Landlines and Clouds: Tech Changes Are the Only Constant

Look, I was 5 when it turned the year 2000, and I’m not going to hide that. But from cultural clues and, you know, being around other humans, I feel like there were a fair amount of people who were just waiting for the internet fad to be over.

We couldn’t predict back then how crucial the iPhone would become to people’s lives (and what it would do to our attention spans, the psychology of toddlers, integrated marketing strategies, etc.). And, like all change throughout history, there was a clinging to the traditional. Landlines became a thing of nostalgia, as did boomboxes (iPods for me). Not to say everything was being laid to waste as technology boomed in front of us– take print for example. Around 2012, everyone was sure newspapers would be a thing of the past because everyone got their news online– but the unique experience of reading a physical book kept physical reading alive and well. Radio might be out of date but podcasts are still up and coming in 2020 as a main form of content intake.

But here’s something to pull the rug out from under you in all this “fad” “trend” “traditional” talk, there’s one thing people knew — and could see– would always stick around for the long haul: brick and mortars.

Oof. And then entered Covid-19.

So the question is, have humans ever actually been right about what will stick around and what will not in the era of emerging technology? It keeps surpassing our expectations, right? So, where’s the end point?

Unfortunately, I don’t have the answer because I’m not a wizard. But I do have another concept to throw at you (us): the cloud.

Never in my life have I seen a fire safe…

People went from having hard copies because of a distrust in computers, fire safes in home corners next to landlines. Then, people went from having local copies to copies in Google Drive, whole companies even. It moved from a method of storage to a method of doing collaboration and more.

And then it stopped there. The cloud went from being everyone’s backup storage, to everyone’s collaboration tool suite, to being a core part of working day by day (whether you’re at a desk, overseeing manufacturing, streamlining entertainment… the industry doesn’t quite matter).

And we figured that’s where it would stop. Or at least, we stopped thinking about it so much, we left adaptation mode.

Yes, this is another installment of ‘not sponsored just stalking.’

But, boom, just like always, following history, the cloud is still evolving, wanting to handle more of what we do. And I don’t just mean edge computing, which we’ve already written about here and here, and worked with clients in that industry here.

We mean changing how we use the cloud AND what the cloud is capable of to begin with. We discovered this when we heard about Preymaker. You can learn more about them here but essentially, they’re a startup with custom AWS capabilities making it so that the cloud is not only where you store and collaborate, but where you create. Where creators work side by side from afar (talk about 2020-proofing) in the programs they normally have to have on-site and on every computer.

The cloud just became part of production too.

Anyways, I don’t know about you and maybe this is just the Zillennial in me talking, but the only constant in life right now seems to be change itself. Whether we embrace that or not (as people and as the 10-year-running top advertising agency in Austin and elsewhere) is up to us. But at least right now, in the present, in 2020 world, this change is good. Preymaker makes being apart feel less like being alone. And for creators in any industry (and any industry that uses the cloud somewhere along the pipeline), it’s opening new doors. And new doors are exactly what we need this year.