Sylvain Perron joined Edelman Digital last year with 15 years’ experience in marketing, interactive media and telecommunications. As managing director of Edelman Digital Canada, he is responsible for extending Edelman’s digital capabilities within the network and acts as strategic consultant on interactive services and social media to Edelman clients.

According to the well respected scientist and futurologist, Ray Kurzweil, the next 100 years will see the equivalent of 20 000 years of technology evolution… Yeah, you read that right, 20 000 years! That’s an average of 200 years every year. Kurzweil points out that we will see 100 years of progress in the next 25 years. The speed of change is only accelerating. Kurzweil also refers to the fact that, “it is human nature to adapt to the changing pace.”

This is one of the reasons that I see how fast the shit is going to hit the fan…way faster than we can dare to imagine, and if marketers, PR agencies and advertisers don’t get with it…well, they just may miss the boat! Only 16% of us are hyper contributors, and today, most people on Facebook are sharing pictures and there are only a few of us on twitter… what will it be next year, or in 5 years.

Now think about your business, think about how long it takes to turn that boat. You think you’re going to be ready to face the new digital customer services age. Not all consumers are like us: hyper media consumers, hyper contributors, demanding direct, authentic engagement from brands and companies @richardatdell is a cool thing to do and a very forward approach, but is this going to be enough to respond to what the world is about to ask of us?

We also often forget to look back, Kursweil points out in his 2005 analysis, ’The World Wide Web did not exist in anything like its present form just a few years ago; it didn't exist at all a decade ago.” The way we are using the digital space today is a pimple on the elephant’s ass compared to how your customers will be using it in only 2 years from now.

So, my take on this is, let’s stop arguing about the fact that some of us are and some of us aren’t hyper media consumers. The heart of the matter is that you can only be certain of one thing; change is constant variable and your business will need to change.