Just because it's old doesn't mean it's irrelavant
Wednesday, July 8, 2009 at 8:18AM 
With the advent of CNN in 1980, the birth of the 24 hour news channel came, kicking and screaming into the world. A game changer, it was the tour-de-force that would craft and structure the power and relevance of today's 24 hour news cycle. All and any news within this time frame, has our attention. Once this cycle has passed the news (and the viewers) move onto the next 'new thing'.
During the mid 90's the internet becomes the power player to begin shaking things up. Then about ten years later with the popularity of web 2.0 bringing to the fore user generated content (ie. social networks, blogs, wikis, etc), this speed is taken to the next level and attention spans get even shorter. And with the popularity of Twitter rising in the last year or so, anything tweeted over an hour ago is like 'so last decade'.
Often the news and information we get (from online news to blogs, to tweets) it's often sensationalism, entertainment and interpretation. How much of it is based on facts? How relevant is it? What's its connection to other similar ideas out there? And if any of these questions are important (and they are) what's the significance of facts, relevance and connection?
The significance is that these three words determine our world view. And our world view determines our perceptions and our perceptions determine how we engage the contexts in which we live.
When 24 hour news cycles and today's tweets are what 'matter' without understanding the history and the context in which they exist. . .you miss the bigger picture. And the bigger picture is where rebels and innovators live.
One quick example - Chris Anderson in his best selling book The Long Tail expounds his theory about the power and innovation of Amazon, eBay, and Netflix to sell niche products. He then quickly follows up by saying these ideas aren't new at all, and actually date back more than a century and are rooted in the Sear's "Wish Book" (the progenitor of the Sears Catalog) of 1897 (Chris Anderson was named by Time magazine one of the 100 people shaping our world in 2007).
In today's market place the power in creating an innovative brand happens by, as Sir Terence Conran states in John Howkins best selling book The Creative Economy, "knowing the history of things and to be able to see a gap in the market."
So you may want to get off Twitter or step away from your Facebook page and check out a history book. It just might be a useful innovation tool for you.
Reader Comments (2)
Thanks for this great posting. I am definitely a big picture person and think it's really important to step back and see patterns, as well as being part of them.
A book that I love is A Walk Through Time (1998), a photoessay on the evolution of life on this planet. It talks about how life was polluting the planet with oxygen, which was toxic for the little creatures at the time. So life developed creatures that could thrive on oxygen (such as humans!). And now we are drowning in carbon dioxide and other pollutants, so what can we learn from past situations where all life on the planet was threatened?
The book also talks describes how slime mold, when viewed through a very high powered telescope, looks exactly like Manhattan, and has its own waste removal, recycling, transportation, and communication systems. And there was a sea creature called the polyp which broke free of its nutrient base and be a free floating organism (e.g., like a cell phone??)
So when we talk about how much more complex and innovative our world is today than it used to be, I wonder if that's really true. Are we repeating evolutionary patterns from the past that merely look different on the surface, or are we truly inventing new things? And either way, what can we learn from the ancient past? And is it really ancient or here with us and in us today?
Kris
Thanks for your comment!