If you want to understand the last 4 decades of technology, consider the following thought experiment.
“Ignoring everything connected to a screen, if you look around your house, what do you see there that wouldn’t have existed 40 years ago?” Make a list before you continue.
Odds are, it’s a short list. Mine includes a miniature speaker, some “athleisure” wear, and LED lights. Not much worth writing home about to 1980.
By contrast, between 1900 and 1940 you saw the adoption of indoor plumbing, electric lighting, refrigeration, automobiles, commercial aircraft, air conditioning, radio, washing machines, coffee filters, hair dryers, frozen food, movies with sound, ballpoint pens, and the electric guitar. The modern world was built in those decades.
I would argue that over the last 40 years, we have been building another world of equal or greater importance. The virtual world. To appreciate that, just recall the first part of my question, “ignoring everything connected to a screen…” Sure, “the screen” hasn’t changed in any profound way, but I think the fact that we spend such a large and growing amount of time staring into it suggests an increasingly rich world on the other side.
Think about your life. Like me, you have probably found a growing portion of your attention drawn into that virtual world. Your relationships have been intermediated by social media. Your mental bandwidth has migrated to the world of podcasts and streaming music. You spend evenings inside Netflix. If you’re under 25 and male, it is almost certain that you do more socializing via video games than in person.
This has a few implications, but only one that I’ll delve into here. The most important thing is that your reputation in the digital world has become just as important as your reputation in the physical world. It is more visible and more frequently examined than your physical self could ever be. Scarier still, when people think of you, they will remember not only how you behaved in person, but what you said on social media.
The positive side of this is that it has never been easier to find like-minded people. There are huge communities centered around shared interests, where people will share ideas, art, and memes. These shared discussions can lead to in-depth conversations that would never have happened if you’d been required to encounter one another in person and stumble onto that topic organically. If you learn some good digital manners, this world is your oyster.
I have several friends I met through my podcast who I’ve never (or rarely) met in real life, but who I stay in touch with fairly regularly. People are not just open to these kinds of relationships, but actively invite them because they often offer the best way to connect with someone who shares their enthusiasm for a specific topic.
For example, on my podcast, I’ve recorded numerous conversations with Chris Kiefer, who I originally met through another podcast guest. We live roughly 4 hours apart, making any real-world friendship unlikely. Yet, we share a set of values that few of our other friends do. We are fascinated with the pursuit of purpose (Chris literally named his podcast “Pursuit of Purpose”) and see our business goals as fundamental to supporting our life goals. We do our podcasts to help show other people the wealth of possibilities out there and to help inspire people to pursue their own paths. I’m thankful for this relationship.
It doesn’t make sense anymore to shun the online world. You can’t get away with it. Lacking a well-maintained online presence can even hinder your ability to form new relationships in person, at least in my age range. Even if you don’t think it’s weird for a person not to have a smartphone, apps are so central to socializing, and managing relationships that you just won’t interact with that person quite as much as you otherwise would. Eventually, they fall off the radar.
Meanwhile, there are such tremendous opportunities online that you’d be crazy not to create a digital version of yourself to engage with them. Imagine living in the 1920s, halfway through that period I referenced at the beginning, and shunning electricity the way some people shun the digital world. “This whole electricity thing is a fad. Nothing will ever replace a good old wash-board and clothesline…”
We’re still in the middle of something big. The sooner you embrace that, the more you’ll get out of it.