There is no status quo

I wrote this before the current turn of events in America and, politics aside, I think it’s still relevant. Especially as I head to New York next week to host our TNW NY conference.

We live in exciting times, where life often can be stranger than fiction. We witness the rise and fall of companies and industries. Even before we grow accustomed to the status quo, it has already changed. In fact, there is no status quo.

Change seems to accelerate – apparent if you follow the daily news. In the short term, everything seems to move slowly; but if you look at the long term you’ll see things changing rapidly.

I remember very well (yes, I’m getting old) that I used to pack up my Macintosh Plus ED for the weekend in a box so big it could fit a human inside. The same box also carried about 80 high density floppy disks that held 1.4MB per disk. The entirety of my digital life stored inside. When I travelled to my parents by train, I dreamed about electricity in said train so I could keep working. I didn’t dream about laptops, Wi-Fi, the internet, a smartphone or tablet. I was mostly focused on solving my short term computing needs, and that was just electricity.

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Now I own an iPhone 6s plus and recently discovered I can pretty much run my entire company from my hand. I once left my laptop at home and had no choice but to work from the iPhone for a day. It seemed like an interesting challenge so I handled email, Slack and all other basics. Then I worked with Google Drive docs – and even worked with Keynote to generate a few simple graphs and images. While this wasn’t extremely efficient, and a laptop allows me to work a lot faster, I enjoyed the experience because I was reminded of that Macintosh Plus ED and how far technology has advanced.

We can complain about slow Wi-Fi or batteries lasting less than a full day, but sometimes it’s good to zoom out for a bit and realize how fortunate we are to live in this moment in time.

This is my introduction text for last week’s issue of our TNW Weekly update. You can read the whole newsletter here, or sign up to receive your own copy.