Era of Digital Fluidity

We are entering an era of digital fluidity. An era of data in motion and more specifically, in graceful and flexible motion available to be accessed, consumed, and shared as people need on an anytime, anywhere, and any how basis.

We’re not there yet. But the era of digital fluidity is being created by layer and layer of information and telecommunications technological capabilities. The layers include:

• the Internet which provide us data
• the Web which provide us ease of access to data
• social media which gives us a platform writ large to communicate and collaborate
• mobility which is amplifying our anytime-ness and anywhere-ness access, consumption, and sharing of digital data in motion.

Now another layer is being built to be added to the previous layers: the Internet of Everything (IoE). The IoE encompasses both tangible assets and intangible assets embedded with sensors and transmitters. This new layer will enable people, processes, and data to interact with each other on one or more bases – programmable, rules-based, and/or a self-learning basis (i.e. a basis which follows the behavior of complex adaptive systems).

With a fully implemented IoE layer added to the previous layers, society will find itself in an era of digital fluidity.

This era will be characterized by different commerce, entertainment, and labor rules of behavior than previous digital eras. Because of these different rules of behavior, enterprises, IT vendors, and Telecoms firms will need to adopt a new basis of competition. There will be three key attributes of the new basis of competition: pace, pattern, and position. These three will become more apparent as the era of digital fluidity takes on increasingly more aspects of a complex adaptive system.