Fast Culture, Slow Change: The Paradox of Digital Society
While it can seem like culture is changing super fast, it isn’t. A framework to understand cultural change in the Digital Age.
From TikTok dance trends to memes that seem to upend what we’re thinking, when stock prices can shoot up or crash a company in a matter of hours based on a single social media post or store shelves can empty of a product by the afternoon based on a viral social media message, sure seems like culture can change on a dime these days. Not really.
It’s a sort of mantra in the business world that things are changing faster than ever, especially for marketers. Many a media outlet declares that culture today is changing faster than ever before, or those prognostications around how Artificial Intelligence is or is about to, change our entire world.
If your dopamine receptors and neurons feel like they’re on fire all the time, here’s a bit of a reality check for you. Actual, meaningful cultural change, despite our hyperconnected societies isn’t actually change that fast.
As one who, through my work, spends a lot of time researching and analysing digital cultures, the impacts of technology on our sociocultural systems and the intersection of humans and technology, I’ve come to evolve what I call Cultural Velocity Networks to help understand just how…
