Dan Pink writes:
I re-read Kevin Kelly's article, "We Are The Web," from the August Wired. I'm glad I did. It's the smartest and most illuminating analysis of the Internet I've read in a long while.
Here are some key points that I have picked from this article which relates to a new kind of customer collaboration that it is driving and the future as he sees it:
- At its heart was a new kind of participation that has since developed into an emerging culture based on sharing. And the ways of participating unleashed by hyperlinks are creating a new type of thinking - part human and part machine - found nowhere else on the planet or in history.
- Three months later, Netscape's public offering took off, and in a blink a world of DIY possibilities was born. Suddenly it became clear that ordinary people could create material anyone with a connection could view. The burgeoning online audience no longer needed ABC for content.
- In fewer than 4,000 days, we have encoded half a trillion versions of our collective story and put them in front of 1 billion people, or one-sixth of the world's population. That remarkable achievement was not in anyone's 10-year plan.
- The electricity of participation nudges ordinary folks to invest huge hunks of energy and time into making free encyclopedias, creating public tutorials for changing a flat tire, or cataloging the votes in the Senate.
- ..in the near future, everyone alive will (on average) write a song, author a book, make a video, craft a weblog, and code a program. This idea is less outrageous than the notion 150 years ago that someday everyone would write a letter or take a photograph.
- In the coming decade, it will evolve into an integral extension not only of our senses and bodies but our minds.
- ...massive cross-referencing is how brains think and remember. It is how neural nets answer questions. It is how our global skin of neurons will adapt autonomously and acquire a higher level of knowledge.
I am still the reading this article again and again to understand the implications it will have on how we will live and how as marketers we need to adapt to this new world.