Summer 2020

Back in the late 1980's when I first encountered Hypercard... the original hypermedia stack bundled in the original Apple Mac OS my impression was This changes everything! !

It was one of those epiphanies

Clearly the Future of Business Communication was Interactive

30+ years on is it worth revisting the question?

Did it?

Change everything?

Today I'm not so sure it did

In fact I'm not so sure it changed anything

People played video games in the 1970's. They still do. The graphics have improved. But the experience remains the same

Since the late 1800's folk have casually thumbed through shopping catalogues and awaited door to door delivery via the global networked supply chain (ie postal service)

Today they still do

As for advertising... since the 1800s we've inserted ads into the newspapers and magazines. Later it was radio in the 1930's and TV in the 1950's. Today we insert ads into the list

The only difference is today we scroll through time and space. Where before we either sat back and allowed time and space to wash over us by flipping through the pages or tuning into the broadcast channel

Either way we end up watching/listening to the endless parade. (These days we call it experiencing). Debord's society of spectacle

The website. Those endless billboards of the desert.They remain unvisited. Unloved. We remain, as always, engaged by the parade. The endless lists of likes

So in retrospect advertising hasn't changed one iota. Magazine pages and TV programming have become lists to scroll

The game remains what it always was: Creating content that is clever enough to generate curosity, trigger changes in thinking and behaviour, and withstand endless repeatability

Dare I say creating the signal in all that noise?

Has the Future of Business Communication become Interactive? Arguably it always has been

An endless feedback loop of call and response

Till next time...

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