Change is Still the Same

It’s been my position that change is not as rapid or dramatic as many would like us to believe.  While it would be foolish to deny that change is occurring and that more changes are coming in future, it’s equally foolish to constantly speak of rapid and dramatic change that will sweep the globe.  Changes tends to be small, and even when it is revolutionary (the emergence of the Internet and mobile), it takes quite a bit of time to occur. 

While the last twenty years or so have been transformative, all of this hubbub has been based on three basic premises that have not changed – and all the plausible prophesies of change for the foreseeable future are still based on the same three basic forces: technology, globalization, and changing consumer behaviors.

Technology

Technology is by far the greatest force of enthusiasm about change, and a force of actual change in far fewer situations than the enthusiastic will let on.  Computer technology has driven change for the past fifty years – between databases and networks, the internet, and mobile.   The devices we use to communicate with one another have expanded to provide more access to more people in more situations.  

But at heart, the functions of technology are still the same – connecting people to one another and providing rapid access to information. The emergence of mobile computing put access in the hands of most people in most locations – this happened around the turn of the century, and nothing that “big” has happened since. The technological changes in the past two decades have simply been more of the same.  

Aside of “more of the same” there are still a few unfulfilled promises that have been lingering: artificial intelligence and big data are the most cited.   But these ideas are not new.  In the 1980s, the idea of an omniscient AI with access to global information was the topic of books and movies, and science fiction writers probably stumbled across the notion forty or fifty years before that.  

And should these two things finally be delivered, what will be the dramatic change that will occur?  Better search results?   Is that really something that will change the world, or something that will be marginally better, faster, and more intuitive than we already have?  Given that the majority of people have access to the majority of information that is of practical value, I don’t see this as a world-shaking change.

Globalization

Speaking of “the world” (as it’s the scale of grandiose claims), the second major force of change for the past few decades has been globalization.   This has been happening gradually since the end of the Second World War.   Arguably, it’s been happening since the time that the wooden ships of the British Empire connected economies around the world, or even when the Silk Road of the Mongolian Empire connected the civilizations of the east and west.

For the most part, globalization has been an economic phenomenon: it has given companies easier access to customers and suppliers in foreign markets at the cost of facing competition from other firms that would normally have been kept at bay by distance.  Its effect on consumers, however, has been largely positive: a wider array of suppliers grants consumers access to a broader selection of goods and advantageous pricing.

And again, there is no future change from globalization other than “more of the same.”  As world economies develop and additional resources become available to buyers in the commercial and residential markets, there will be even more things and price competition will become even more acute.   This is nothing new, merely the continuation of a trend.

There is also a similar force of deregulation, which does for domestic markets what is done for the world market on a smaller scale – but because markets were not regulated until regulations were passed, deregulation is not a change to something different, but a return to a previous state.   It is certainly advantageous for an industry to be deregulated, but this is not revolutionary.

Consumer Behaviors

The final force of enthusiasm about change are the differences in consumer behavior – but my sense is that this is not much different to the effect of globalization.   A great deal of attention is paid to the subtle differences between Boomers, Generation X, and the Millennial – but this is strictly in reference to the American market, which is neither the largest nor the most important market in the world.  

Overseas, similar changes have been taking place for years as younger generations depart from tradition to join the global market.  There was a great deal of buzz about the “shin jin rui” or “Japanese Generation X” about four decades ago, the emergence of the Russian capitalist a decade later, and similar phenomena in nations the world over as they become industrialized and join the global marketplace.

But again, it is a “more of the same” phenomenon – the growth in consumer income that results from industrialization creates a growth in demand for consumer goods (primarily luxury goods) and a shift toward greater individual choice due to the increased variety that is brought by globalization.    As more locations industrialize, it is predictable their consumption will follow this pattern rather than taking on a new and unheard of shape.

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In the end, there is little consideration of any force of change that is really new – it is merely a continuation of trends that are twenty, fifty, or even more years old – so the “change” is more evolutionary than revolutionary, and there’s very little insight into anything truly different than has already been witnessed.    This is not to say that some sweeping and revolutionary factor will suddenly emerge, simply that none has for quite some time, nor seems likely given that the world is still taking time to adjust and mature into the three factors listed above.