Shift Happens

Further to last week’s posting and the subject of change, growth and the development of digital media from infancy through to adolescence and maturity – also referenced in The Guardian’s recent article ‘That awkward teenage phase’ – there was a very interesting and entertaining YouTube video this week on PROpenMic, the worldwide social network website for public relations students, faculty and professionals.

Distilling the writings of the Pulitzer Prize-winning author Thomas Friedman, and particularly his international bestselling book, The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century, which analyses the progress of globalisation, the latest ‘Did You Know?’ video from Karl Fisch cleverly illustrates the implications of powerful, potentially seismic political, economic, social and technological shifts across the globe, all set to the prescient soundtrack of Fatboy Slim’s ‘Right Here, Right Now’ – the video of which is itself a pertinent parody of the evolutionary process.

In his book, Friedman explores both the advantages and disadvantages of the latest developments in global communications, and contends that the proliferation of advanced digital technologies across the globe now means that previously disparate pools of knowledge and resources have connected suddenly all over the planet, levelling the previously unplayable field of play: the availability and popularity of blogs, podcasts, YouTube and MySpace now enable modern citizens of the world to broadcast their views to a potential audience of billions.

Which is all well and good (?), but what does it all mean? Unfortunately (but predictably), it’s not altogether clear to anyone, except to state (as it does unnervingly at the end of the original version of the ‘Did You Know?’ video) that ‘Shift Happens.’ Indeed it does. And now increasingly more frequently.