Use only voice search for 1 month…any takers?

I’ve always struggled with the notion that anything is inevitable.

It feels like a bit of a cop out.

Like it’s just an excuse not to take responsibility, an excuse not to get off your backside and do something, something that’s potentially important in this magic and crazy world in which we live.

The title of our latest book club read, first reminded me of a quote from the late Stephen Hawking.

“I have noticed that even those who assert that everything is predestined and that we can change nothing about it still look both ways before they cross the street.”

But this isn’t Kevin Kelly’s point.

Kelly forms a compelling argument that certain tech forces are inevitable, that ‘there is a bias in the nature of technology that tilts it in certain directions and not others.’

• The form of the internet — a network of networks spanning the globe — was inevitable, but the specific kind of internet we chose to have was not. The internet could have been commercial rather than nonprofit
• Telephony — long-distance electrically transmitted voice messages — was inevitable, but the iPhone was not
• Instant messaging was inevitable, but tweeting every five minutes was not

So if we believe the theory (that inevitable tech forces will continue to pervade our lives) how can we use this knowledge to our advantage?

How about we do something, rather than just observing, reminiscing about ‘the good old days’ and waiting for others to invent the future…

At Journey Further we’re going to take the following steps:

Step 1 — we will consider each one of Kevin Kelly’s 12 tech forces

Step 2 — we will identify their relevance in our world of digital media

Step 3 — we will create related experiences that help optimise PPC, Programmatic and Paid Social (the things our agency specialises in)

Here’s a great example…

Force #9 — Interacting

Kelly states that ‘the future of technology resides, in large part, in the discovery of new interactions.’

Increasingly we use our voices to interact with technology.

Just look at what Google are getting up to…

To understand voice search better in the world of digital media we’ve already developed the Journey Further Amazon Echo skill [thedrum.com]

But let’s set ourselves a new challenge. Jimmy, our Community Manager who rarely uses voice search, is going to undergo an experiment on behalf of the agency. For a whole month he is going to use voice for every search he performs — using Google, Siri and Alexa.

Jimmy will track the experience, we’ll then analyse the data and report back on how we as an agency can better optimise campaigns for voice search.