You And The Great Adventure

Michael Hedges September 5, 2013 Follow on Twitter

Consumers like to believe it. Businesses want to believe it. Governments try to insist on it. But power and control shifts quickly in the digital age with information flying through the ether. If the picture seems fuzzy, just wait.

At the first of this week MediaGuardian (September 1), adjunct of UK daily Guardian, released its annual list of the top hundred media movers and shakers. Topping that list was YOU, meant to conceptualize the online “empowered” individual. The arguments of the editorial panel, as intended, stated the obvious: “Everyone can be a broadcaster-publisher in the digital era,” the digital economy is rocking and big digital data is very scary.

The digital consumer is, said the Guardian’s panel, “the most powerful industry leader.” This empowerment – not to forget fear, anger and confusion - comes from digital technologies envisioned in the middle of the last century and honed to the marketplace over the last two decades. The personal computer (PC) first appeared as an affordable and accessible product in the early 1980’s. By the end of the last century annual sales topped 100 million units globally. More than 350 million units – better, faster and smarter - were shipped just twenty years later. In Western Europe and North America half of all PC’s are in the home.

Manufacturers scurried to deliver PCs and made fortunes doing it. Several brands disappeared, IBM and NEC notably, disappeared, replaced by Dell and Lenovo as empowered YOU flexed its muscle. But YOU wanted things to do with those PCs and, thus, Microsoft became the most valuable brand on the planet selling software.

And the technology sector roared on, giving YOU the internet and with it new rules of interconnectedness. Telecoms scrambled to replace copper wire with fiber optics. Suddenly, YOU became wired. Google became the most valuable brand on the planet for giving YOU – in return for a scattering of ads – simplified access to the web’s treasures and pleasures. YOU had a website, too.

Telecoms also heard from YOU. Digital advances – chip size, processor speed, battery life and unhindered access to radio spectrum – transformed clunky and expensive mobile phones into mobile access points. Apple’s Steve Jobs turned them into fashion statements. Nokia became the world’s biggest seller of smartphones and, in the process, cameras. Olympus and Kodak disappeared. Telecom Verizon, once known as Bell Atlantic from the days of the AT&T breakup, just bought out the Vodefone stake in its wireless joint venture for roughly €100 billion. Microsoft picked up Nokia’s mobile business this week for a mere €5.4 billion.

The traditional media sector also heard YOU, however loud and confusing. Pictures, sound and words could be hurled through the air with incredible speed. YOU wanted more but just couldn’t decide between posting cat pictures or reading the news. More than a billion people – YOU – visit Facebook every month. Social media has become the place for YOU to shout-out every thought, including the half-baked and obscene, all of which can be monitored and trolled.

YOU – personal and conceptual – has been central to product branding for more than a generation, pre-dating the PC, the web and the iPhone. Fast-food icon McDonalds was “Your kind of place” in 1967 and answered the challenge of modern age living with “You deserve a break today,” which AdAge called the best slogan of the 20th century. The ad pitch for Toyota automobiles said, “You asked for it, you got it.”

But the opening of sci-fi TV series Outer Limits braced us all with “We will control the horizontal. We will control the vertical. You are about to participate in a great adventure.”

See also in ftm Knowledge

Digital Transitions

Media's transition from analogue to digital has opened opportunities and unleashed challenges beyond the imagination. Media is connected and mobile yet fettered by old rules and new economics. Broadcasters and publishers borrow from the past while inventing whole new services. This ftm Knowledge file explores the changes. 88 pages PDF (March 2012)

Order here