These lifestyle changes are the result of the digital revolution…and it’s just beginning.įollowing is a great blog post from marketing guru Seth Godin called Pre Digital:Ī brief visit to the emergency room last month reminded me of what an organization that’s pre-digital is like. When’s the last time you remember seeing a telephone booth? Back then, there were telephone booths at nearly every street corner. I recall trading a $10 bill for a roll of quarters at the bank in order to make a long distance telephone call back home during my military service days. I recall my father making a trip to the bank on Friday afternoon to withdraw cash for the weekend activities (no ATMs). The upside is that we are spending less time on mindless “busy work.” Growing up, I recall watching my parents spend a full evening going through canceled checks and bank statements in order to balance their checkbooks. Sometimes, I will go months without writing a physical check to pay a bill. I’m constantly connected to my family, friends and work colleagues with my mobile phone via talk, text, or email. Thanks to the Internet, I haven’t had to commute to an office in more than 10 years. However, the lifestyle changes we have gone through in the past 30 years (even the past 15 years) have been radical. In fact, you could even wind the clock back another 10 years to 1940 and not see a drastic change, although World War II was a major focus in the 1940s and did challenge the stability of day-to-day family lifestyles. It was commonplace for people to work for the same company for 30 years and retire. With the exception of transportation (automobile/air travel) and some medical advancement, the 1950-1980 period was relatively static and stable. If you think about it, the past 30+ years (1980-2011) really dwarfs the previous 30 year period (1950-1980) in terms of lifestyle changes. Usually when I write about technology wiggling its way into our lives, the mail I receive is from readers who are apprehensive, concerned, and even frightened of the paradigm shift we are experiencing and going to experience in our lives at the hands of the digital revolution. After last week’s column, “Technology: Friend or Foe?”, I received a bit of mail.
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