NORTHERN PLANNER

I was reading in this week’s Economist about the rise of the paperless office. Remember the predictions that digital stuff would reduce the use of paper? Never happened, all that internet content and masses of emails just had the new, cheap printers lots more to print them off.

End of story, another black mark against the futurologists. Or so we thought.

Apparently, use of paper is finally going down as a generation that has grown up in the digital age enters the world of work. The previous generation was too used to it’s old habits, it just took a bit more patience to wait for new people without the baggage.

That’s a big truth to our approach to  new stuff, be it thinking about the future or dealing with new things entering into our own lives – it’s always from our own frame of reference. So Star Trek from the 1960S doesn’t look like the 23rd century, it looks like the 60S.

Star Trek from the 80S looks, well, 80S.

That’s why it’s so hard to see into the future – it will be based on what we know now. That’s why it’s hard to predict how new innovations will work – will people adapt the innovation to how they live now or adapt the innovation?

That’s why really creative ads are hard to test – people will judge them based on what they’re used to, and why culture (and agencies in particular) take so long to change.

So any change in attitudes, feminism, homosexuality, attitudes to race….whatever… take time  since you have to wait for the generations without the baggage to come through first.