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Being digital, going digital, working digitally……

This idea is on the agenda of most organizations today. Individuals also accept that this is the way our world is moving in order to connect with each other. Digital is no longer just for business; digital is increasingly important to have a full life.

It’s Always Been About Connecting Networks

Our current ability to be digital emerged over the past sixty years. Numerous ideas, discoveries, and inventions culminated in you and me being able to use our mobile phones to communicate seamlessly around the world in both words (spoken and written) and photos. Highlights of that chronology include the following:

1962   M.I.T. scientist J.C.R. Licklider proposed computers communicating through a  “galactic network”

1969    first node-to-node connection was transmitted

1983    “network of networks” was created: the internet

1991    Tim Berners-Lee introduces the World Wide Web, “an internet that was not simply a way to send files from one place to another but was itself a “web” of information that anyone on the Internet could retrieve”

All of this development was stimulated during the1950s by concerns in the U.S. that our military’s ability to communicate might be disrupted by the Russians using Sputnik, the satellite they had launched.

What Will Be Next?

Since the turn of the century, we have been able to enjoy the benefits of using so many digital tools that run on the internet. These allow us as individuals, groups, and organizations to build our networks of relationships in so many ways. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the internet and these digital tools have allowed us to find new ways to work together. Can you imagine what would have happened if we had not had these and other tools at our disposal?

LinkedIn – invented in 2002

FaceBook – invented in 2004

Twitter – invented in 2006

iPhone — debuted in 2007

Instagram – invented in 2010

As we all know, there will be so many more digital innovations and they will be coming at us fast and furious. We know they’re coming but not when or how much they will transform the way we live and network. So be ready as they emerge and change our world!