Digital is the new Electricity

"What is digital?"
In a recent wave of presentations I've had the privilege of delivering around the globe, I defined "digital" as the new electricity. To us electricity is a natural part of how the world works. It's just there, it just works... Actually, without it nothing (except perhaps bicycles!) would work, yet we don't ever question its mere existence. (sort of a Matrix trilogy existential debate of man vs. machine)

Many daily objects use electricity as their main source of power but you don't say, "let me connect my kettle to the electrical grid and use some electricity to heat water" or "let me connect my fridge to electricity so it keeps stuff cold". To us electricity is invisible. And that's the beauty of it, because at some point in time, electricity was something you could hold an exposition about. Just look at the cover image of this post, international exposition of electricity in Marseille, 1908. It was new, it was a driver of change, "electrification" was a phenomenon. (digitisation? anyone?)

Back to "digital".
It still is something we can "talk" about. But we've certainly passed the "let me connect to the internet...", "yesterday I connected to the internet.." kind of talk... guess what... give it some time, we'll stop talking about it at all. It will remain in the background as a natural part of our lives, connecting things to each other with no interruptions, full IOT style (internet of things) and cease to exist as an adjective as in: digital marketing, digital this, digital that...

Today's business jargon of digital: digitisation, digital revolution, digital marketing, digital director, digital transformation... will follow suit.

So a word of advice to all of us who work on this field, our days are numbered! When all is digital, we won't talk, nor think about digital...

Now let me post this on the internet!