Looking Forward to a Creative Digital Future 189some of the morning papers are handed out free of charge. There is no doubt
we are getting closer to the device of choice for the Web 3.0 or Web 4.0 gen-
eration; iPhone and iPad have gone some way towards this but the best is
surely yet to come.
So back to our gospel. Then the conversation opened up for all, advertisers
included. No more would we be servants of the net, we would be authors,
film directors, political leaders, visionaries, champions, fashionistas, rock stars
clicking in a levelled world earning our 15 gigabytes of fame. For those more
ordinary folk, we too would be empowered in the most extraordinary ways –
here we are reminded of the great legend and media prophet of the 20th
century, Marshall McLuhan. For those of you who haven’t heard of the man,
he is well worth a ‘search’. In fact, McLuhan was the under-riding inspiration
for our first book Understanding Digital Marketing. If you have ever come
across a really witty or insightful quote from the world of media and advertis-
ing, chances are it was McLuhan who quipped it. Our favourites include:
●●Good taste is the first refuge of the non-creative. It is the last ditch stand
of the artist.
●●The modern little red riding hood, reared on singing commercials has no
objection to being eaten by the wolf!
●●Today it’s not the classroom nor the classics which are the repositories of
models of eloquence , but the ad agencies.
●●Diaper backward spells repaid.
McLuhan observed that the successful adoption of new media by societies
followed four basic principles or qualifiers – called a ‘tetrad’. It is a very useful
qualifier for new stuff like ‘social media’.