About the author

Martin Recke is Corporate Editor at SinnerSchrader, now part of Accenture Interactive. He has published such books as Transformational Products (by Matthias Schrader) and The Product Field Reference Guide. In 2006, he co-founded NEXT and was Head of Conference Management until 2016. Martin has worked at SinnerSchrader since 2001 and was Head of Corporate Communications until 2010. He is also a political scientist, a blogger, and has a background in journalism.

Table of Contents

Preface

Introduction

We are now in a different world

The Big Crunch of the digital universe

1. Parallelwelten

2. Reality

2.1 What is Digital Humanism?

2.2 Modernity and reality are the next frontiers

2.3 Losing touch with reality

2.4 Reality mining: how Big Tech extracts value from reality

3. Innovation

3.1 Can innovation get us out of the current mess?

3.2 How to be disruptive and sustainable at the same time

3.3 What is innovation?

3.4 The parallel universes of innovation

3.5 Experience as a product

4. Marketing

4.1 Regulation on the rise

4.2 Is there a future for the online marketing industry?

4.3 The future of marketing is closely related to the future of innovation

4.4 The new role of the CMO

5. Post-digtal

5.1 Digital is ready, it just has to be done

5.2 The game of efficiency is over

6. Purpose

6.1 Seeking a higher purpose

6.2 Making sense in a VUCA world

7. Politics

7.1 The future of work is what can’t be done by machines

7.2 Power to the people

7.3 Tech has left the building

7.4 The downsides of scale

8. Outlook

8.1 An immersive experience that doesn’t suck

8.2 What will the end of smartphones look like?

8.3 Will spatial computing define the fourth cycle of personal computing?

8.4 The next computing revolution

8.5 Why imagination and creativityare primary value creators

Preface

By the editors, Matthias Schrader and Volker Martens

In the early ‘90s, differentiating real life from life on the internet was easy: real life was everything that happened offline. Now, a quarter of a century later, this assumption is nearly obsolete. Real life and internet life have merged, creating not one but several new realities.

Stretched out across time, continents and social spheres, Parallelwelten (parallel worlds) are worlds invisible to anyone not a part of them. Worlds where generations live in the same house, but in different dimensions. Worlds connected or disconnected by our actions. Worlds formed in filter bubbles and corporate silos. Worlds that crave innovation, and worlds that don’t want to change a single thing.

Digital products are increasingly defining our lives, allowing more freedom now than was ever conceivable in the analogue past. But increased choice has also heightened our susceptibility to manipulation.

How do artificial intelligence, computer vision and quantum computing generate these new dimensions? How does our digital imagination drive these new virtual, augmented and mixed realities? And how do we cultivate these worlds with equal ownership of the outcomes, both positive and negative?

Each year, NEXT introduces a theme intended to provoke and prompt discussion on digital transformation. At NEXT19, topics, speakers and the programme were framed by “Parallelwelten” and how the joint forces of digital and analogue create a myriad of worlds to live in.

This book investigates these parallel worlds from different angles: technological, corporate, scientific, cultural, economic and political. It is intended as a companion to the event and its video streams, both live and recorded, as it draws some lines connecting the topics, talks and discussions we’ve had in recent months and years.

Those talks and discussions, however, are not finished. We are eager to continue the debate. May this book help us as we move forward together.

Matthias Schrader is founder and CEO of SinnerSchrader and the NEXT Conference, and Head of Accenture Interactive DACH.

Volker Martens is one of the founders and board members of the Hamburg-based communications agency FAKTOR 3. Together with his partners Sabine Richter and Stefan Schraps, he has spent years following the digital world’s central communication aspects and trends. Alongside Accenture Interactive, FAKTOR 3 is the organiser of the NEXT Conference (nextconf.eu).

We are now in a different world

The ever-escalating debate over Big Tech has reached a new zenith. With technology more ubiquitous and invasive than ever, this brave new world has given rise to urgent questions. It’s time to find some answers.

The tech industry is a crazy beast. Technology itself constantly spurs discussion, and people still follow Apple‘s keynotes, hoping for one more thing to revolutionise the world one more time. Trends change fast, but consumer expectations and human behaviour change even faster, and the consequences are more profound. Technology not only enables this change, but thrives on it.

Browsing the current tech trends, we notice the usual suspects that have been spinning the hype cycle for years now: artificial intelligence (AI), blockchain, the cloud and VR/AR, not to mention voice interfaces, chatbots and smart speakers.

A certain disconnect

These suspects are still relevant, but have grown disconnected from the debate we’ve been having for at least three years. →1, 2 In hindsight, the election of Donald J. Trump as 45th President of the United States signalled the end of innocence for technology, foreshadowed by the Brexit vote in June 2016. Along with technology, marketing is no longer a blameless bystander, since both Brexit and the Trump election have been enabled by the (ab)use of marketing tech in general and Facebook in particular.

Granted, neither tech nor marketing was ever really innocent, but my point stands.

Mark Zuckerberg‘s company still barrels ahead oblivious to the fallout of its actions, meaning Facebook will likely be remembered as the worst example of a tech giant that doesn‘t take responsibility for the wreckage it leaves in its wake. Facebook and Google are now the biggest empires in history, and with great power comes great responsibility. →3

The quest for value(s)

If one major (meta) trend persists, it‘s the quest for value(s), relevance, sustainability, responsibility, meaning, purpose, privacy and ethics. →4, 5 Compare this list to the above-mentioned trend items like AI and blockchain, and you’ll see the stark shift from techno-curiosity to lasting principles. This was brilliantly captured by Fjord Trends 2019. →6

Tech has left the building. →7 It‘s the end of tech. →8 We‘re no longer debating the latest technologies, gadgets, social networks, or apps, as if they were an end in itself and something the rest of the world simply must adapt to. Such a debate is now boring and deeply inappropriate. Instead, it‘s about how tech can solve real problems and make the world not a worse place, but a better one.

In a way, it’s a return to the roots. →9 But this time without our previous naïveté. We‘re now better informed from two decades of digital evolution, though in some respects it has rather been a devolution.

It‘s still day one

We can write off the two decades since the dot-com craze as a phase of laying foundation, experimenting and learning. We are starting again from scratch to build something meaningful, now equipped with a multitude of powerful technologies. But if two decades are not enough, we can write off the last three since the invention of the World Wide Web, or five since the invention of the internet. →10

To sum things up:

We are now in a different world. It‘s social and technological terra incognita. →12 In a way, and in retrospect, a certain German chancellor was exactly right back in 2013: →13

The internet is new territory, uncharted territory to all of us. And it also enables our enemies. It enables enemies of a free, liberal order, to use it, to abuse it, to bring a threat to all of us, to threaten our way of life. →14

While that‘s precisely what has happened over the last couple of years, the trends now point in abetter direction. The ever-escalating debate has reached a new zenith. Tech is more prevalent and powerful than ever, and is giving rise to urgent questions. It’s time to find some answers.

References

→1 Recke, Martin (2018). Digital Fix – Fix Digital. nextconf.eu.

→2 Recke, Martin (2017). Digital Sucks! nextconf.eu.

→3 Toscano, Joe (2018). It’s Time to Get Serious About Regulating Tech. Medium.com.

→4 see chapter 3.2

→5 see chapter 6.1

→6 Fjord (2018). Fjord Trends 2019. Trends.fjordnet.com.

→7 see chapter 7.3

→8 Tinworth, Adam (2018). The end of tech is here, because tech is in everything. nextconf.eu.

→9 Tinworth, Adam (2018). From innocent idealism to pragmatic fixes: two decades of internet culture. Imperica.com.

→10 Weber, Marc (2009). October 29, 1969: Happy 40th Birthday to a Radical Idea! ComputerHistory.org.

→11 Barton, Rachel et al. (2018). To Affinity and Beyond. From me to we, the rise of the purpose-led brand. Accenture.com.

→12 Recke, Martin (2013). Here be Dragons. nextconf.eu.

→13 see chapter 3.1

→14 Carrasco, Ed (2013). German Leader’s ‘Neuland’ Internet Remarks Prompt Humiliating Memes From Social Media. NewMediaRockstars.com.

The Big Crunch of the digital universe

Today’s digital world looks like a universe that is recollapsing into the black holes of Amazon, Facebook, and Google. Cosmology has taught us this won’t end well.

In early 2019, German politician Robert Habeck announced that he’ll leave both Facebook and Twitter. →1 He cited two familiar reasons for his decision: having repeatedly “unconsciously adjusted to the polemical nature of Twitter”, and facing a hacker attack on his personal data, facilitated through Facebook. It is a tough decision for a man of his status – he had close to 50,000 followers on each of his channels – though it’s worth noting that other German politicians have much bigger audiences on social media.

Habeck was not alone in his pilgrimage away from social media. He even captured the zeitgeist: Walt Mossberg, a veteran tech journalist, left Facebook in December 2018 (but stayed with Twitter). →2 And yours truly installed neither Facebook nor Twitter on the new iPhone I got right before Christmas last year. And it feels good. True, I still occasionally experience withdrawal, but I don’t miss watching grumpy old men getting older and grumpier – and documenting it publicly – while turning older and grumpier myself. For professional and personal reasons, I won’t delete my accounts anytime soon, but I’ve drastically changed my media diet.

Social media fatigue

For a while, Facebook – and, to a lesser degree, Twitter – selected most of what I read. I managed to ruin my Twitter experience by myself early on, but the platform itself deteriorated it further by adding advertisements, distorting my feed and showing me random notifications, all for the sake of what is known in social media lingo as engagement. Facebook had been messing with my feed for years, burying me in content which neither satisfied me nor provided useful, relevant information.

All this has drained me. I have social media fatigue. So I think I’ll keep my distance and rest awhile. From time to time, I’ll approach cautiously, check in on the mess and maybe even post something. Or maybe not. I hope such a rest will cure my fatigue, because opening Facebook or Twitter these days is like checking groceries in the fridge after a few weeks: the same old acquaintances are still there, moulding.

The web giants have become toxic

Both platforms have become toxic over the years, and addictive. Facebook in particular is like a black hole, sucking up our time and attention with such gravitational force that nothing can pass without being yanked in, or escape once inside. The same goes for Google, Amazon or any of the Web giants. Along with black holes, cosmology also has presented the notion of a Big Crunch, or the universe recollapsing in on itself. That’s an even more drastic metaphor for the current state of digital, yet perhaps more accurate, as we approach 2020.

The Web in its early days was a Big Bang of creativity, expression and commerce. The digital world of today is a universe recollapsing into the black holes of Amazon, Facebook and Google. Cosmology has taught us this won’t end well. But if we look back at the history of the internet, we also realise it’s unlikely any one platform will be able to permanently sustain its dominance. They all eventually go the way of the dinosaur – “In the long run we’re all dead” – or at least the way of the typewriter: still here, some even in use, but regarded as curiosities.

After all, eBay and Myspace are still around. AOL and Yahoo lead shadowy existences as subsidiaries of Verizon, with most of their former value written off. Skype is now a Microsoft product.

The hope for innovation

The once-decentralised Web has yielded an astonishing concentration of power. Umair Haque draws a dark picture:

The Amazon——

Umair’s different take on Apple is interesting. In his view, the first trillion-dollar company, and at times the most valuable on the market (in fierce competition with Amazon and Microsoft), appears like the Rebellion against the Galactic Empire in A New Hope: while mighty Amazon has long degraded its employees and sacrificed product quality for speedy delivery and bargain-bin prices, crushing workers and consumers in the process, Apple seeks to counteract that with truly life-changing innovations that positively impact the world and thus merit a higher price. Bottom-dollar corporate greed vs. care for customer and coworker. But, to drive the Star Wars analogy even further, where are we right now in the saga? Will we see a New Republic? Who will destroy the death stars of the Empire? And what will happen next?

Our hope is that the spirit of innovation which dragged us into the current mess will be enough to drag us back out. →4 However, innovation can’t do this alone. It needs a little help from regulation, social responsibility, consumers, education and humane design →5 which brings me to the question: What is innovation, anyway?

But that’s a subject for another chapter. →6

References

→1 von der Mark, Fabian (2019). German Green Party chief Robert Habeck quits Twitter after data hack. DW.com.

→2 Victor, Daniel (2018). Walt Mossberg, Veteran Technology Journalist, Quits Facebook. NYTimes.com.

→3 Haque, Umair (2019). Apple, Amazon, and the Future of Capitalism. Eudaimonia&Co.

→4 see chapter 3.1

→5 Recke, Martin (2018). Digital Fix – Fix Digital, nextconf.eu.

→6 see chapter 3.3