The post-internet world is with us.
The ways of communication, in the "global village", may have evolved to include social media, but the aim is the same, whether face to face or virtual encounters.
It's a sharing of one's message with another.
The value of the message --whether between someone known/or can be met with, in the here and now/face to face, in real time, or whether between a virtual presence/perhaps never to meet physically -- the value of the two styles of interaction is the same/is equal.
Only the methodology of the message sharing has changed.
Very interesting that Twitter and Facebook have been integral to the recent citizen revolts in Tunisia and in Egypt. When the Egyptian government initially stopped internet access, in order to try to control the crowd's collective rallying responses, then online banking, air travel, medical, etc, also were "frozen", thus bringing the entire society to a standstill.
One can't pick and choose on the internet terrain.
One is either on the 20th Century side or on the 21st Century page, in this AG (After Google) world. Either/Or, as Kierkegaard promised.
The post-internet world is chaotic, full of raw data, unrated information, where opinion can take the place of proven thought, and where total strangers have become one's "friend"...the vocabulary of this world has blurred the meaning of words like privacy, corroborated data, friendship, time, balance, editorial comment, loyalty, etc.
There is an immediacy in the binary world of internet connectivity: on/off, on/off, act/react, act/respond. No spaces of downtime for measured consideration...response/reaction is required immediately. This does seem to imply that the editing function in our brains could be atrophying.
It may also explain why the old formulas of creating balance in one's business life are not working. The "global village" means that we are always "on"...someone, somewhere, is needing our services and if we don't "answer" in a manner that is" timely", the consumer of the service will simply "pass on" to the next provider. Does this mean that the post-internet world is about impatience? "I just texted you and you didn't answer!"...that kind of immediacy erodes thoughtful responses, and may mean that emotion will rule the day. It's certainly going to breed a sense of uncertainty among service providers. If the "answer" to the consumer query isn't immediate, in the time-frame required by the consumer, then the provider loses their "edge".
Marketing of services has changed, due to this post-internet world of "instant" communication/immediacy of response.
When viewing the coverage of the revolts in Tunisia and in Egypt, it's clear that there is no time to respond in conventional ways, when seen from the perspective of those who held power. The consumer has taken the forefront position in all manner of "transactions".
The consumer revolution unleashed by the internet, and the technological explosion that followed, has forever changed the terrain of politics, business, finance, education, personal loyalties. Nothing is untouched.
In a very short space of years, we've come through a shift of such major proportions that we are only now dimly understanding that a whole new way of reacting to our "times" is required.
An AG (After Google) person finds it easier, in one way, to navigate the current world...they've been in it from its inception. For those BG (Before Google) people, it can be both scary and exhilarating. It requires a letting go of the past's script, the things that worked without much thinking about them, and learning the new methodology. The advantage of a BG person, in this quickly dissipating "transition period", is that they can be interpreters of two world views, and so can "speak" to both. Hybrid transition periods are hiatus moments; they don't last.
We could liken this shift time to the dramatic 14th Century, with the Gutenberg revolution, and the way his invention of the printing press changed society completely, and gave birth to the Renaissance, Humanism, the turn from the oligarch to the "common" man. There are other eras with such dramatic societal shifts, too.
Innovation is often the creative and the successful pathway to the new. So, short-term, it's important to get the Smart Phone understood and used the way it's meant to be, to get a tablet and use it the way it's meant to be, to text, to Facebook, to understand that the first iterations of websites no longer "work", that emails are becoming like old style faxes, "almost extinct", that the erasure of time and geography delivered by the electronic revolution of our time is a way to expand our self-imposed boundaries...and to truly understand what the words "global village" really mean.
Scary? For BG people, yes...exhilarating? Definitely! Fun? If we let ourselves, we will enjoy this shift...as usual, it's all about attitude. Our perspective of this shift will shape our response.
As always, the outcome is up to us.
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