The triumph of digital is practically complete. Now is a moment when digital competency – or the knowledge, know-how, and understanding necessary to make effective moves in the contemporary era – has moved beyond specialized organizational pockets and boutiques and is moving throughout entire organizations. The spread of this knowledge is not complete by any means, but our clients today are, by leaps and bounds, better prepared and more knowledgeable about how to navigate the landscape and confront the changes to business and culture that digital tools have wrought.

This triumph of digital means more than knowing how to make the most out of social media or whether to let personal devices onto your IT system. As Aaron points out in his letter commemorating Undercurrent’s fifth anniversary, digital has moved beyond status as a set of tools or platform-specific solutions to problems. “Digital isn’t a place,” he writes, “It’s not even a pace. It’s an operating system. A method of dealing with the most complex and rapidly changing dynamics we’ve ever experienced.” Approaching problems from a digital worldview requires more than creating new tools to solve problems. It requires designing systems that respond to the ways our assumptions, behaviors, practices, sensibilities, expectations, and processes of meaning making have changed. Read more

Most people believe they need to master “the cloud” in some way to prepare for the future. Truth be told, while everyone should gain an cursory understanding of technology, deep knowledge of how cloud computing systems work will always be reserved for IT departments. Instead, here are the best traits and principles of cloud computing systems that businesses should learn from.
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How much of the story does your social data really provide? We’ve discussed previously the challenges rich data tools pose for understanding the social space. There are a multitude of data points available and just as many data providers, each of whom is ready and willing to fill your inbox with reports, data, and charge you a retainer for monitoring. As you probably realize by now, asking the right question is just as crucial as getting the right data. Equally important, however, is having some way to validate the data you get – validation is what moves you from statistic to insight, what moves you from just knowing something to truly understanding. Read more

While I’ve helped design solutions for hundreds (thousands?) of client problems, all of them fascinating, unique and inspirational, the challenge that inspires me most is inside Undercurrent. And it’s a challenge shared by most organizations: offering customers a unique and special product or service that helps them be more awesome. My hunch is that we do that by focusing on the few elements that truly help us make magic.

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Watching a video of Google’s self-driving car is a lot like science fiction: it can navigate the winding streets of San Francisco with ease. It recognizes pedestrians from distances outside the human periphery. Compared to a driver, it can stop in a fraction of the response time. Eric Schmidt, Google’s CEO, summed up the project’s vision at Techcrunch’s Disrupt conference in 2010: “Your car should drive itself. It just makes sense…it’s a bug that cars were invented before computers.” Self-driving, automated cars have arrived. With successful test runs, policy makers can both consider the realities of automation, and prepare for a transition from manual-only driving. Read more