Age of Context Draft Introduction

In the 2005 movie Batman Begins, the caped guy appears out of nowhere as Commissioner Gordon is taking out his trash. He delivers a cryptic message: “Storm’s coming.”  Then, just as suddenly as he appeared, he is gone.

For the next two hours of the movie all hell breaks loose.  Finally, peace is restored. After so much tumult and trouble, people can resume their normal lives. And they discover that life after the storm is better than it had been before.

We are no caped crusaders, but we are here to warn you there is a storm coming. It has already started. There will be tumult but, when the disruption subsides, life will be better.

This imminent storm is no natural creation. Instead, it is being created by thousands of people, some of them the world’s smartest technologists and business strategists. Some work for tiny startups; others represent the likes of GE, Walmart, Heineken, the NFL, Apple Computer, Nike, Oakley, Google and Qualcomm, to name just a few. They are investing billions of dollars in technology that will change the world, including your particular part of it.  They are forward-thinking decision makers in banks, the military, government, health, robotics, space exploration, marine biology and many other categories.

These companies are among thousands of organizations worldwide who are changing the lives of people as varied in their needs as: skiers who wear goggles that give them realtime information as they careen downhill; paraplegics who use robotic arms powered by their own brainwaves; stadium fans who order food and beverages via a mobile app and get delivery in express lines; and technologists who reduce energy costs by billions of dollars a year by chatting in a social network with jet engines in flight.

This is a storm of change and it is extremely powerful. It’s already upon us and is growing ever more powerful as you sit reading these words. It is going to change your work, your life and the lives of the people you love or just casually meet online or in the real world.

Perfect storms change the face of the land when they hit.  At first there’s havoc and debris. Then there is rebuilding. The landscape heals, and very often the places hit hardest end up better off than they were before the storm hit.

Our storm is comprised not of three forces, but five. They are not natural. They are technological, and they’re already causing havoc and making waves. As separate entities each is already a part of your life today: mobile devices; social media; big data; sensors; and location-based services. Together, they have created the conditions for an unstoppable perfect storm of epic proportion.

Each of our five forces is growing exponentially in mass and velocity. But that story has been told. What is new and different is that these five forces are converging into one great superforce, one whose impact will be far greater than the sum of its parts.

This superforce will change work and life for most people in the developed world so fundamentally and universally, that we believe it will usher in a new age.

Robert Scoble and Shel Israel are two veteran Silicon Valley journalists, covering two interdependent communities. Picture them sitting on a fence looking out in opposite directions.

Scoble looks out at the tech sector, where he spends much of his time talking with innovators who build little chunks of tomorrow for the rest of us. Collectively, they give Scoble a good look at what technologists are building for tomorrow.

These days, he is hearing considerable use of the buzzword context. Investment dollars are pouring in. Big companies are recruiting contextual technologists by the truckload. New products are coming to market at an accelerating rate. There is great excitement.

Israel looks out upon the other side of our virtual fence. He writes and consults for the business community and in business publications such as Forbes.  He talks a lot to business people who are interested in how technology can help them make customers happy and their companies more profitable.

He is not seeing much excitement. Most business people are still trying to push rocks up the hill into business recovery.  They know little or nothing about contextual technology. They don’t think about how contextual tools and wearable computers will make them more efficient and acquire them more customers and sales. No manager we know has pondered what they should invest in context to make their quarterly fiscal goals.

But they will and it will happen sooner than many people realize. In fact it is imminent.

When the tech community is this unified in focus, and excited about what they are building and introducing, it follows as surely as the day follows the night that technologists make waves that invariably land on the shores of business.

They invent the stuff that the rest of us use.

Sitting on the fence, Scoble and Israel are currently in the eye of a superstorm. The business community may sense nothing, but the winds of fundamental change are blowing at them. Bracing for it is wiser than trying to evacuate.

Like the good folk of Batman’s Gotham City, the best option for you is to brace yourselves for this storm of change and prepare to ride it out. It will be followed by good times in a new age—the Age of Context.