The Future Is Here..... Apparently.

Who out there has a "smart phone"? You know, the kind that lets you check Facebook, watch Germans fall over on Youtube and generally waste time browsing the web, all on a phone that has a battery life of about 34 seconds?

Now, who has the Internet? Well, all of you obviously, otherwise how are you reading this? Maybe on a "smart phone". I love all this technological shenanigans personally. I get unbearably excited over new gadgets that do all manner of non-essential yet interesting stuff. I'm sure most of you also use Facebook (Ultimedia does) and I'm sure a fair number of you use Twitter (again, Ultimedia does).

Why am I pointing all this out? Well, when we were all young, we would all draw pictures of how we thought the future would look: we'd all have silver jumpsuits, eat all our meals in pill form and take regular holidays to space. If you look at some exhibitions held in the 50's, they predicted all manner of funky things that we'd be doing, such as calling using a phone that showed the person calling, we'd have robots that did all manner of things for us, and everything would be automated.

Well, a lot of that has happened. Granted, we don't eat pills for breakfast, but we do make calls using video, we call it "skype", or, if you have an iPhone 4 it's called "facetime". Richard Branson has launched Virgin Galactic, which takes people on quick trips into space. Granted, it's about eleventy million pounds for a ticket, but mobiles used to be £1,000. Now, you can pick a basic one up for £5.

All this is, quite frankly, brilliant. However, the most amazing thing is that we've not even noticed this has all happened! We've all been dreaming of the future since we were teeny tiny, but it arrives in dribs and drabs and we go "ooh, that's nice. What's for dinner...". Even worse, it's dismissed as "new" and "fangled", or just an extravagance for some rich showoff. Well, so was the car. And central heating.

These make our lives a little bit richer. I speak to friends anywhere in the world, which is something that the previous generation could only dream of. I can write blogs (such as the one that you are reading now) and tell other people about it. I can do the food shop, buy birthday presents, and stay up to date on all sorts of things. It can also be used to solve problems. For example, I have an invite to an awards night, and I am staring a menu to pre-order from. Now, I have no idea what Beef Bourguignon is, so instead of hoping it's nice or not risking it, I let Google show me a picture and explain what it is. Useful? I think so!

So why do people dismiss it? Why do people refuse to use it out of principle, when it is only there to help? Granted, you do get some people who refuse to put their Blackberrys down when they get a work email, regardless of what they are doing, but this is up to them to regulate themselves. For the vast majority of the time, technology is a massive help.

So how do businessy people use this new world to their advantage? Well, your new press release can go further than just the paper: you can put it on a whole multitude of websites like Digg, Reddit and the like. If it's interesting (as a press release should be) then it will be exposed to countless people who would have not had a clue. If you do something that is fun, interesting or the sort of thing that people go "oooooh" when they visit your website? Well put it on stumbleupon! People will select what they are interested in, and they will show you interesting websites that relate to them. See, how useful is that?

So please, take some time to understand these sites and how they can help you. Then, when you're using them to your favour, you can also ignore the naysayers who still have to drive to Tesco's to every week and rely on Royal Mail to send a message to someone.

Tweet