millsworks

There was a great article in the Globe & Mail a few days ago that I wanted to point your attention to, about how mobile tech will be changing the world.

I know I tend to wax poetic from time to time on the coming evolution of humanity through the advent of our technological extensions of self – becoming better people in a better world – in spite of our basic primitive and pathetic human nature.

It’s not all gonna be sunshine and roses – I know that – but it sure as shit will be an interesting slow motion train wreck to watch; and we got ourselves the front row seats!

Here’s part of the article that caught my attention:

“The best parallel that I use is when they first came out with motion picture projectors, the whole thought of those was ‘Hey, now I can do a stage play and play it at a different location at a different time,’ ” Mr. Balsillie said. “The concept of a ‘movie’ wasn’t in anybody’s mind at the time because they couldn’t see how the media could change the nature of the entertainment, it was just time and place shifting the pre-existing entertainment.”

“In the case of smart phones, we’re just time and place shifting some of the applications. Will it actually change the nature of the application? Absolutely. Do we know exactly how it’s going to change it? I don’t think so.”

The whole article covers the range of changes that have already been wrought by the emergence of handheld connectivity to the growing wash of information and sensorial input available through the internet. It also points out that only one in six human beings on Earth has access to the Internet which, naturally, begs the question: What happens when the rest of the world starts coming online?

When the next billion come online, many of them will not experience the Web through a PC, but rather through smart phones and handheld devices. That new influx of ideas and perspectives is bound to have a profound impact on the next decade of Internet innovation and change how information is disseminated and consumed.

Over the weekend I had a great Twitter conversation with @michaelkinney about the “flow” of content on the web, feeding the insatiable maw of the all consuming interwebs and how that affects the creation of the content from a business perspective and from the position of the individual artists. This factor of how mobile devices are and will continue to impact the way we access that flow should also form a part of that discussion. We agreed that linear narrative will most certainly survive – it’s hardwired into our living experience as animals on this planet and until such time as we conquer death or the flow of time itself that narrative line will continue to play a role in how we define and express ourselves.

But just as the cinema transformed storytelling from the oral traditions of the theatre – time shifting the experience of performance with repeatable product, as well as playing with time within the structure of the stories themselves (for that I refer you to Walter Murch and his book In The Blink Of An Eye) – so too will we see the emergence of wholly unimagined forms of storytelling that will be born into existence purely as a result of the technologies that carry them.

Entertainment is but one small part of the larger puzzle of what lies in store for us as we become increasingly connected in every way possible; but it is safe to assume the world will indeed seem to be a smaller place when we can hold it in our grasp – and perhaps, in the process of that change, we’ll gain a larger sense of ourselves upon that very world and learn to cradle it (and each other) more gently than we have in past, knowing that every gaze and every whisper with which we grace that which we hold in our hands will be conveyed to everyone around us and back again.

Be kind to your neighbours. Shake hands. Gently.

Cheers.

P. S. The stunning image above has been culled from monti_84′s blog. Beautiful stuff. Thnx.