Emergent
The Truest Sense of Now New Next
I have been chiseling away at my mountain of books purchased over the last several months. I need to find the antidote to “tsundoku” to help find my desk space again. But, I digress.
My penchant for bouncing back and forth between books hit a particularly high note this past week as I was simultaneously reading several books to help make sense of the term “emergent”.
I live in the middle of “emergent”. It has come to define the very essence of Now | New | Next and my assignments for companies launching new category concepts to executives who have to lead them to new movements that aim to change the status quo.
We are now living in a perpetual emergent state of mind. Perhaps we should re-lyric Billy Joel’s New York State of Mind to fit our New way of existence. Our respective Now has transitioned to living in pursuit of the new New thing that we can’t see or understand, but are enamored with.
The Emergent Workplace
My primary read at the moment is Working Assumptions, by Julia Hobsbawm. It was the chapter, “Commuter Triangle”, that brought home this notion of emergent. An interview with Peter Miscovich, who is the Global Future of Work Lead for Consulting at JLL describes how he looks at corporate real estate and the real estate industry sector with a thirty - to fifty-year lens and how there was really almost thirty to forty years of transformation that is now accelerating even faster with more disruption and with more complexity.
When asked to prognosticate the fundamental trends for the next three years, Peter spoke about the next three years will be continuous innovation and experimentation.
“We’ll be in a ‘continuously emergent and experimental state’ over the next three to six to seven years, whereby we will be continuously responding to the novel issues, challenges, and environments arising out of these emergent and disruptive technologies in combination with continuous disruptive workforce changes.”
The evolution of the office was happening well before the pandemic hit, but the activity since suggests that we are living in a forever-changing emergent environment that we either didn’t see coming or are now reeling from the unintended consequences (better known as 2nd and 3rd order impacts) of decisions made decades ago.
Buildings were built to last with a certain function in mind. When that function ceases to exist, the pain associated with its demise is widespread, as we are witnessing in city centers across the US.
The emergent 10, 15, and 20-minute cities are now at the forefront of urban and workplace planning across the globe. Singapore, Amsterdam, and Paris are the new role models for this way of thinking. A quality of life attraction that will force the social contract to be refashioned.
The Emergent Network
Switching over to Read Write Own, Build the Next Era of the Internet, by Chris Dixon, you get a different, yet overlapping sense of emergent. In the introduction section of his book, Chris sets up the emergent storylines shaping our destiny as users of Big Tech.
Today the top 1 percent of social networks account for 95 percent of social web traffic and 86 percent of social mobile app use. The top 1 percent of search engines account for 97 percent of search traffic, and the top 1 percent of e-commerce sites account for 57% of e-commerce traffic. Outside of China, Apple and Google account for more than 95 percent of the mobile app store market.
“The internet got intermediated, in other words. The network went from permissionless to permissioned”.
He goes on to showcase that even though Big Tech companies deliver significant value, their services come with considerable negative externalities. Big Tech controls what we see and watch. The most visible example of this is deplatforming: when services eject people, usually without transparent due process. Alternatively, people may get silenced and not even know it, a practice called shadowbanning.
“Search and social ranking algorithms can change lives, make or break businesses, and even influence elections, yet the code that powers them is controlled by unaccountable corporate management teams and hidden from public scrutiny”.
The observation that struck a chord for me was the premise of the killer app on the internet is networks.
“Most of what people do online involves networks: The web and email are networks. Social apps like Instagram, TikTok, and X (Twitter) are networks. Payment apps like PayPal and Venmo are networks. Marketplaces like Airbnb and Uber are networks. Almost every useful online service is a network”.
When you think about your growth as a company or an executive, you always hear, “You are as good as your network”. This brings to mind the question, “Do you own your network or does the platform you are on own your network?”.
The Emergent Spatial Computing
I have always been fascinated by the idea of spatial computing - it is why my company name is Spatial Shift. It was the movie Brainstorm in 1983 (starring Christopher Walken and Natalie Wood in what was her last movie) that launched this pathway of curiosity.
I am reading Cathy Hackl and Irena Cronin’s new book Spatial Computing, An AI-Driven Business Revolution to lean into the emergent future of all things Spatial Computing. The transitions from the movie Brainstorm (where a head device would allow me to feel your feelings and taste the ice cream you were eating) are getting closer to becoming a reality.
The concepts of convergence between physical and digital are happening all around us. The metaverse, the AR overlays on your mobile phones, and the VR capabilities of early Apple Vision and Oculus headsets are advancing the possible.
The introduction section of the book speaks to the emergent frontier of AI and Spatial Computing with this proclamation:
“This moment signifies a transition from passive consumption of technology to active participation in the digital world.”
And goes on to say that it’s a shift from merely observing the digital realm to inhabiting it. The convergence of AI and Spatial Computing promises to redefine not only our daily experiences, but also the very essence of work, education, healthcare, and entertainment.
Given my work in the neurodivergent world, I can fully appreciate where the fusion of this technology is going to enable a world of 75M - 1B people on the spectrum (pending your definition) to be unlocked from what is now a cognitive communication gap. My partner, Mario Major is working to create Neuro Universal Language, or NUL as a translation layer between a neurodiverse and neurotypical mind.
Imagine the possibilities of taping into the genius that operates on a different level. We all know someone who lives on the spectrum. Elon Musk’s Neuralink has the potential to revolutionize lost body functionality through neurostimulation or rerouting of synapse signals.
As my industry friend, Ian Harper, creator of InAnimate Alice - an interactive journey into the multiverse - said the other day, “Science fiction is becoming science fact.”
The Cluetrain Manifesto
The good thing about age is the wisdom you gain by looking backward and recognizing a pattern, a lesson, or a passage that has stuck with you over the years. A centering of sorts that forms your intuition and spidey senses.
That for me was the reading of The Cluetrain Manifesto. That book, written in 2000 by Rick Levine, Christopher Locke, Doc Searls, and David Weinberger, was seminal in its attempt to grab the lapels of executives and shake some sense into the idea that life will not be the same going forward. The internet has arrived. This book shaped one of the Workquakes I wrote about in a prior newsletter post.
It is the chapter on Post-Apocalypso that speaks most to this idea of emergent. This passage, which was used in the chapter description illustrates a truism that is happening Now.
“When paradox becomes a paradigm, it’s already too late to look for a magic-bullet cure for Corporate Linguistic Deficit Disorder. It’s time to imagine entirely new roles, new reasons, new worlds.”
The Post-Apocalypso chapter opens with a quote from Richard Nixon’s first inaugural address, 1969 (see below in payoff) and is followed by:
“Irony is perhaps the most common mode of internet communications. The Net didn’t create the mentality, but it did come along just in time to give it new expression”.
The paragraph goes on to say,
“We have stopped listening for answers from above - from Big Government, Big Business, Big Education, Big Media, Big Religion. With few exceptions, the interlocking agendas of these monolithic powers have become utterly divorced from the constituencies they were originally conceived to serve…”
So, here we are again. We have witnessed an internet that broke down what the authors referred to as the powerful weapons of ignorance and invisibility. Ignorance is a power. See authoritarian governments that repress communication to their people. Invisibility is freedom. How ironic that we now live in an Attention economy driven by dopamine hits and instant celebrity and gratification.
The Cluetrain Manifesto was clearly written as a call to action. A call to realize we were about to enter into a revolution (in 2000) and that it was already too late. You either get on board or be steamrolled by the destiny of the Internet.
Movements and paradigm shifts always seem to take a generation to adhere to or to become a reality. Even the one we didn’t see in our NEXT vision. It is now 24 years later. Right on time.
I want to end this newsletter with the last paragraph in the book.
“Imagine a world where everyone was constantly learning, a world where what you wondered was more interesting than what you know, and curiosity counted for more than certain knowledge. Imagine a world where what you gave away was more valuable than what you held back, where joy was not a dirty word, where play was not forbidden after your eleventh birthday. Imagine a world in which the business of business was to imagine worlds people might actually want to live in someday. Imagine a world created by the people, for the people not perishing from the earth forever.“
NOW (How you are realizing this today)
Are you emergent in your thinking?
What is your call to action as an individual in this emergent world?
Have you identified where you can make the biggest impact?
NEW (How you will realize this tomorrow)
I will make a list of the emergent issues that impact me by Oct 1.
I will educate myself on two or three of my identified emergent issues to overcome them or leverage them into my pursuit.
I will find a community or build a personal network of emergent minds to grow my understanding of how to make a bigger impact at my work, in my community, and for society.
NEXT (I see a world in which)
I see a world in which understanding emergent preparedness is a power skill.
THE PAYOFF
“We will strive to listen in new ways - to the voices of quiet anguish, to voices that speak without words, the voices of the heart, to the injured voices and the anxious voices, and the voices that have despaired of being heard.” ~ Richard M. Nixon, first inaugural address, 1969.
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