An incredible set of innovations have washed over us in the last 20 years; Email, The Web, Mobile Phones, eCommerce, Social Media all have spawned industries, companies and opportunities that were not even conceptualised in the world we occupied previously.
Take a quick look at the current waves hitting the beach; YouTube, FaceBook, Twitter & Mobile Apps. All have some surprising similar traits. Key among them is they offer innovative (regional) populations a platform for real and lasting change, if they can 'surf the waves' for their own purposes.
So what are the mathematics of digital waves. The exact answer lies in the pure mathematical expression of sine or 'sin' eg. y=sin x , expressed below.
These pure waves go for ever on the horizontal x axis, and on the y axis oscillating between 1 and -1 may just represent the rolling nature of many things in nature and in digital world of innovations.
If we overlay the cosine of y=cos x to the graph this may represent the delayed effect in the real world change of these digital innovations.
These of course are perfect expressions and as such don't apply in the outside world, as there are so many variables that distort these waves. It is in these 'distortions' that we see the pitfalls or opportunities.
Imagine for example if a regional population could bring the blue line of digital reality closer to the red curve. This would in effect shorten the uptake time of a digital technology in the population and accelerate the real change, literally ahead of the curve.
More of this later.
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