Times Change

Here's one. Fifteen years ago, a LinkedIn warrior touted the "power" of digital analytics. "It will render how we do things useless, we'll #measure everything ... data driven organizations will reap the rewards, leaving everybody else in the rear view mirror." I was on Twitter at the time, and his nonstop cheerleading of using Google Analytics to replace old-school channels / tactics / metrics allowed him to build himself a nice little presence online.

Here's his quote from Saturday.

• "You're crazy if you fire people because AI can do their jobs. AI can do a lot of things. It cannot do jobs."

Every endeavor has its day in the sun.

In 2010, you could replace a handful of practitioners with one analyst who thoroughly knew Google Analytics ... the person of course had to have some level of business acumen (too few did), but the modern world moved old-school practitioners out, moving modern analysts in.

The modern 30 year old analyst in 2010 is now the 46 year old fossil staring AI in the face. From transformative to Luddite in just sixteen years. That's how business works. I have a 62 year old friend who led a team of four individuals. He and his staff were canned, replaced by one hapless person. The 62 year old cannot believe that all of the "value" his team created just evaporated.

My Bluesky feed revealed this little beauty.

Go read some of the DMNews archives you can find from 25 years ago. Every old-school practitioner in the book is screaming about how Amazon was likely to fail. Instead, Amazon became more powerful than most small countries, taking a huge bite out of department stores by becoming the modern department store.

And guess what? In 20 years, it will be the "Amazon-stans" who will lament whatever-comes-next. "You can't do it that way!" Of course you can.

There are still catalog professionals lamenting ecommerce. "GEN-Z HAS DIGITAL EXHAUSTION". No. No they don't. You're making up a story, refusing to yield.

Some Silicon Valley folks want "all the money". They're creating a future where white collar employment is under attack. Why do they want to pay you when they can pay a machine that they created?" And so what if that machine drains all the water out of Lake Michigan? Machines deserve water ... humans and fish?

Change is coming. As it always has. It will anger incumbents, as it always has.