feel intangible. We focused our energy on creating an experience that could show clients what was possible; to paint a picture of the strategic potential of using the most cutting edge media technologies. We were driven by the belief that by pairing consumer insight with imagination, software and data, could drive bottom-line results. Tonight, it's with total pride that we launch the result of that labor.
Since March, the Mediabrands website has been running a countdown clock, As we pop the corks, I thought I'd post some before and after photos. More importantly, I want to humbly thank everyone involved.
I finished the last post by asking for readers' help figuring out how to complete the journey that began here. Many thanks for all the feedback, I really appreciate how thoughtful and considered it has been. Now to the subject at hand.
This post has been the most challenging, inspirational and (I hope) valuable part of the series.
Putting this together has caused me break the pace of daily dispatches; it was just challenging to synthesize everything but I think it's been worth it; I've had insights that have eluded me until I reached this topic. I'm amazed it took me until the 16th dispatch to realize my that my central theme is that in visualizing the future we keep telling and retelling stories about the Past to understand the Present and imagine the Future.
Stories are the language we understand; they are the organizing principles of our lives and we care about how they end. It is through stories that we place ourselves within the timeline of history, connect with others, makes sense of life and derive meaning. Stories are Universal.
Let's begin today with a backwards glance. We're just over halfway through the 23 part series; so far we've covered quite bit of ground. Here's a quick graphic review:
Today's topic is a fun one, but before I start, here's BLATANT SCREAMING DISCLAIMER: (The title of today's post is intended to provoke thought and debate. I am well aware of the fact that this topic is often treated with starry-eyed breathlessness and a lack of scientific rigor. My intent is to simply to conduct a thought experiment, not to invite you to join the Borg)
First things first, let me explain what may otherwise feel like a jarring segue from Ponzi Schemes and the Financial System to a discussion of the internet as a brain. In developing this series, I've looked at how societies have developed, how technology has affected how we think about the future and the effect of these technical innovations on media and commerce. Once I reached yesterday's topic, I was surprised that how fuzzy the line was between a Ponzi or Pyramid scheme and the international financial system. I'm not yet sure where I come out with respect to the rage of the Occupy Wall Street Movement, but something generationally defining is happening and about a broken economic system with a message spreading at net speed.
At a fundamental level (jump in here economists), both Ponzi Schemes or Health Finanacial Markets only work insofar as participants trust in the system and have faith that debts will be honored. (I covered this in detail in "The Future of Money") . I remember in 2008 during the Financial Collapse watching the headlines in the WSJ grow daily to larger and larger typeface. Running a startup at the time, each days headline made me queasier and queasier so I wrote a short piece for AdAge called "In Shaky Times, Relax". Looking back on it 3 years later, it seems both naively hopeful and creepily accurate:
"Financial institutions are repositories of trust, which they accumulate, hold and invest in the form of investors and depositors' money. As soon as the trust placed in them erodes, the funds quickly follow. The phenomenon we're witnessing right now is the result panic-amplifying feedback loops that happen in our highly networked world.This is the the societal equivalent of a healthy person who knows he will drop dead if his heart rate exceeds 160 beats per minute. Everything is good unless he starts thinking about it. And his heart-rate rises. Which worries him. And his heart rate rises and rises and then . . .pow.. . . . .The reality is that nobody will escape unscathed because we are all so fundamentally interconnected. "
No discussion of the web's evolution towards sentience would be complete without Kevin Kelly's epic talk at the 2007 TED Conference entitled "The Next 5000 Days of the Internet". In it he masterfully chronicles the first 15 years of the web and compares it's quantitative elements to the circuitry and memory of a brain. I recommend watching the whole thing, but for me the pull quote comes 5 minutes in - despite it's immensity, the Internet (in 2007) was roughly the size of 1 human brain.
I gave a talk with this title on Saturday. My old friend Kurt Kratchman had invited me down to Savannah to the International Digital Media and Arts Association's annual conference. IDMAA's members are amazing; they teach digital media at universities around the world and they're really the folks in the trenches training the next generation of creators. I had done it back in 2008 and what I loved was that it was such a real environment -the absolute opposite of the Techcrunch / Google Zeitgeist circuit. These people are Teachers.
And a funny thing happened. I've always wondered how I ended up doing what I do - I basically grew up as the kid of two profs (my dad is a computer scientist and mom an archaeologist). Lot's of past, present and future. But the amazing thing was that speaking to teachers cut made me realize that while I might think a lot about the future, our teachers and students are the ones who will really make it happen.
So here's what I'm going to do. On November 11th, the IPG Media Lab launches. I've spent the past year working to create a picture of what the Future of Media will look like. So, between now and 11/11/11 I'll be posting 1 piece a day. 23 pieces total.
Each will explore 1 slide from the presentation I gave IDMAA. I have no idea where it will go but I've been thinking so much about the Past, Present and Future and can't wait to explore.
The November issue of Media Magazine hit newsstands yesterday. Edited by my colleague Brian Monahan, it's called the "Future of Media" and is really quite something. I'm proud to have a piece in it, called "The Future of Money", which I've included below. Feedback warmly welcomed.
