{"id":27308,"date":"2016-06-28T15:32:20","date_gmt":"2016-06-28T22:32:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/?p=27308"},"modified":"2017-04-29T15:48:43","modified_gmt":"2017-04-29T22:48:43","slug":"the-digital-economy-postnormal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2016\/06\/the-digital-economy-postnormal","title":{"rendered":"The Digital Economy: Postnormal?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/pew-1-195x300.jpg\"><\/a>I\u2019m curious if readers of this blog, futurists or otherwise, were as surprised as I was to see the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pewinternet.org\/2016\/05\/19\/the-new-digital-economy\/\">Pew Research Center report<\/a> last month about how, to the average American, some of the biggest digital economy companies and concepts are still relatively unknown. A few highlights:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>61% of Americans have never heard of the term \u201ccrowdfunding.\u201d<\/li>\n<li>73% are not familiar with the term \u201csharing economy.\u201d<\/li>\n<li>89% are not familiar with the term \u201cgig economy.\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>This was a reminder to me that the digital economy is still<a href=\"http:\/\/www.fastcompany.com\/3060014\/most-americans-dont-use-services-like-airbnb-uber-and-instacart\"> far from mainstream<\/a>, and I think we need to keep that in mind when we analyze new technologies. But there\u2019s another reason the report caught my eye, which is that it I think it\u2019s another good example of a human ecosystem, in this case the digital economy, exhibiting signs of <a href=\"http:\/\/ziauddinsardar.com\/2011\/03\/welcome-to-postnormal-times\/\">Postnormal Times<\/a> (PNT). The digital economy is famous for making our lives easier, cutting out various middlemen and red tape to get what the consumer actually wants: a bed, not a grand lobby, a ride, not a car. This seems very normal in terms of the evolution of consumer needs.<\/p>\n<p>But according to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.academia.edu\/25020625\/The_Three_Tomorrows_of_Postnormal_Times\">Sardar and Sweeney<\/a>, \u201cmany \u2018normal\u2019 systems will not continue to operate \u2018normally\u2019 in PNT\u2014sooner or later, the 3Cs will have a direct or indirect impact on them.\u201d It may sound somewhat doomsday, but it\u2019s not. PNT is nothing to fear, but a way of observing the world; evidence of the 3Cs are just indicators that a system is evolving and changing, and lets us know that our responses need to change in kind.<\/p>\n<p>One of those Cs stands for \u201ccontradictions.\u201d Though contradiction is of course \u2018normal,\u2019 the contradiction between the <a href=\"http:\/\/fortune.com\/2016\/05\/19\/pew-sharing-economy\/\">relatively small slice of consumers<\/a> being served by Uber and AirBNB doesn\u2019t mesh with the massive values (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2016\/06\/29\/business\/dealbook\/airbnb-is-said-to-be-seeking-funding-valuing-it-at-30-billion.html?smid=tw-nytimesbusiness&amp;smtyp=cur&amp;_r=1\">AirBNB worth $30Billion<\/a>) associated with such startups. This is where my PNT radar goes off.<\/p>\n<p>Here\u2019s another set of interesting facts that show how low actual consumer engagement with the digital economy services actually looks:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>6% of Americans have ordered groceries online from a local store and had them delivered to their home (Instacart, Peapod or Fresh Direct).<\/li>\n<li>4% have hired someone online to do a task or errand (TaskRabbit, Fiverr or Amazon Mechanical Turk).<\/li>\n<li>2% have rented clothing or other products for a short period of time online (sites like Rent the Runway).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The digital economy is still maturing, and certain aspects of it (Craigslist, Ebay) are widespread. But I think this contradiction between the high value of the startups and low familiarity with these services is worth considering as a signal of the postnormal, which means being prepared to explore new worldviews that can better meet the need of the modern digital consumer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I\u2019m curious if readers of this blog, futurists or otherwise, were as surprised as I was to see the Pew Research Center report last month about how, to the average American, some of the biggest digital economy companies and concepts are still relatively unknown. A few highlights: 61% of Americans have never heard of the [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":404,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[2473],"class_list":["post-27308","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","tag-digital-economy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27308","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/404"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27308"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27308\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57084,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27308\/revisions\/57084"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27308"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27308"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27308"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}