Risky Business
I have become a big fan of Pop!Tech recently. It has taught me loads, notably, the use of our frontal lobe, as Peter Whybrow explains here
Whybrow goes on to explain that basically (and this is my very basic summation) that when humans are near danger they do something to stop or change it. When we touch a hot stove our brain tells us to automatically move our hand away. However, in the current state of abundance we are not using the intelligent part of our brain (the frontal lobe) to stop taking when we dont need it.
However this does change. When there’s scarcity (danger) people become more resourceful and innovative because they have too. Whybrow notes that some 200 thousand years ago we came out of a period of great turmoil in the planetary climate. Some 80 thousand years ago we migrated out of Africa and now we are all over the world doing crazy things to it. And the thing that drove this movement was scarcity.
In light of the current economic climate and the scarcity that is becoming more and more apparent everyday, not only are advertising budgets getting smaller, jobs getting cut and the pound drop drop dropping, our personal budgets and habits are having to change too.(This friday I stayed in and made christmas cards – so rock and roll)
So, I guess what im trying to say (very badly) based on Whybrows Pop!Cast is that taking risks and creating new concepts with new and existing technology is really important and exciting in this period. Just as some people may learn to cook now because they can’t afford to go out to eat every saturday night, advertising,the Web and technology are going to change and adapt too, because we have to start finding a different approach. That seems exciting!
