Always-on reality   |  January 26, 2009  

Anything that happens now doesn’t happen just once. It lives on in an on-demand world of video images, and that is changing politics, business and our society

By Jim Harris

With millions of mobile phones, digital cameras and camcorders in use in North America, we’re living in an always-on era. And with the advent of YouTube, personal video recorders and podcasts, any event that would have been broadcast once and then allowed to fade from our memory is now available on demand.

This is having a profound impact on business, politics and society.

It certainly hit John McCain’s presidential bid. His selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate gave the Republicans a boost following the party’s convention. Palin’s speeches were carefully scripted to pull former Hilary Clinton supporters and independent female voters to the Republicans. It was a fascinating strategy given the drawn out and divisive fight between Obama and Clinton for the Democratic nomination.

And the strategy worked until Palin had to leave the script behind and sit down with an actual journalist. Her interview with CBS’ Katie Couric wasn’t just disastrous, it was fatal.

Had all this happened even five years ago, its impact would have been muted, because Palin’s inability to handle even basic questions would only have been viewed by those watching the show in its actual time slot. The next day, commentators would have had their say, and a few days later the whole episode would live on only in memory.

But not today. The interview went up immediately on YouTube and it’s had almost seven million views, in one form or another. This was followed by Tina Fey’s portrayal of the candidate on Saturday Night Live, in which Fey used entire lines cribbed directly from Palin’s interview. Those comic portrayals have collectively drawn tens of millions of additional YouTube views.

Living in an always-on world killed Palin’s chance of becoming VP.

The always-on era began for most of us with Rodney King’s beating in 1991 by Los Angeles police. More recently, the Sûreté du Québec were caught on video trying to incite violence at a peaceful protest during the North American leaders’ summit, and in 2007 Toronto students investigating the impact of traffic video cameras caught an alarming scene on tape, as an enraged driver assaulted a bicyclist. The driver turned out to be an off-duty cop. (To relive these events, check out http://tinyurl.com/surete, http://tinyurl.com/suretecbc and http://tinyurl.com/assault2007.)

New world order
Business and political leaders need to assume that whatever they do or say in public can, and quite likely will, live on as an on-demand narrowcast. This means they themselves must be always on. We all saw a failure to do this when, on Sept. 11, 2001, George Bush continued to read to elementary school students after being informed of an attack. The scene played prominently in Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 911, and it is still available on YouTube (http://tinyurl.com/bushreading).

So a lack of reaction can be damning as well, especially in our current climate of gotcha politics.

So, turn off
Despite all these stories of people brought low by video evidence of their incompetence or criminality, long term I think we will actually become more tolerant of gaffes, because after all we’re all human. However, I expect us to become far less accepting of cover ups. The Sûreté du Québec’s denials and then admission that police had acted as provocateurs caused a huge backlash.

Furthermore, I believe we are experiencing a new form of addiction, an always-on addiction. If you sleep with your BlackBerry turned on and choose to run the risk that an incoming piece of spam will wake you—well, you may be addicted.

All of this—the gotcha politics, the documenting of crime and the always-on addiction—are new societal norms we’ll all have to navigate. To help, I offer the following advice: unplug occasionally. Work out, meditate, hang out with family or friends, and stay away from YouTube and e-mail while you do it.

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Jim Harris is the author of Blindsided, a number one international bestseller published in 80 countries. Jim is sought after as a speaker at conferences and seminars around the world. E-mail him at jimh@jimharris.com.

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