Online space becomes a route but not a destination in a post digital world
While most of us are wrestling with how best to cope with the digital world here and now, it is good to know that someone is looking ahead towards what is coming next.
To try to get a handle on what the post-digital world will look like, leading commentator for the UK Guardian, Simon Jenkins, spent time in California to discover where the smart money is moving.
ADMA found his conclusions fascinating and thought-provoking. He anticipates that the post-digital world will not be anti-digital but instead of the web being a destination in itself, it will become a route map to somewhere else.
What he found in California is that every online service or forum promotes an event, an invitation or a club night. From this experience his crystal ball tells him the post-digital world will focus on personal experience and the shift will be from online to live experience.
What is impressive is that Jenkins is basing his views on research as well as his own investigative reporting. He draws on urbanist William Mitchell's view that a characteristic of the online city will be a yearning for actual experience. Ultimately we will all want to be where it is happening but in person.
Jenkins is refreshingly honest that neither he nor anyone else really knows what all this means but his common sense explanation is entirely credible.
While he rejects Silicon Valley guru Nicholas Carr's opinion that our brains are being 'shallowed' under the influence of too much computing, Jenkins suggests it is possible that people who spend all day online will yearn to escape the screen at night and on the weekend.
Hence, he concludes, the next stage is consumer spending evolving from needs to wants and goods to experiences with the post-digital world focussing on personal contact.
Article provided by:
Melina Rohan - Director of Corporate and Regulatory Affairs, ADMA
(Reference: The Guardian Weekly 9.12.11 www.guardianweekly.co.uk)