via BLDGBLOG: The Nesin Map
is a 30-year-old human being, lives in Chapel Hill, NC, works as Vice President of newfangled.com, reads, writes, draws, and thinks about the future.
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Christopher Butler
Christopher Butler
Alvin Toffler, 40 years after the publication of his book, Future Shock
Forty years ago, America was gripped by Future Shock. It was a book, published in July of 1970 — but it was also an idea.
But what about their book’s main prediction — the idea that change is speeding up, and that it threatens to overwhelm us? Alvin Toffler says he sees it happening, and that others do now, too.
“In the past, you made a decision and that was it. Now, you make a decision and you say, ‘What happens next?’ There’s always a next,” he says.
Still, the accelerating change doesn’t seem to be driving people crazy, as was predicted by Future Shock. Alvin Toffler says it may be that younger generations have simply become more adapted to change, that it is their culture.
Crazy people usually don’t acknowledge their insanity… Just sayin’
“…we now produce enough bullets each year to kill every person on the planet — twice.”
— Ed Moses
via The Long Now:
A stunning painting of a possible future (or present depending on how you look at it)… walled cities of techno-utopia surrounded by the rest of the world living in the middle ages. Here is a link to the large version on Zilinzky’s site. (Found via Coolvibe.)
“The most important question we must ask ourselves is, ‘Are we being good ancestors?”
Storytelling is the Future of the Web
Most of the successful marketing campaigns that stand out in my memory all revolve around characters. Some of them are simply charismatic spokespeople, like Geico’s gecko, Nationwide’s “Greatest Spokesperson in the World, or, I suppose, Burger King’s creepy king. Others keenly represent the intended customer—think way back to Wendy’s “where’s the beef?” lady, or more recently to Apple’s mac and PC guys. In all of these cases, it was decided that a more compelling message could be created by using characters to tell a story, rather than putting the product itself front and center.
Relating to characters and their stories is essential in order for people to make an initial connection with brands. Sure, some brands eventually transcend the need for connection and become themselves defining characteristics of people. In fact, Apple’s “I’m a mac/pc” was somewhat self-referential in that way. But in the beginning, people need to connect with a story in order to believe that a product or service matters to them. Of course, this isn’t news. This has been established marketing thinking for a very long time. But somehow, the concept of storytelling doesn’t seem to have worked its way down from the worldwide mega-brands to the next tier of businesses in which you and I work. But why shouldn’t it? After all, we’re endeavoring to speak to the very same people they are! This month I’d like to explore storytelling, dispel the myth that we can’t tell stories on the web, and identify some ways we can hone our craft as web-based storytellers.
“A favorite concept of mine is the 200-year present, a way of thinking about change. The 200-year present began 100 years ago with the year of birth of the people who have reach their hundredth birthday today. The other boundary of the 200-year present, 100 years from now, is the hundredth birthday of the babies born today. If you take that span, you and I will have had contact with a lot of people from different parts of that span. So think in terms of events over that span and realize how long change takes. You can see how difficult it has been to create these bodies and new ways and how in many ways we are slipping backward; but in other ways we are not. I take comfort to know that super-power hegemony has a very limited lifespan (decline and fall of Rome, the Ottoman Empire).”
Minority Report!
