What Mr Spock, death and physics teaches us about expertise in the digital age

There's a bit in Star Trek, after Spock has died and come to life, where Dr Bones McCoy asks him what being dead was like. Spock basically tells him he needs to die too before they can talk, as it's simply beyond his frame of reference.

Normal, non-reincarnated folk don't have the chops to understand.

It's a little like the brave new world of digital, especially social media.The majority if specialists in these areas tend to have the same approach as Spock.

There's is no way a digital/social guru can explain the intricacies of what they do - what clients are paying them for and what other specialists are asking them to support with - unless they're talking to another guru. It's beyond the frame of reference of most mortals.

And yet, anyone brought up in the fairly complex world of managing conjoint analysis, the Link Test, the oceans of data from Nielsen or TNS, 20 page client briefs, the unpredictable behaviour of customers, the game-theory like dynamics of any category - folks in those quaint old dinosaurs called advertising or, these days, integrated agencies -  are continuously tasked with boiling everything down into a few sentences that are can unlock creativity, client buy in and, ultimately, the hearts and minds of people with better stuff to do. 

Makes you wonder doesn't it?.

Is this brave new world really that complex? Or is just that those that specialise in it don't know really know what they're doing?

Usually, if someone can't explain something to you in plain English, they either don't understand it properly themselves, or they don't want YOU to understand.

Unless we believe digital social stuff is as profoundly outside our normal realm of understanding as the afterlife, quantum physics or relativity.

Actually, hold on there........ 

 

Can't help you with reincarnation though....

Comments

[tom]

I do think this bashing social / digital / whatever stuff is getting a bit tired. Maybe I just don't come across enough of them to get worked up about it but it seems to me you encounter fools that don't know what they're talking about in bad agencies; less so in good ones.

[northern]

Of course there are good and bad folks in all types of agencies, and everyone's perception is their reality, and yes, observations about emperors new clothes apply to all species within marketing - however, in my experience in the job- it's more commonly the case that social,especially, is the answer - now what's the question.