Globalization: infectious connectivity

Karl Fisch and Scott McLeod’s Did You Know videos have been doing the rounds for a while now. As Karl Fisch says in his blog, The Fischbowl:

“The various versions have been viewed well over 20 millions times (my guess is that with downloaded versions and audience showings it’s probably closer to 30 million times, but 20 million would be the safe number). It’s been shown to audiences large and small, educational and corporate and everything in between. It’s been shown to the leaders of our national defense and to incoming congressmen. It’s been shown by university presidents and kindergarten teachers, televangelists and politicians, folks just trying to make a buck and those trying to save the world”.

The essence of the videos is to capture the escalation of technological advancement and also the globalization of society. Fisch’s response is tongue in cheek:

“I think the fact that a simple little PowerPoint can be viewed by so many folks and start so many conversations means that we live in a fundamentally different world than the one I (and most of you reading this) grew up in.”

Indeed it is phenomenal how large the impact of connectivity owing to the Internet is and both the content of Did You Know and its circulation show just that.

Fisch and McLeod’s latest Did You Know project takes a slightly different route than the previous versions. Did You Know 4.0 was created for The Economist’s Media Convergence Forum which is taking place on the 20-21st of October 2009 in New York. Although mainly focused on marketers, the forum hopes to demonstrate the impact of the evolving media landscape – the fading of the print and the embrace of the online.

Amongst the media blogs that I follow, (and I apologise to those I forget to mention and promise to add to my food for thought should my memory be jerked) these entries provide interesting insights into the debate on the death of newspapers:

Matt3010’s Blog – The Death of Newspapers?

Organ Grinder Blog – The Death of Newspapers (series)

The Guardian blog is a series of posts which cover the debate on the fading print press from a historical perspective and is currently at the 1920s and will be interesting to follow through.

The Did You Know 4.0 nicely captures the changing media landscape and the absorption of technology in to our daily lives. A common theme that runs through the latest Did You Know video and its predecessors is that there is undoubtedly an infectious buzz around technology that simply cannot be avoided. Everyone from businesses to the media down to individuals are scrambling to keep up with the escalation of technology and missing the bus means missing out.

The video is certainly worth a look and so here it is below. It even gets a nice mention in this week’s Time magazine.