Uneven Distribution.

Always climbing.

October 31st, 2009

I’ve been having a recurring conversation with various people over the past few weeks. It’s always someone who’s been in the industry for a while, and is really starting to get stuck into digital. The phrase ‘getting up to speed’ gets thrown around a lot, and there’s this resounding idea that it’s so much to learn, but they feel like they’ve just about got it worked out.

My response is, usually, to let them know that this is it now. You’ll never be up to speed any more. Media, marketing, communications, technology, are all moving at such a pace, that the real skill is knowing where to look and surrounding yourself with diverse people who do the same.

I didn’t really figure this was worth a post, but in a few moments of nice synchronicity, I came across the same idea from different industries, and a different age. The first quote is from novelist F. Marion Crawford, in 1896:

The old fashioned novel is really dead, and nothing can revive it nor make anybody care for it again. What is to follow it?…A clever German who is here suggested to me last night that the literature of the future might turn out to be the daily exchange of ideas of men of genius—over the everlasting telephone of course—published every morning for the whole world…

Matthew Battle has a wonderfully brief and insightful opinion on this on his posterous.

I was then listening to a podcast by Yale Economics Professor, Robert Schiller. In it, he talks about a book by George Gibson, The Stock Exchanges of London, Paris and New York. Gibson writes about what would eventually become the Efficient Market Hypothesis, and argues that with information now shooting around the globe at the speed of light, all information about any particular market is now instantly knowable.

What’s amazing about this, is that Gibson wrote his book in 1889.

This is an idea that I’ve been comfortable with for quite a while now. I have a habit of having job titles that don’t exist until I start them, and I never have any idea where my next move will be. But, as the role of the digital world becomes more and more important, and more and more people fold it into their skillset, it’s important to know that we will never reach the pinnacle (the idea of climbing a mountain that you’ll never reach the summit of is actually one I stole from our MD, Andy Pontin. It’s a great way to visualise it, because you don’t actually climb a mountain for the view, it’s about the challenge in getting there).

But that shouldn’t be an overwhelming thing. As powerful as it is to think that our generation has created such an epic influx of information, technology and communication, this has been going on for a while now. Yet we still seem freaked out at the pace with which knowledge and skills have to be attained.

Comments

Its pretty true. The one thing that makes me feel better about the rate of change is that we’re not trying to just wrap our heads around technology, media etc, but the way that people use it. For some reason this turns what would probably be an intimidating thought on its head for me - with people in the equation things will always be unpredictable and ripe for experimentation - and full of opportunity.

Nic - you’re spot on. The longer I spend working and living in this digital space the less I seem to know about it! Sometimes I feel a bit overwhelmed by the fact that I can never get my head around enough of it to feel comfortable, but then I just shrug and go with it. And once I do, it’s actually very liberating. To realise I can never master it all actually helps me to open my eyes to all the possibilities, to think with the mind of a beginner and to just enjoy the learning and the experimenting - happy in the knowledge that I will definitely make mistakes along the way. Being cool with all of this actually helps me just get on with it!

Agree whole-heartedly. I’m lucky to be in a position where most people at work think that I’m an IT guy, the one that knows everything about the Internet. But I know no computer code, don’t know how they make the bell ding or the whistle blow. The only thing I have going for me is that I explore, investigate and am not afraid to play with something until I break it. I think that by experimenting like this is the only way to create new roles and carve out new areas. Plus it’s pretty fun too!