The Schedule and the Stream

[Commentary] Right now, we’re at a tipping point between two concepts that shape how we experience the world—the schedule and the stream. The first has lasted over a century, and the second is barely a decade old. But both have been essential in helping new technologies enter the mainstream; and both have created new forms of public space.

For a new technology to see widespread adoption, it needs a simple idea that acts as a bridge between the old and the new. This helps audiences understand and navigate the technologies, content creators work out how to tell their stories, entrepreneurs decide which investments to make, and government decide whether to introduce incentives or regulation. The problem with new technologies is that we’re really, really bad at predicting their futures. Our immediate frame of reference is so small, and our experience of time so fleeting, that any attempt to imagine how technologies will develop is bound to fail. We suffer from what Carolyn Marvin, in her book When Old Technologies Were New, calls “cognitive imperialism.” We can only imagine futures which are broad extensions of our own contexts and needs.

[Matt Locke is the Director of Story Things]