How Fast Are We Really Going?
Picture this. Every living cell on this planet, whether mobile or stationary, is involuntarily traveling at a speed of 1,040 km/h thereby covering a total distance of 24,960 km a day, which is Earth’s circumference. Yet due to the enormity of the planet, we only experience motion when we actually move!
Another baffling example related to speed, is the amount of data generated. According to IBM, “Every day we create 2.5 quintillion (18 zeros) bytes of data, so much that 90 percent of the data in the world today has been created in the last two years alone. This data comes from sensors used to gather climate information, posts to social media sites, digital pictures and videos… to name a few.”
To clarify, using a snapshot of Internet data exchanges in 2015 every DAY, we find that people sent 144.8 billion email messages, 340 million tweets, 684,000 bits of content on Facebook, and uploaded 103,680 hours of new video to Youtube.
Medical knowledge in 1950 took 50 years to double. In 2015, that same knowledge doubled in just 3.5 years and by 2020 that number will be 73 days. Round that time, the word ‘doctor’, will be as outdated as the profession itself and the term ‘professional -expert’ will long be forgotten or otherwise mean very little.
Brands will take a life of their own as they move online and begin to grow and evolve based on global search queries eventually dictating their own future rules of engagement and strategies.
The irony of it all is that people in communication, while still afforded some control over the brands, products, and services they represent or own will realise they have been sidelined by the very same wares they were peddling.
The world will give way to ‘The Law of Information Accessibility’ where time between intention and action will be measured by nanoseconds, a speed beyond man’s ability to fathom or even imagine. This will necessitate the introduction and institution of autonomous systems into all walks of life.
Most will make the switch for profitability’s sake and not because they like the new system. On the contrary, they will come to despise it because they won’t understand it and therefore fear it. They will nonetheless revere its ability to do what they cannot. So, what does this all mean? Well, it’s quite clear that we have inherited phenomenal abilities. However, these same abilities are limited by our own physical selves, a reality that has become too obvious to ignore. And while machines and algorithms are taking over part of the mundane responsibilities previously delegated to humans, we are gradually moving into a world where the entire creative process, from start to finish, will eventually be automated, thereby liberating man to engage different creative endeavours.
As a result, this shift will bring about an entirely new category, namely that of the ‘Creative Machine’ as the masters become the minions in service of the industry they created!