In recent years I’ve been paying more and more attention to writing – articles, blog posts, even fiction – which wrestles with the near-future world economy, technology and the evolution of business and the nature of work. Writers such as Cory Doctorow and William Gibson, to name a couple, are prominent contributors on these topics. So, bear with me. I’m going to nerd out a bit on this, but I promise I’ll bring it back to Marketing and Analytics in the end.

There’s an ongoing discussion of whether massive societal changes will follow from some kind of (admittedly debatable) Singularity. Whether or not such a fundamental turning point is imminent, there are plenty of interesting things occurring right now which indicate bigger shifts … if we know where to look. A recent article in Fast Company related to these topics caught my attention. One interesting section:

This is the moment for an explosion of opportunity, there for the taking by those prepared to embrace the change. At the turn of the 20th century… those accustomed to the agrarian clock of sunrise-sunset and the pace of the growing season were forced to learn the faster ways of the urban-manufacturing world. There was widespread uneasiness about the future, about what a job would be, about what a community would be. Yet from those days of ambiguity emerged a century of tremendous progress.

The main theme of the article is that agility matters. It’s probably more important to be agile now than at any time in history. But this situation is not only, or even necessarily, negative or threatening. It’s more about being able to make the absolute most/best of any given scenario. I would argue that this holds not just at a macro level for technology, economics and culture. It’s also time to start thinking about what this means for marketing.