Digital technology has pushed our lives to the frontiers of instantaneous communication and a data-driven society. Thanks to Steve Jobs for synergizing creativity with technology. Now that Steve Jobs is gone, we fear a discontinuity.

 

In the early ’60s, management guru Peter Drucker brought up the concept of the future called the Age of Discontinuity. Drucker was predicting the changes that will drive technologies, economies and businesses of the next millennium.

 

The ’60s was the decade of the Cold War. It was a period of ideology and nationalism. Conflicting political philosophies dictated the economies of democratic and socialist nations, backed by corresponding war artilleries.

 

A few economic powers, led by the United States, dominated world production and trade. Many technologies from the advanced countries were proprietary. Technology transfers came with exploitative strings attached. The capabilities and territories of global companies were clearly demarcated with local country businesses. The gap between rich and poor countries was a chasm.

 

In the ’60s, peace and stability were values highly sought. They still are. Drucker’s alarum on discontinuity was an idea ahead of its time. Today, it is a lifestyle.

 

In the ’80s, the computer began to change consumer usages and habits in many ways. Product innovations took virtual quantum leaps, in new media, biotechnology, medicine and telecommunications. Product obsolescence, the strategy of American cars since the ’40s, pales in comparison with the computer-based breakthroughs coming in quick succession from Silicon Valley. The quickness and multiple output of technology in the ’90s resulted in upgrading knowledge base, changing careers and lifestyles.

 

Identity crisis

 

Consider these management tenets that confront board directors and CEOs nowadays: downsizing, reengineering, empowered teams, total quality management, just-in-time delivery, flotilla productions. These corporate structures either trigger career dislocation or reinvention. Identity crisis becomes the order of the day for skilled or manual laborers, including specialists.

 

In marketing, distribution and retail, with enormous size and expanse, challenged manufacturers by becoming the arbiter of price and inventory of products. In the US, Walmarts and K-Marts have become brands themselves, able to deliver value added to the consumer by harnessing efficiencies of computerization. The magic of the brand diminishes due to parity.

 

Manufacturers of global brands resorted to economies of scale in order to compete in the pricing arena, both locally and globally. The consumer continues to be either enlightened or economy-driven.

 

Consequently, the cost/quality competitiveness forced manufacturers to review their revenue structure, a move that ricochets, hitting their business partners and suppliers. The unbundling of services results in corporate moves of deconstruction and construction in order to protect the shareholder’s value.

 

Marketing expense is whipped by the tail of the storm. The cumbersome hierarchy of marketing crumbles. Businessmen now know the structure and art of global or regional marketing.

 

Individuals with traditional careers confront the difficult task of reinventing themselves. This is acceptable to some who recognize the value of continuous learning and the viability of a multi-skilled status. For zone dwellers and congealed individuals, the change is a pill hard to swallow—which shouldn’t be, because the need for innovation lies in everything that the new normal can redesign or invent, whether it’s content or structure.

 

Back in the ’50s, the teenagers of the world were homogenized by rock music and Levi’s. Today the globalization of business, the use of information technology, and the removal of trade barriers cut across all demographics in all continents. Homogenization of needs and wants is fast becoming universal.

 

Young professionals, housewives, children, teenagers, newlyweds, and farm families become homogenized consumers, by countries, by continents, by the planet.

 

Shopping has never been so generic. Many brands have become regional or global. Beautifully designed malls and supermarts are familiar landmarks all over the world, just like fast-food brands. When you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all. Whatever is left of the distinctive country’s products is relegated to handcrafted tourists’ souvenirs.

 

Many of today’s new products evolve from new technologies and new lifestyles which transcend race and religion. New wants and needs emerge, as exemplified by the wired customer.

 

Steve Jobs’ Mac, iPhone and iPad have made earth people neighbors socializing or doing business across the fence, by being data-fed instantaneously. Constituencies of autocratic nations have demanded or rebelled for their ultimate freedom, just like in democratic states. If poverty can be systematically wiped out all over the world, man’s dream for equality and dignity will be fulfilled.

 

Paradox

 

The last element in the equation in the culture of change is a paradox: the element of permanence.

 

Permanence is a value only an intellectual and spiritual being can adhere to. It is a quality we can attribute only to a human being.

 

There are simply things natural to man. Prime examples are the Golden Rule, the longing for peace and happiness, the quest for truth, the struggle for perfection, the yearning for immortality. Truth and morals are immune to change.

 

In the field of communication, whether objective information or creative persuasion, we will always deal with a human being, whatever the age of civilization he lives in—Pleistocene, Sumerian, Classical, Renaissance, Industrial or Galactic.

 

When a man is born into this world, he is the only creature around bursting with potential. He can grow up to be an Einstein, a Picasso, a Francis of Assisi, or a Tiger Woods. The puppy can only grow to be a dog, to bark like any other dog. The human culture will always be different from animal culture or a robotic culture. Only humans are capable of art and imagination, and transcendence will always be magical.

 

The mass exodus caused by Supertyphoon “Yolanda” is a discontinuity in habitation and domicile. A physical severing of the ties between a community and mainstream society.

 

But there’s also permanence amidst the havoc wrought by Yolanda. The Philippine Daily Inquirer’s Nov.18 issue said it all on its front page: Faith is stronger than typhoons. The main photograph showed a woman kneeling inside a roofless and rain-soaked church, saying her thanksgiving prayers for keeping her family alive. Permanence comes from a thing called the soul. And it means immortality.

 

 

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