I grew up in the 1960’s. What a world. JFK, RFK, and MLK assassinations, Watts riots, Man landing on the moon, anti war protests, nuclear proliferation, Beatles; Hendricks, Dylan,Andy Warhol, bell bottoms, and psychadelic drugs.
Yet through all of this culture-changing events and people, we were lectured about watching “The boob tube.”
I recall when the color TV came out,how cool. But, we still only had a handful of channels to watch in LA: channels 2, 4,and 7 were CBS, NBC, and the new-comer ABC. Outside of those were the rerun channels, 5, 9, 11, and 13. We hardly looked at UHF because nobody could adjust the circle antenae sticking out of the back of the TV for good reception.
Mathew Ingram’s Is modern technology creating a culture of distraction? discusses studies which paint our society as prolificating false online relationships, and short attention spans. Raising four children, I can see that argument, but don’t agree that modern technology is the culpret.
Creative business people will blossum regardless of the era. Fifty years ago, non-creative business people were just doing what was done by those before them. They would not necessarily fail, but would not prospher like their competitor who used technology or personal resources to advance their strategic goals.
This is the same for today, except that technology has identified the business cretan. If you choose to just do what those did before you, then your business will not surpass what they accomplished. The fast moving technology will amplify and accelerate your demise.
Is this new technology turning business creators into cretans? I would think not. The creative business person will leverage technology and not usually succomb to the temptation of cretanism. I have worked with many business owners and executives that cannot see the cretan mentality. They only want to know about two things about their businesses: 1) What are their sales; 2) Do they have enough cash to make payroll.
This buisiness mindset must be broken. The E-myth book is a good start. If you find that you are not normally creative, find someone who is, but participate in the business creative process, don’t ignore it.