Glocal
There’s something of a dichotomy, or so it would seem, with the zeitgeist.
The world is becoming more and more connected. If you pay attention to the tech media, to the growth of networked behemoths like Facebook and Twitter, you’ll fairly inevitably come to the conclusion that we’re becoming one mega-community; one without borders, without separation.
However the more pervasive that technology becomes, the more our laptops, phones, watches notify us of everything that happens in our lives and the lives of our extended networks, the more we seem to want to push back against it. The more we want to live in the moment, to spend time with the people around us. To buy food from local farms, to support local people, and to move to that far-flung corner of the world and live a sandy, sunny care-free life.
Despite this, society seems in no danger of tearing itself apart. Well, at least not for this reason. Somehow we’re managing to embrace both the globalisation of technology, and the overwhelming desire to run away.
For me, this poses one question…
Does mass-adoption of a shared technology actually make local, community-based living easier?
To answer this question, I think we need to take a look at what it used to mean to be local, to live in a small, close-knit community. The problem is, how far back do you have to go to remember true ‘local’ living? When we weren’t dependent on connections to the rest of the world for every part of our lives. Pre-internet? We still had trains, cars and telephones to connect us to those around us, to make us reliant on cities for our financial support, to make us reliant on holiday destinations for our relaxation. What about in a pre-industrial, even feudal society? Weren’t we still dependent on the feudal lord for our protection, and trade routes to provide us with resources that we lacked?
Is it then more accurate to say then that we’ve never truly lived ‘local’ lives? That any living reference is more of a “good old days” lament, rather than an accurate recollection of how life used to be. Maybe the last time we lived truly ‘local’ lives was when we lived in caves, and that our lust for progress, our will to collaborate with each other, to build bigger and better things, to improve our own lives and those of our descendants has been the driving force behind a more global and connected society, been increasing the size of our communities ever since the residents of cave A lent cave B a wooden club?
So, maybe things weren’t that much different in the old days. Maybe those longing for time to rewind itself were actually making the same sort of changes as we are now, changes that the generation previous to them found just as uncomfortable. It’s not hard to see the increase in the speed of change in the modern generation, and without a doubt the discomfort felt by those resistant to change is more intense now than it ever has been, but who’s to say that they haven’t been right all long? At least in a way.
In longing for local living in the face of globalisation, for things to be how they used to, we’re really doing two things. We’re making a statement about the landscape of the past, and we’re saying that the concept of local living is something to aspire to. It’s easy to put the former down to a number of human failings, but that’s certainly not to say the latter is incorrect.
Is the realisation of a true ‘local’ life something much more profound. Can it answer some of what it is to be human?
Remember the time that you spent at University? The time that you couldn’t walk down the street without bumping into someone that you knew, that you had a bond with. When we move away at 18 to a new city, meet new people, and embark on a whole new adventure, we so often cut ourselves off from our old lives. Our families and school friends are just for Christmas, not for life. Within the University bubble we have every thing we need — food, shelter, work, play, friends… Do we find ourselves in possibly the closest analogue to ‘local’ living as we might be able to find in modern, western civilisation?
We live in these huge, anonymous cities. We live there because we must. I don’t know about you, and maybe it’s the rose-tinted glasses talking, but the thought of returning to a life where the people I walk past are people I know, people I want to speak to, and people that I have something in common with is really quite appealing.
But I digress. It certainly seems that local living is something that’s worth striving for, but as asked above, does mass-adoption of a shared technology actually make local, community-based living easier?
Yes. And it all boils doing to the work that we do.
We do two things with our time; we work and we play. We (mostly) play with the people close to us (keep it clean…). Proximity to people who are similar to us, who have similar past, who understand what it means to be you, is essential. However much we Tweet, text and Snapchat, we still sit down with each other for a coffee, for dinner, or for a beer, and as far as I’m concerned, there’s no getting away from that.
The communities that we work in are not built on these connections. They are built on a value chain, which has, until now, held us all together in communities of people that don’t even speak to each other. Let’s take company A for example, they have clients B, C and D. In order to service them best, they must be located close to clients B, C & D. Similarly, each of B-D have their own clients, and must be located close to them in order to service them as well as possible, and ensure maximum success for the business. You get the idea.
This is where my favourite topic — the on-demand economy — can have its moment. Communication costs have been tumbling for decades now, yet these bonds that hold our biggest cities together still show no signs of crumbling.
Why?
Opportunity.
Look at it from the eyes of a man-on-the-ground. The man in this example is a copywriter and works for a large marketing company. This company has numerous clients scattered throughout the city that keep his paycheque full. He needs to be there, as does his company, in order for them all to fulfil their roles. What is he to do? Up sticks, and move elsewhere, because…internet?
Of course not. Imagine however that there was a platform that allowed this copywriter to open his laptop from wherever he wanted, whenever was convenient, and simply write words that he was paid for. Imagine he had an ability join a global workforce of copywriters, all working together, providing a unequalled earning potential and flexibility. He would have no requirement to fulfil the other business processes — accounting, client management, HR — that his old company did ‘for’ him, but all the flexibility and freedom that our connected civilisation should offer him.
That’s the difference. That’s why. This magic combination of technology and communication that facilitate these sort of distributed workforces. It’s exactly this that will allow these bonds to be broken, that will allow our generation of disillusioned corporate workers to break free, to make your own lives, wherever that may take you.
Wherever that is, whatever you do, you’ll have the freedom to be with those that you care about, those that you have a real connection with, and live lives that are so much more fulfilling.
Glocal, yeah.
Oh, BTW. That platform? It exists.
