Paul Saffo, the Silicon Valley futurist, makes the point in this interview with Michael Krasny that we’ve entered a third type of economy. He calls it a “creator economy,” one in which the central actor consumes at the same time they create.

This was preceded by, as we’re now painfully aware, the consumer economy, which was symbolized by the credit card.

Saffo points out that the consumer economy arose after WWII, powered by workers (and savers), when companies realized that they were producing more than people could consume. What to do?

So, three economies: producer, consumer, creator.

This isn’t news to most of us, but what’s interesting, in my mind, is to realize, absorb, how central marketing (and sales) was to making the consumer economy viable. It literally shaped the world’s awareness and attention. And TV was at the center of this effort to inflame the desire for more.

What happens when a society runs out of room to make unlimited things and, simultaneously, the method of communicating what’s worth having splits into a zillion threads? Like overnight.

We are about to find out. And I think, in general, we underestimate the depth and speed of change caused by digital/social media. This is why I strongly believe that display advertising on the Web is going to get turned on its head along with so many other things . . . no matter how much we kick and scream and insist it’s not.

Display (and search and social) is telling a new organizing story, and this time we’re all talking back.

• BROWSE / IN TIMELINE
• « Content All the Way
• » The Great Coordination

• BROWSE / IN Red
• « Content All the Way
• » The Great Coordination

• RELATED / YOU MIGHT FIND THESE INTERESTING
No related posts