Commentary
Real-Time With What Is Real
- by Joe Mandese @mp_joemandese, July 1, 2013
As you read this, I
will be somewhere between Yosemite and Mt. Whitney in the High Sierras, thruhiking the John Muir Trail with my daughter Zoe. And frankly, I can't think of any time more real than that. The reason I am
posting this is not to tell you how I'm spending my summer vacation, but because it relates to the two underlying themes I have tried to focus on since we started posting on RTBlog: What is real and
what is time.
They may seem obvious to most people, but I believe media -- especially the kind of hyperaccelerating media technologies we write about in these pages -- are changing how we think about both of them. Increasingly, what is real to us is mainly what we can access via some digital data stream. And as for time, well we clearly are redefining that too, thanks to media technologies that enable us to experience things faster, and in combinations no generations of humans ever experienced before. And it's not just speed, but all sorts of other time-bending ways media enables us to manipulate the way we experience things.
I was first struck by this notion back in the mid-1980s, when I started covering the concept of "time-shifting." The main culprit then was the VCR, but it blew my mind that a new media technology was changing the way we were thinking about time, even if it was only the way we experienced television content. Then again, given how important media content is to us -- and how much of our time we actually spend with it -- a technology that allows us to bend it at our will, is a pretty significant development. Thirty years later, we take something like time-shifting for granted, and don't think much about how it has changed us, but I assure you, it has.
There are other time-scramblers going on now with media technology that I don't fully understand myself, but I know with equal confidence that they are also changing us. Especially, the kind of "real-time" media technologies we write about here. Especially the ones where machines are processing information faster than people know what to do with it. That has huge implications for our industry, and our society. And it's not just about the man/machine questions surrounding programmatic buying. It is about how we use machines to manage the data that determines what information we use to define what is real to us.
One of the best examples of this are new data processing and targeting technologies that are enabling media and marketing content to be targeted and served to people even before they know they need it. Many of you have probably heard of Google Now, by now. But there are a host of new "precognitive targeting" technologies that are about to change the way we think, before we have the time to think about that.
So the main reason for today's post is to simply ask you to think. And specifically to think about the way we think because of how faster and more powerful media technologies keep accelerating that -- even to the point of thinking before we think.
Honestly, I won't be thinking too much about it over the next couple of weeks myself. One of the reasons I am looking forward to this wilderness trip is not to think too much about those things. Instead of thinking about algorithms, I am looking forward to thinking about the rhythm of my feet as they bounce along the trail. Mainly, I am going to think about what is real.
Joe Mandese is the Editor in Chief of MediaPost. You can reach Joe at joe@mediapost.com.
Well put, Joe. Enjoy the camino real!
Right on! Drink in all those real footsteps along your journey. There's nothing comparable in the synthetic experiential life waiting for you back here ;-)
Have a grand Teddy Bear Picnic ! (as in the song)
Good article, and I love the High Sierras. but the only change I think matters is that people are increasingly "always connected". Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.
He might not be always connected on his trip, but he will probably still have to worry about, "crap! my thumb is in the corner of the picture!" moments