Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Intertwining Interactive Technology with Popular Culture

Mad MenImage via WikipediaWe are at the dawn of intertwining interactive technology with popular culture. The Internet has radically changed our culture and the way we go about business. A quick list of some of the major impacts includes the rise of instant communication from anywhere…to anywhere using:
  • Email
  • Instant messaging/chat
  • Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP)/ Video
  • Webinars
In addition, the web has enabled us to communicate with people all across the world to discuss their opinions, instantaneously, on any topic imaginable via blogs, discussion forums, social networking and online shopping sites.
 
To fully comprehend how far we’ve come with respect to the Internet in just twenty or so years, we can look back in time to another medium that drastically changed our lives - the Television. This medium, which pushed content to the user, was always in control of the content. The Television ‘decided’ what it told you and you had no way to interact with it. Not only that, you couldn’t easily take it with you. You usually viewed it from the comfort of your home, and frequently shared it with others. Jump forward from the 1950’s to 2011 and we find some very interesting statistics: 
  • There are roughly 1,416,338,245 TVs worldwide.
  • At the time of writing this blog the US census estimates there are 6,957,575,011 smart phones in the world
  • Estimates show there will be approximately 1 billion smart phones in the world by the end of 2011
  • Twitter reports they track 144 million tweets per day versus 50 million tweets per day, one year ago, and as you know, Twitter is only 1 microblog of many in the world
  • Facebook reports it has roughly 750 million facebook users of which more than 250 million active users currently access facebook through their mobile devices. 
It goes without saying the Internet has mobilized communication for large masses of people.  The question is no longer are we an Internet based society, but rather where are will we go with it next?
 
People have moved from passive users of content where the information was pushed to them (e.g., TV and print) to an Internet-based consumer group that now interacts with the content, thus adding to what was initially published. 
 
Internet behavioral and contextual technologies are beginning to provide real-time marketing information about users that content publisher's analytic systems process to decide what content or product they’ll provide next. People have been transformed into active, engaged users.
 
Instead of simply pushing content, site owners are pulling content from their users to improve their services and get a better understanding of their audience. Users today expect to be able to give their opinion and if you don’t give them a channel to do so, they’ll build their own in the form of a blog or forum.   There are many advantages of this two-way communication or two-way feedback. Hopefully it will continue to lessen the gap between the digital native and the digital immigrant. 
 
Why is this important?
 
For one, it is likely the digital natives will continue to have an ever-increasing impact on the workplace and how business gets done.  The digital natives expect interactive, accessible technology, enhancements in big data, augmented reality, mobility applications, and capabilities that move beyond the mouse to gesture based interfaces. All of this will require new privacy and security models that support the dynamic systems (cloud) of the active engaged worker’s work/life experience.
 
I’d love to hear about examples of this kind of change that you currently see or foresee in the workplace.

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Posted by Paul Davis at 3:12 PM
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