thenetworkone: the independent agency network

1st October 2010

Post with 6 notes

Resistance is futile – Google will assimilate you!

A few days ago at TechCrunch in San Francisco, Google’s Eric Schmidt told us about his vision for the future.  Not surprisingly, Google is at the centre of it.  It’s a tech utopia where we are always connected, where we can find what we want, when we want it, in what so ever colour we’d like it in and have access to the sum of human knowledge – good, bad or just plain incorrect in some case.

Schmidt believes, “We are at one of those points in technology where something interesting is about to happen,” and that soon, we’ll be more willing to let computers take over life’s more mundane tasks (such as driving the car – a terrifying thought if they crash with the frequency of my laptop!) thereby freeing up our time and enabling us to do other more ‘worthwhile’ things.

Now, setting aside the obvious temptation to draw analogies between this and Wachowski brothers Matrix-esque view of Humankinds future, I suspect there’s a degree of truth and indeed inevitability about Schmidt’s beliefs.

Our acceptance and growing reliance on the proliferation of smart technology is extraordinary – fifteen years ago I worked for a large London agency that was debating the merits of getting email – after all, we had several fax machines.  Now, I practically have a nervous breakdown when my iPhone can’t get a 3G signal thereby barring me from my email and, I am not alone. Take any flight and watch what the passengers do as soon as the wheels hit the tarmac – beep, beep, on go their Blackberry’s!

So has technology taken over our lives? 

Yes, of course it has (in truth it started when some hairy caveman stuck a rod through the centre of a round disk and invented the wheel) but, this is not necessarily a bad thing providing it’s tempered with dose of humanity.  It’s all too easy for us to be drawn in by the shiny little LCD screens but, let us not forget that at the end of the day, human interaction is a fantastic thing (if you don’t believe me, watch Disney’s Wall.e).

Whilst I might find it terribly useful to do my weeks grocery shopping from the train, it’s not as enjoyable as exploring the store, talking to the butcher and choosing the food in person.

And perhaps this is my point.  It’s not enough for this sort of technology to be useful it has to be intuitive, interactive, enjoyable and human for us to engage with it fully. 

As marketers we need to understand this more so now than ever before.  We have seen so many companies (and their eager agencies) jump on the ‘App’ bandwagon to varying degrees of success, (even my local taxi firm has an App – so I can track where my cab isn’t).  

With the ‘Outernet’, Web 3.0 and augmented reality coming our way faster that the proverbial pulse down a fibre optic cable, we need to find not only appropriate but useful and fun ways to exploit the communications opportunities these technologies present us with. 

And yes, we at thenetworkone are putting ‘our money where our mouth is’, by offering thenetworkone member agencies and friends a series of seminars workshops on the subject in the coming months.

Watch your iPhone, Blackberry, email etc for more information.