The past, present and future of Conversations (video)

As easy as a conversation. This is how we believe at Letsclap.io how brands should communicate with their customers.

 

Conversations have always been the most powerful way for people to engage and collaborate.

Our understanding of conversation is currently undergoing a seismic shift. In the video below Mark Curtis (Fjord) walks us through the history of conversation, including etiquette, emojis, Socrates, and the singularity (WebSummit 2017 ).

Our selection of takeaways

 

Conversations have been important troughout human history, there have been moments in history when conversations where front and center of the dialog of history

 

The development of ideas has, for a century, entirely been directed by conversation (without any technology)

 

With each new technology new etiquettes emerged

 

With instant messaging for the first time ever you can pause the synchronicity. This never happened with earlier technology

 

The speed of change of this etiquette is increasing

 

Smartphones brought spontaneity and also distraction. We still haven’t figured out the etiquette of when to look at our phone or not

 

We need to ask ourselves, what does it take to be human in the digital age? Not what does it mean to be digital

 

Conversations are places where you can actually buy and sell things. Marketplaces were not only for buying (…) but also for news. We have now put the marketplace back in the conversation.

 

Phone calls are in decline. But voice is on the rise (thanks to Amazon Alexa)

 

Bots don’t have to human to be human-centered

 

Patience is a thing bots can do, where actually humans are not very good at

 

Mirroring is an ancient thing. Computers might try to do that.

 

Brands might try to mirror you as a consumer. Each brand becomes like you

 

A popular brand might be live managing 1M different manifestations of what the brand is. That is a living brand.

 

AI + Voice  + Digitisation of everything around us is leading us to a Conversational Singularity, a place where the devices actually begin to disappear

 

Leading to conversations everywhere, with everything at every given moment .That is completely transformative.

 

The implications: new etiquettes needed, machines will know us better than other humans

 

The golden age of conversation

Mark Curtis ends his analysis with a big question: how can we get back to the golden age of conversations , now technology might finally help us ?

Watch the full video for an answer and his in depth analysis of the past, present and future of conversations.