Larger, Smaller, More, Less
Looking at the business alternative to AI from my own perspective
Welcome to Exodus 25. If you’re a new reader, this is where I take a weekly look at the forces which persuade us in the modern world, and how we operate within them, as people, businesses and brands, to persuade each other. Please comment or restack on what has, or has not, persuaded you about what you read here.
This article is a little more personal than I normally write, I hope it resonates, but I won’t make a habit of indulging myself too often!
I have days where I wish my world was a little larger.
I remember when it used to be, when I worked for bustling, sometimes frenetic, digital agencies of 20-100 people. That was between 2001 and 2016.
The early years were a lot of fun, digital was in its infancy and every month seemed to bring something new, a different format, a new creative tool, or just more power for craftspeople to wield, from processing power to bandwidth.
Towards the end of that period, and ever since, that sense faded. Technology became much less about allowing craftspeople to do better, and much more about allowing everyone to try their hand at those crafts by replacing B2B services with easy-to-use tools.
Perhaps that was a noble ideal, that craftspeople and their agencies were just a form of gatekeeper and we should all be able to wield our own power, produce from our own imagination and speak our own truth. A decade on, did that make a better society and a better business world? Or was it in fact a grand game of divide and rule?
I’m far from alone in thinking we have produced a world now far more atomised and noisier at SME level, whilst the levers of digital power, financial and algorithmic, are in the hands of a tiny number of corporations. We created a culture of ‘more’, a content-industrial complex powered by data, but governed by attention metrics. For a while data-focused marketing agencies made hay from this, but it came to bite even them in the end. One need only listen to Mark Zuckerberg’s recent comments on the advertising industry to understand the trap we walked into.
Now we spin our wheels and honk the horn furiously, but we don’t really get anywhere. Hence our economy doesn’t grow and the dividends of capital are retained by a small ultra-wealthy class.
The rest of us just get resentful and frustrated because we have have an information network, the internet, which does not allow us to live in the blissful ignorance that our ancestors could.
We should perhaps be kicking ourselves that we stopped valuing and investing in the pursuit of great ideas and instead told ourselves the value was just more expression of more ideas from everyone. I suppose it’s what happens when you combine the explosive population growth of my lifetime with the growth in liberal ideas of everyone mattering and having a voice.
There are two things I believe to be universal human truths:
We will always be tribal and we will always want to strive for some kind of improvement. It is in the basic nature of our cognitive abilities. All we have to strive against are the others tribes of humanity, hence our wars, religions, societies and secular ideologies. The only thing that would unite humanity is a non-human intelligence equal or superior to us. That could unite us as one tribe against it.
It’s interesting how quickly we regained a community spirit thought lost during the COVID pandemic, then just as quickly abandoned it when that enemy was vanquished. Shows both sides of that which we are capable.
There is no evidence alien life from another planet is about to provide our cognitive challenge. Could happen, I suppose! But a non-human intelligence we ourselves created… well that’s more interesting and actually becoming reality.
If my thesis has any truth, the chances of all humanity accepting the influence of that intelligence is almost zero. Some will, but take away our ability or need to strive and many people will become desperately unhappy very quickly. We might expend some time and energy blaming and fighting not the new intelligence itself, but those who released it. That would seem quite a natural human response.
But finding another way, not ruled by AI, would give a lot of us something to do. I don’t think we should underestimate the power and allure of that desire.
Apologies, I’ve indulged in a philosophical detour there. Bringing it back to the business world of today, it’s a strange contradiction that I would love my world to be larger, but without being MORE. The shrinkage is caused by a general sense of uncertanty about the human world. We know a lot of policy decisions haven’t delivered, we feel economic theory keeps getting judgements wrong, and our political leaders seem weak (either incompetent or self-serving). Into that vacuum has been poured an almighty perception of certainty about AI, hence massive financial investment into the AI arena and draining from more human and creative arenas.
“In 2023, S&P 500 performance was led by a small number of mega-cap stocks, with the Magnificent Seven delivering 101% returns versus the equal-weight index, which yielded 2.5%”
Dubravko Lakos-Bujas, Chief Global Equity Strategist at J.P. Morgan
That may be a bubble, as the likes of Ed Zitron contend and if it is we’re going to have some severe ructions to contend with. All I know is that, at the age of 50, I already feel the relentlessness of the attention economy intently and I recoil from it. I also sense turbulence in the minds of younger generations around AI, wanting to grasp the opportunties that will be theirs to shape, but also demonstrating admirable wariness to it. They may turn out to be a very wise generation, if they can avoid having their minds rotted. As digital natives they can see that the current development of generative AI has not demonstrated any intent to take us beyond the attention economy, just supercharge it further.
This overload seems likely to come in dual forms. One being sheer volume, the other being heightened uncertainty, leading to even greater levels of anxiety than are already manifesting. I believe this will create severe consequences, both economic and societal. Our brains can’t take it. I don’t want this for my children, democratic societies, or the world.
I could respond to this in one of two ways, but I feel both happening simultaneously.
I could just check out, accept I am now too old to play a major role in anything much and concentrate on planning as soft a landing into old age as possible. Part of me has already been tempted by these thoughts, as my body increasingly creaks and the demand for my services becomes harder to create.
Or I can make a different bet. I can bet that the arrival of AI bifurcates humanity and a portion of the business world rejects AI control and wants to know what to do as an alternative to re-engage human-led persuasion and co-operation. For that I would have a useful contribution to make and hopefully a demand for my skillset would be triggered, creating a larger purpose to my later life.
If you want to know what that means for the future of marketing it will involve:
Behavioural signalling over audiovisual media signalling
Augmented reality over virtual reality
SME collaboration instead of reliance on megacorps
Imagination driving bigger gains than productivity
A culture of “better” replacing a culture of “more”
So that’s where I am. Often feeling adrift in the world of today, but refusing to chase after it for money and perpetuate a sub-optimal future. Instead I am studying, thinking, writing and planning what might be useful, for a certain tribe, in a world I can envisage. If that tribe never forms, or that future doesn’t come to pass, I will quietly pack it away without resentment and live out my years in a state of humble peace.