Internet life is finally scaling

Tom Standage’s latest book is doing the rounds in an innovative (or allegedly ancient) way at the moment and a tweet about it leapt out at me this week:

Thinking about this brought up some interesting comparisons from another area where I’ve noticed a similar trend: ecommerce.

In the old days, you used to go to a shop, the shopkeeper knew your name, knew what you liked, knew how to keep you loyal and could maintain a relationship. It was small scale and one to one. Since then, the commerce scene expanded so much with supermarkets and similar that this stopped being possible and a lot of this personal touch was lost. Then the internet happened and things quickly moved toward a dumb anonymous experience.

But the digital age also offers salvation. In the case of ecommerce, smart analytics and tech like multivariate testing can create bespoke web experiences that also provide an equal degree of knowledge about individual customers to the retailer. The familiarity may no longer be in a human mind, but that’s necessary at this scale. The important thing is that the user gets something closer to the virtues of that original experience from the pre-digital age.

This isn’t a point about humans vs machines – and indeed I think the machines make this work at scale but I’m a big believer in the human world and the human aspect that makes most interactions tick. And that’s even more true when it comes to the kind of media and communication that Standage is describing.

I’d suggest these technologies aren’t taking us back to the old standard but instead finally the manifestation of digital as a proper alternative. It’s easy to forget how young the web is and a when the only experience you’ve had becomes in retrospect a period of teething, the new status quo can be shocking. But I think it’s here to stay.

When it comes to media, when it comes to commerce and likely other areas too, the web is finally starting to provide the kind of insightful, customised and productive relationships that are comparable to business’s origins. The web has arrived. What’s next?

 
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