So, is every Google search already in the past?
A few years ago, I was excitedly running from one client to another, claiming, “In the future, there will be no media, only content.”
At a 4A’s conference a year later, I took the lyrics of Elvis’s “A Heartbreak Hotel” and compared it to the Eagle’s lyrics “Hotel California,” to show how language and metaphor are changing so quickly that we no longer know what we are talking about. Other people do not know what we mean, and we barely know it ourselves.
Then along comes the Internet, creating these boner-billionaires telling us that the world is changing. I wonder what they mean.
Yes, we can text, send emails, download music, Google, play games, bid on eBay, blog and share our opinions with others. The fact is that we now have instantaneous access to other people but no more to ourselves.
On a more serious note, “Speed,” writes Milan Kundera, ‘is the form of ecstasy that the technical revolution has bestowed on man.”
And in this age of quick information, the present is solidified into history as it happens. So is every Google search already in the past?
If time itself is already in the past, are we traditionalizing from a society that looks at itself for a time and space perspective to one that is just overwhelmed by volume — F. Scott, if he were alive, or McSweeny would probably come up with a better name but for the time being will stick “Volumetric Age” – where volume overpower substance and nothing makes sense anymore.
When you think about it, the concept of time and space has always helped us to understand ourselves and the world around us. It is the engine of our reality. But mass and volume is now the disturbance of our lives. Suddenly, everything is strange.
In fact, Tom Stoppard said the other day that so many things are going wrong that it is tough to decide what to write about.
What we are having is a crisis in meaning.
If we are having a crisis in meaning, we are also likely to be having a crisis in communications. As much as I believe in brand content, having developed a whole architecture on how to best create it, I do believe there are other alternatives. Not better or worse. Just others.
It occurs to me as I continue working on the evolution of brands that maybe we ought to start thinking about separating brands from communications.
Is it possible?
Of course it is.
Today, there is no single answer – just a series of alternatives.
