The latency of culture is a function of the speed of information. Culture can’t change until new information has propagated and this used to take a long time.

When letters took weeks to arrive, that defined the threshold of assumed response. Now, thanks to Twitter, the latency of culture has decreased to almost nothing, as everyone shares news as soon as it might be true. The news media feels it needs to move in step, so it makes mistakes, as we were shown during the Boston bombings. Speed is as important as content, evidenced in the Oreo SuperBowl blackout tweet that went around the world.

Science fiction of the near future, from visionaries like William Gibson, collapsed into alternative versions of now, as we try to decode the increasingly weird present. Kevin Kelly calls this the missing near future.

No-one is laying out plans for how we are to move forward, and so, as an industry, we recycle the oldest idea in advertising – branded content.

Futurology is not about prediction, it’s about mapping possible pathways.

Without it, as Rushkoff suggests in Present Shock, planning gives way to ‘Apocalypto’, the hoping for an end of the ever decreasing circles of now, evinced by the endless, tiring, uses of the ‘death of’ narrative.

The death of the 30-second spot, of strategy, of traditional, of digital, or media.

All are, basically, saying “We give up!”. We can’t find our way to the future and so, like all end-of-days nonsense, it means people give up on trying to find functional solutions for the problems and opportunities of the present.

Perhaps, then, we need to start thinking about the future again and start living up to the promises we made to ourselves and to the industry back when the web was born and manifestos were being made. 

Marketing that was useful and beautiful, transparency of people and action that social media can deliver and distribute. Awesomeness created at the intersection of art, copy, Arduino and code,that can come about when we all learn to respect each other, department, silo, agency, client, and start working for the good of the industry and each other, as well as the bottom line.

The browser-based world wide web turned 20 this year. It’s finally ready.

Let’s start mapping out a future for our industry that doesn’t assume declining relevance and margins, but instead lets us help clients create value and make the world we live in, and the industry we work in, a nicer place.

– “The future isn’t what it used to be” – @faris

http://www.bandt.com.au/news/innovation/the-future-isn-t-what-it-used-to-be

 

//  What if we’re temporarily walking within the Terminator Line (the illuminated day side and the dark night side of a planetary body) between the current generation of advertising/marketing folks who are 25-45 and the next-next generation who haven’t lived anywhere else besides the paradoxically small-town of Zero-latency Culture? 

One group unknowingly walks anti-rotation. Essentially, relatively, sprinting towards the old way, and are rapidly left behind as the future Doppler zooms ahead like the Jetsons car sound.

Others (our youth, for instance, or others, who never really ‘grew up’ and loop iteratively in small eddies of awareness adolescence like a transmigration of the teen soul) are living their lives, floating with the current, barely aware that the sun is at its brightest point in the sky of recent memory and their latent optimism can’t help but drive them to awesomeness. 

How do we solve that problem? Maybe we don’t. Or shouldn’t. One group is left behind. They don’t know any better, they’re unaware. That’s life. The other, continues forward. And… that’s OK. Let’s help them go even faster, with purpose. We invest in their progress. Guide gently. Shove firmly. All the while being open to discovery ourselves. Specially when the Snapchats, the Twitterz and the Tumblrz come to life and we’re caught flat-footed. Scratching heads in paroxysms of surprise and delight. Stoked to witness the future arriving. At peace with our fears and insecurities.