Evolve or dissolve
The great Charles Darwin famously wrote in his master piece On the Origin of Species, “it is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change”. I have been noticing lately more than ever how fast the world we live in is changing, in part due to the faster and faster evolution of technology. Today I asked my friends (most of them living in Finland) on Facebook which social media platform they prefer to use, Instagram or Snapchat. The answer of 90% of them was pretty straight forward, they prefer Instagram.
If this was me barely 6 months ago I would’ve just forgotten about Snapchat and any desires of learning how to use it. The “me” today has changed, that just made me realize how important it is to learn about using it, more than ever. Because even though Snapchat is getting stronger and stronger (so much Facebook has been dying to buy it), especially among the youngest people, it is clear by many of the responses that people still rely on the good old “this is what’s been and this is what will be” mentality. Not that is wrong to use Instagram or any other thing that has been there for longer, at the end taking on something new requires time, patience, a learning curve that always takes a lot of effort, and who has time for that anyway.
I myself couldn’t understand for two years what on Earth was the advantage of having Snapchat other than sending dick pictures that get erased forever once they’ve been opened, that’s why it took me until recently to download it, until I realized two things:
- People, realizing that whatever they open on Snapchat will get erased forever, will pay more attention than on any other platform (massive marketing potential).
- If it has become the darling of the younger generations, then it’s here to stay for a while, whether we like it or not.
And that really is how it goes with everything, we somehow get way too romantic with what has been, with what has worked and prefer to ignore what’s coming, even the possibility of it, it happened with the radio, it happened with the T.V. it happened with the internet, it happened with Facebook, with smart phones (ask Nokia) it happens over and over again and over and over again we ignore it.
Part of the project I have in mind has to do exactly with following what’s happening and trying to forecast what’s coming, not the things that are not here yet but the things that are already but don’t have yet the adequate technology to support them, and there are plenty and they are all exciting as hell, Artificial Intelligence, Augmented Reality, Mixed Reality, Virtual Reality, Bitcoin, etc. All those things are already here, they are just evolving slowly, quietly, while most of the population decide to ignore them thinking they will never get mainstream (like the internet at the beginning of the 90's), but they will not just get mainstream, they will change the world as we know it forever, forever.
I really hope people realize on time the implications of all this, because just like Darwin realized it more than 150 years ago, only the ones most responsive to change will survive in the world of 20–30 years from now, and it’s not anymore about who is the tallest, who outruns the rest, who has the biggest muscles, it will be about who jumps on the train of our evolving technology. Robots will take the jobs of those who can’t fix robots, whether we like it or not, it’s going to happen, machines, automated systems, Artificial Intelligence generating algorithms to solve problems in a few seconds a human brain could never solve in 100 years, they will all be here, very soon, sooner than what you think. The world won’t wait for anyone, it has never done it, quite simply, on a present where information is available to a level we could’ve never imagined 15 years ago, where online education is free for those who take the time to find it, it really boils down to choice not chance not luck, we either evolve or dissolve..
RG