Brave new world

The web as we know it, navigable via a graphic user interface or ‘browser’, was introduced to the public in 1993. I was nine. People turning 18 this year have never lived in a world without the web. I am going to talk about the web, apps, social media. But I’m not going to talk about the specifics. I’m not going to recommend specific applications, media or indeed suggest that there is any one way of doing things. Because the thing is, this world changes so fast that in 6 months, my recommendations will be useless.

What you need to learn, is that these tools change so fast that no one knows everything, everyone’s learning, and the only way to learn is to get stuck in. People know more than they used to because they are connected – learning becomes exponential. They ask questions, they google things. (I built my first PC from scratch from simply googling. And that was before ‘to google’ was even a verb.)

The question shouldn’t be “why should we be using the web?”, but “why on earth are you not?”. Not only should we be using the web, it’s vital that we use it to examine the way it is changing our audience’s lives. There is no use being a brand in these spaces. Social media is interesting because it is social. It is peer to peer – the personal-as-brand is an out-dated marketing concept. Marketing is outdated. Be yourself, just as you would at the drinks after a conference. And while there are plenty of benefits and efficiencies to be found in online spaces – longer, deeper audience relationships, free software and images for posters and copy, and bloggers and social networks eager to discuss new work – there’s more than one way to work with technology, we need to stop using it and start examining it. How is it changing how we communicate? How is it changing the way we tell stories about our lives?
Life is no longer Aristotelian, no longer expected to pan out along three or four certain paths. Rituals and local communities are becoming less rigid. Information is no longer a top-down system, and it doesn’t just reach us through one channel (a newspaper, or news broadcast). Life now is, more than ever, a series of intersecting moments, of peer-to-peer sharing of data, a collage of information from which meaning, opinion and facts emerge. In our relationships with our audiences, and in the work that we make, we need to stop thinking about beginning, middle, end (or contact detail, information sent, ticket purchased) – but about working with and exploring the aesthetics of digital technology.
What might that look like? Well, think about conversations, two-way communication, not marketing; arts experiences which explore the first-person aesthetic of social media and video games. This doesn’t have to be in technology, and it doesn’t have to be expensive. Think open source, think peer-to-peer, think collage of moments. Develop work in which audiences have some degree of agency or immersion. Make scratch-nights and previews truly responsive to the feedback. Blog openly about process, publish emails between makers, ask for advice, give it. Open up your space to other artists when you’re not using it. Share photos of your work via creative commons so bloggers can use them in discussion.
Produce work that challenges how companies are beginning to trade our data, examine how marketing shifts when we receive it via social networks, and not in a ‘framed’ advertisement-space. Write agreements that encourage actors to video blog and photographers to share. Ask for stories to help shape a project, share the product online under a licence that allows people to remix and mash up. If you don’t know how to do something, google it; if you find out how to do something, blog about it. Think less about ownership, and more about collaboration. Think less about product, and more about process. You may just find this results in a better product.
These are just a few suggestions, the only way to find what suits you or your company is by doing. This is not a waste of time, this is an investment. Learning to learn, unlearn, relearn is not a just a way of communicating with the so-called ‘digital native’ generation; it’s a twenty-first century survival skill.
And what if you feel completely lost? What if you have no idea where to start? Well, this is what the world is like now. It’s a level playing field, you’ve always got Google, and there’s always a ‘back’ button.
Do what I would do if I don’t know something: ask someone.