Nex Media • Vol 5 Issue 3
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falls into the wrong hands. And there are plenty of those in both official and
unofficial power these days. So they have a point.
Unfortunately the direction of travel is already set. Ever since the first cave
painting and tribal folklore, humans have been bucking the consequences
of time and the limitations of space in order to talk across the ages and see
what’s round the next bend in space.
We defy gravity each time we fly. We are about to defy what has made us
human thus far.
The story to-date
The grand commentators of our times – McKinsey, Deloittes, MIT Sloan,
Accenture etc are both scriptwriters and directors of the transformation plays
they concoct for the wealthy patrons of their services. They act as a 21st
century Pepys for the rest of us to observe the changing fashions of society.
The topic du jour is, of course, digital. And as with every brand new fashion
everyone simply must have one or risk being ostracised.
They write the chapters of digital transformation and rehearse their clients
in how to bring the ideas to life. Every so often they report like headmasters
on progress. As of 2018, most remain in the ‘could do better’ apart from
some precocious talent leading the pack. These are the ‘always day one‘
organisations that, like classic film stars, refuse to succumb to age and
remain hovering in their own zeitgeist: consistently brilliant, pulling new stuff
out of the void.
The rest have clay feet. They still have the floors up as digital plumbers
continue to turn a jumble of dead ends into something that hums with the
intelligence required to lock onto ‘real time’ and start fishing for digital
footprints. To be fair, there are a few giants attempting to be nimble with their
innovation centres and hackathon cultures.
Even so, the world outside continues to accelerate away from what it used
to be. It used to be screens with touch and type. It’s becoming an invisible,
ubiquitous presence summoned by voice and gesture.
It used to be human judgement. Now it’s the prescriptive calculation of
a data-hungry algorithm that tells us the best way to fix our bodies, love-life
and bank balances.
Cars used to stay on the ground and have drivers. Blade Runner style sky
taxis are now a Chinese lifestyle choice.
Such is the momentum of this new magic that even the 1 per cent – who
own the 98 per cent – can unjustifiably hope for immortality.
What’s A Post-Digital Human?
Of course, there is always a price to pay when human experience is
heightened and accelerated. Ask the hippies! But now whole societies burn
the candle at both ends. What does too much digital do to us? Facebook
might be sheepishly wondering out loud, but for you and I what does a loss of
time and privacy do to our inner lives?
Constant noise. Everything real time. Ironically no space. I recently saw an
old Pickard-led Star Trek episode. They were suffering a no REM sleep threat
and rapidly going insane as a result. Is today’s polarisation of political tribes
part of that disease?
Digital has enabled cyber theft and fake news. The question of what’s real
gets under the skin. Apparently 30 per cent of Millennials spy on each other’s
digital correspondence. Gen Z prefer anonymised Instagram IDs.
Of course all this might just be the fun of the fair seen through older eyes.
Yes it’s crazy but that’s what millenarianism does to you. Humans are infinitely
adaptable. We might all be on a digital rush, but that does not mean we
aren’t instinctively self correcting.
Flipping sides, I have noticed the re-introduction of paperbacks on London
underground commutes. Kindles are fine, but the feel and flickability of paper
still draws many.
Only nine years ago Polaroid was going bankrupt. Now it’s been reborn
under the Impossible Project brand. Here is the second camera they have
launched. The reviewer describes it as ‘a pure analogue experience. The
OneStep 2 doesn’t have any digital connectivity and it’s a better product
because of it.’
Maybe part of the fusion of living physical and digital lives is to choose
the superior version for the moment at hand.
My sister’s son runs Quit Your Job record label in Bristol UK. At a recent end-
of-year family gathering during an after-lunch walk, he worked the rest of the
‘seniors’ for any tape recorders left in storage he might appropriate.
He explained that while rival labels simply offered them as a kind of retro
gimmick, he was going all the way and was actually issuing his latest bands
on tape! That’s trending towards radical for someone born digital.
So, is this just an arc of self-correcting behaviour which means we all end
up in a 1+1=3 digiverse? Maybe. Each new generation makes their own luck
and ignores the advice of those who have gone before. I gleefully did that
and had the best of times as a result. So, maybe the age old split between
roundhead and cavalier, republican and democrat is just humanity’s ying and
yang in motion. And everything over time stays pretty much in balance.
If so, then here is a new tipping point already causing imbalance.
At the time of writing this, I can confirm there is a massive swell building on
the seas I professionally navigate (customer engagement) that is preparing us
for a world which works better with less humans involved.
David Byrne (ex Talking Heads) dissects this dynamic with wonderful
precision in a 2017 contribution called Eliminating the Human. I commend the
whole piece but here’s the relevant nugget:
‘Human interaction is often perceived, from an engineer’s mind-set,
as complicated, inefficient, noisy, and slow. Part of making something
“frictionless” is getting the human part out of the way. The point is not that
making a world to accommodate this mind-set is bad, but that when one has
as much power over the rest of the world as the tech sector does over folks
who might not share that worldview, there is the risk of a strange imbalance.
The tech world is predominantly male – very much so. Testosterone combined
with a drive to eliminate as much interaction with real humans as possible for
the sake of “simplicity and efficiency”– do the math, and there’s the future.’
In transitioning the analogue world of physical being into the virtual
world of digital, coders are rearranging how daily life works. If futures are by
definition infinite, is this one wanted by the majority or the few?
Some of us see lines. Others see wiggles. A deep learn dive into that data
lake called human history tells us we need a bit of both. It’s time we taught
that in coding school at the very least.
About Martin Hill-Wilson
He is a customer engagement
and digital business
strategist. Also an author and
international keynote speaker.
Working under his own brand,
Brainfood Consulting, he
designs masterclasses and
transformational change helping
clients evolve their social and
digital capabilities.
He takes pride in his creative
output. In this context, he designs
and embeds relevant customer-
centric operating models for
various organisational needs.
Martin Hill-Wilson
