Sunrise, day one, year 2000

Communication World, Dec, 1995 by Naseem Javed

IBM provided the battlefield, Apple the sword. The Computer War had begun, and information was now flowing from many to everyone.

In branding, the advent of small, affordable computers created a Star Wars of its own in the marketplace. This logically driven society projected data at ferocious speeds with great accuracy and control, breaking mythical boundaries, proving facts, isolating fictions, and bringing credibility to our system. The force of information was awesome, which created massive reorganization and made the disks spin. Small change was out; small business and credit cards were in. So were the letters Q and R: Quality of life, Quality of operations and Quality of quality, followed by Reinvent, Re-define, Re-engineer. Part-timers worked flex-time, aerobics and video games caused repetitive-action disorder. Miniaturization blossomed and micro became beautiful.

Telecom Society . . . Networking created the Internet-ers, and universal access came at last. Information could now flow from all to one, and from one to all. Electronic transmission of day-to-day commerce was now moving the white, blue, and pink collars aside and putting steel collars on the robots, along with desktop junkies, while corporations miniaturized.

In commerce, flattened hierarchy, clearly visible in now-empty skyscrapers, filled the North American landscape and dominated the power shift. Robocop was almost a reality, with Bill Gates as the new icon of fame and power.

In this frantic era of hi-tech breakthroughs and media explosions on all fronts, print, radio, TV, computer and the Internet magically took us everywhere, from a state of being nowhere.

In branding, as never before in the history of civilization, confusion in communication in the marketplace was glaringly evident. Several times every minute, a new name for a business, product or service was being registered somewhere around the globe. Desk-hopping and debit cards were in, as one hour of transmission in the city of New York represented the entire dialogue of the 19th century. At the same time, very large groups of digitally privileged, if somewhat intellectually challenged, men and women were being formed, and all of a sudden fear of being everywhere and nowhere at the same time became an issue: One minute you could be in a totally isolated mountain retreat; in the next, you could be on a video conference from Manhattan to Tokyo via Rio. Brand names were developed to not only convey typography, but also how they sounded and projected in color and on computer screens and at bullet speed.

Virtual Society . . . If knowledge is the bond of society, and the printed word was the breakthrough, flow and control of information now have more power than ever. And, in this quickly coming-into-being society, a single person can send a message to all. Several billion and counting.

To appreciate the pace of change and the rate of this growth, imagine if Alexander the Great had a cellular phone. Or if Moses had desktop publishing.