“A new civilization is emerging in our lives. This new civilization brings with it new family styles, changed ways of working, loving and living; a new economy, new political conflicts, and beyond all this, an altered consciousness as well.”
– Alvin Toffler, “Creating a New Civilization” (1995).
In this transition of which Toffler speaks, cultures everywhere are being redesigned along digital guidelines, creating what we would call diginomic lifestyles. As the world reshapes and redesigns itself, it is rapidly and optimally adopting the technologies required to maximize convenience. Don’t sweat it! There’s no need. Just push that button.
Like the car commercial whose ubiquitous mantra is “Zoom! Zoom!” – the evolving Diginomic Lifestyle is one in which the speed of Life needs the speed of Light to thrive and prosper.
~ A World Market in Your Pocket ~
“There can no longer be any doubt that the future of business is inextricably bound up with the Internet,” says John Chambers, president/CEO of Cisco, as quoted in the book, DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION in 2000.
Michael Robert and Bernard Racine agree. From their 2001 work entitled, e-STRATEGY PURE & SIMPLE, “e-commerce is changing the rules everyday – making it even tougher for brick-and-mortar companies to develop strategies for survival in the new economy.”
At this moment (January 2015), the total world population sits at 7.2 billion souls, 3.1 billion of whom have access to the Internet … fully 42 percent of the earth’s population (Internet World Stats). That’s a lot of people coming to visit!
In the U. S., the Census Bureau of the Department of Commerce reports that “e-commerce is growing at a faster pace than street sales in brick-and-mortar stores. Estimates of U.S. retail e-commerce sales for the third quarter of 2014, according to the DOC (adjusted for seasonal variation, but not for price changes), was $78.1 billion, an increase of 4.0 percent (±0.7%) from the second quarter. The third quarter 2014 e-commerce estimate increased 16.2 percent (±3.2%) from the same period in 2013 while total retail sales increased only 4.2 percent (±0.5%). E-commerce sales in the third quarter of 2014 accounted for 6.6 percent of total sales.”
Jonathan D. Freidan, E-Commerce Law: “Though online spending is still a fraction of total consumer spending, it is growing at a rate of more than 25 percent annually.”
According to one source (eMarketer), there are over 4 billion global subscribed users of cell phones today … over 67% of the world’s population. “By the end of the forecast period (of 2014), smartphone penetration among mobile phone users globally will near 50%.” According to a 2010 study by the U.N., “more people on earth have access to cell phones than toilets.”
~ Click and Buy ~
Aside from making phone calls or texting, new connection technologies in smartphones is on a fast track to being your electronic wallet whereby wireless purchases are made on the fly. It’s also being used as your personal scanning wand for food, clothing and department store purchases.
“Today’s younger generation will trade in their cash, credit cards and checks for mobile digital wallets by 2016, new research claims,” the International Business Times reported on November 24, 2011. “Children born today will be [the] first ‘cashless generation’ and will frequently use their smartphones in exchange for goods and services, according to a report by the research company Forrester for the e-commerce site PayPal.”
International business consultant and author, Kenichi Ohmae, in his book, THE NEXT GLOBAL STAGE, writes: “The interconnected, interactive, global economy is a reality. It is often confusing and disorienting. It challenges both the way we see business and the way we do business.”
“The mobile Internet – mobile commerce – will dramatically change what has already dramatically changed the world,” says Richard Silber of Accenture. “The wireless world will be a truly global market … Get ready for the ride of your life!” ■
DiginomicsCentral 