A Paradigm Shift Too Far?

A stereotypical array of 'media types' congregated in the humble Pavilion Theatre yesterday, for an informative and exciting backstage peek into the world of the 'Digital Zeitgeist'. According to Wikipedia we were discussing the "spirit of the age", which seemed to incorporate lots of buzz words and hot insights into the future of digital media, with opinions from leading experts representing the BBC, Channel 4, The Guardian and Universal Music.

The evening, however, was marred by some pretentious delegate being a knob. Floor open to the debate and she pipes up with "hello, pretentious woman, from pretentious company...I would like to discuss the prevailing paradigm shift, which is shifting the paradigm of paradigms to one which is less of a paradigm and more of a paradigm." Needless to say, she was a knob, and the disapproval from the audience was very apparent.

Her obvious knobish mistake got me thinking, and what I took from the debate was an affirmation of my beliefs, a nice confirmation bias if you like, that goes something like this:

Stuff is complex, it's complicated, it's impossible to predict, and easy to rationalize in hindsight. Some people call themselves experts, and have the confidence to lead people towards a utopian paradise that their deluded - yet perfectly rational - brains have constructed, to make sense of the complex world around them. If they are very lucky their efforts will be rewarded; if not they will explain their error away to make it look as though they were right all along. Either way they can carry on their deluded practice of pretending to understand the future.

Caution is needed. For me, that stupid delegate also reinforced one of my own biases: talking shit can only get you so far. I looked to the speakers and wondered how they became the "messiahs" of the digital age, and not just talkers of shit. And, the more I listened the more I found comfort from them. They were successful people who serve the public, and whose day to day task is working with the unknown, working with uncertainty, and surviving the ever changing face of the digital zeitgeist. If we try to deconstruct it, it seems their success is simple, and innate. Whether they realized it or not, they were doing the right things - allowing their ideas to survive and flourish. And the more I listened the more I started to see a trend, a pattern of survival, and set of underlying heuristics emerging from these "messiahs" of the digital zeitgeist:

1. Adapt to change, and quickly. To survive you must evolve.
2. Collaborate, embrace the decentralized, the diverse, utilize the wisdom of crowds, be the aggregator of all the amazing knowledge we now have access too.
3. Don't be scared of making mistakes - it's human nature. Don't explain error away - embrace it and use it to understand why.
4. Innovation is about action, it's about doing stuff and not about talking about doing stuff.
5. Stop trying to chase control - it's a fruitless endeavor.

Ultimately, I don't believe the future is about the next big thing: it's not about buzz words, it's not about tweeting, it's not about the latest APIs, or business models, or workflows, or about repeating the word paradigm numerous times. As the speakers warned us, it's dangerous to follow and herd towards the latest trend because these things will come but they will also eventually go.

What will always stay with us, however, is our human nature. We are all, potentially, incubating the future within us every day - whether we realize it or not. The foundations of the digital zeitgeist lay within us, within our genes, our human nature, and not a server room in slough. We don't need an iPhone, an e-bible, or a twitter account to "drive" the future; the future (get ready for the shock horror) is already here! We just need to unlock it first, by understanding a bit more about ourselves, as human beings.