The world we live in is brimming with information each and every day. The World Wide Web had erupted and evolved from the fledgeling web 1.0 to 2.0 and now to the new 3.0. So all of us are spoilt for choice to get information out of the web. Web surfing takes a new meaning where the figurative waves are getting higher and higher as we speak. The analogy of getting information from the internet is that of trying to drink water from a guzzling water sprout. There is so many information and choice out there that we sometimes just mindlessly surf the internet’s highway of information without even thinking. Almost as if our actions are zombie-like then. But then in order to give a sense of order to a life like that we bring it upon ourselves to find the next best thing after consuming content that we deemed before the next best thing.
Let’s look into an example: Viral Videos. After we found ourselves watching the popular K-pop phenomenon Gangnam style and then showing it to our friends, making cover videos for the song and what not till our fascination with that content is dead and then we found Harlem Shake and now it’s Twerking.
Another example would be TV shows. There’s always a new show out there that is all the rage. However, TV shows are not shown in one shot but rather in seasons. Some people base some of their free time and socializing activity around watching TV shows. However, when one TV show goes on hiatus after a season or ends, these people are frantic to find out what is the next best thing out there. What to do with their free time again. They feel almost lost after finishing watching a great TV show knowing that ‘it’s over’ for that TV show. Even if one of the greatest content ever created (according to them) is over ‘sadly’ life goes on.
This could be the ultimate bane of the Cognitive Surplus as coined by Clay Shirky as we have so much free time these days on aggregate as a society we are constantly cementing the ‘Paradox of choice” as made popular by TED speaker Barry Schwartz. We have so many choices of what to do with our free time. Thus, we are always on the lookout for the next best thing to satiate our desire to indulge our highs.
Though this paints a sad picture of how we as human beings live our lives, at least how we spend our free time this is not a full depiction of why we always look for the next best thing. We need to look for the next best thing in order to find out what is the next frontier for us as the human race. We find the next best thing to find solutions to problems. Ideas are created and ‘eureka’ moments happen in order to fuel this existential need. If you think about it we really stand on the shoulders of giants or well at least our ancestors and forefathers. All their effort, pains, failures and success are the reason that we live the lives that we live in the moment.
Let’s look into some big changes that happened in the past few years alone. There was all the rage about cloud computing and virtualization, and now it’s about relationship marketing and digital marketing. It’s all about integrating the ‘E’ of e-marketing inside marketing. It’s actually 21st-century marketing. And as a business major I am thinking right now as well – what is the next best thing in the world. Is it augmented reality, Transmedia storytelling, niche social networks, new age prosthetics, robotics, gene manipulation, life on mars, wearable technology, virtual reality gaming, mobile money transfers, online streaming of content and the list goes on.
Due to this kind of culture imbued in the modern world especially due to Schumpeterian concepts like Creative Destruction, it leads to a better world with better things and better content for us to consume and use while leaving behind the vestiges and broken carcasses of things of the past. Some might say this fuels pure Capitalism and consumerism which leads to undue wastage which is gradually destroying the environment. I concur saying that, that might be true but we do not live in a perfect world. Instead, we live in a world which is perfect because of its imperfections. As human being we thrive and strive to make those imperfection less of an imperfection by coming up with solutions to today’s issues. Even though we are destructive in that pursuit, we come up with many innovations and ideas to create a better life and a better environment as well. The good comes with the bad.
Thus, even though the idea of a society (Capitalism) where we all are always striving to find the next best thing, whether it might be for important pursuits or just to indulge our next high to use in our free time – our cognitive surplus, might be something which is bad or imperfect, I believe the capitalist societies we live in is just an ideology which is a stepping stone to something greater. The end of history as Francis Fukuyama had theorised saying that we are living in the best age is a folly in my view. I believe the better age and the next best thing is yet to come. We just got to keep looking and never give up. It’s out there! Whether you use your work time or your free time try to find a next best thing so that it can make our world a bit less imperfect and towards perfection that will hopefully never come to pass. Let’s become the giants that our descendants will stand on so that they could live a better life than us in the next generation. So let’s get cracking. Let’s keep Looking for the next best thing.
What do you think is the Next Best Thing? Leave a comment Below:
