Brad: Uninterrupted.

Power in your pocket

We hear a lot about ‘the good old days’, how it was better when you could leave your door unlocked, when things were a lot simpler. People called each other, talked face-to-face and we didn’t have the 24/7 bin-fire of social media.

The truth of it is — we are living in a time of huge change and none of us realise it. A time where energy costs are coming down, eventually to be free of charge in the future. It’s a time of connection across the world, where we can call each other or catch up with video chat any time we like without expensive equipment.

We seem to think it’s all too much. Too much information, too much change, too fast and nothing stays the same. But have you thought that maybe it felt the same before those ‘good old days’ when people went out and met other people, visited other countries and took their lives to another level. I would say that many of the current improvements to our lifestyle come down to the information we have about each other and being given the choice about the type of lives we lead and the type of person we aspire to be.

In our lifetimes, we have seen decisions about the planet, industry and the way we interact with the world around us completely change. Over the coming decades it will speed up with desired and needed changes that will help resolve the major issues of our time.

In our industry of media and communications the single biggest impact on myself has been the ability to work, live and play wherever I want. For me, that is being with my family every day, to work in the field that I love and be able to change the world around me for the better.

In the last 20 years, the media industry has changed beyond recognition, beyond what I thought was even possible. Those changes have been incredible. The biggest change is by far the introduction of the smartphone. This small, almost stealth change has created a whole new paradigm.

Think back to when the iPhone first appeared, we were all running around with Nokia bricks or Motorola flips. At that time we were all thinking, ‘this is cool, but where are the buttons?’ Not to mention, the battery life on this smartphone stank, why did this only last 5 hours (if I was lucky) and not 50?

But hey, we were now smart and had a device that we could play games on, not just snake, you could send emails and text messages. The iPhone promised a lot and many of us thought this could be good. But it was fragile, easy to break and really a bit of a pain with battery life, terrible camera.

But again we thought we all had to have one — because it was a smartphone. Fast forward several years to when smartphones truly did start to become the device that we had all been promised and now we had the power in our pocket. With 2021 now here, we’re living in the time of the Jetsons and the Terminator, Skynet and the machines threatening to take over humanity. It’s time to look at what can be achieved with the media powerhouse in your back pocket. Step outside what you know, don’t just use your phone for calls, texts and pics of your pets. Use your power for good, your smartphone is a powerful tool, become a digital ninja, don’t let the doomsayers control how you feel.

Create a series of photographs, download an app to draw, use your social media for creating a community, rather than sharing ‘the flotsam of bile and paranoid delusions of others’. Be that person who shares and creates. It’s interesting that all of us avoid the negative person at a party, but we are happy to sink into that mire of despair on our phones day in, day out, doom scrolling our way to hell and back.

Here’s the challenge, let’s make it a 30 day challenge, there are plenty of take a picture a day type challenges but this is different.

Over the next 30 days, take this list and see what you can achieve with your ‘device of delight’ and not have a ‘device of doom’.

• Do not read the news in any form
• Do not use social media, unless it’s a positive post that changes ideas
• Take a picture, but not just any picture, use the rules of thirds (google it) and create something to be proud of, share and have some fun, smartphones pack serious camera power
• Make friends with someone under 12 and see how they interact with the world, adopt a new tech view on the world
• Write a nice text to a friend
• Learn to love texting, it’s a great way to communicate (no emojis allowed)
• Text without !!!!! and ????? its very passive aggressive, no one speaks like that
• Download a ‘camera’ app, or video app and learn to use
• Video call a friend or your family
• Sign a petition online, change the way you think
• Buy a kickstarter product and support new ideas
• Get on Instagram, learn, create and share
• Be present in the moment even with your phone present, leave your phone alone for 8 hours

So now we have looked at 30 days, the above can be anything you like, the point of this blog is not about how bad things have gotten with big tech, little tech and tech in general, it’s about you making a decision to not drown in bad news.

The world is now a virtual world, a playground for people who care and have the passion to change it. The challenge for us, is to realise that all the things we sort of hate right now are all the things we are truly involved in through that small device.

Take the challenge, pick up the phone, use your phone power for good. Think, if we were at NASA in the 1960s this phone would have had enough computing power to get us to the moon and back. I think — looking at all of us — size really does matter, if the smartphone was as big as a house, we might all realise the power we hold in that device.

We live in the most exciting and terrifying tsunami-of-change moment in history. This is a time that history will point to as the single moment where everything changed again — the uncoupling of information to each and every one of us. We can all become experts, change communities, change people, affect change on the other side of the world and at the same time, visit anywhere we choose with our back pocket buddy.

Embrace it.