Last week we published From Frogs to Camels: Unveiling the Pace of Change, that spoke to the very slow pace of human change. What I didn’t clarify is that I was really speaking to the change in human consciousness, which does seem to change very slowly and gradually. But this week I’m thinking about the change in human culture, which only in part reflects human consciousness.
So, I did a little research to see what data there might be that speaks to how fast or how slow human culture changes. But the problem is that we can’t separate technological advancement from cultural change. When tech rapidly advances it affects culture, while culture affects how we use tech. The two are inextricably bound together.
While AI is rapidly infiltrating our lives in myriad ways it’s become difficult to discern or distinguish whether tech is affecting culture more, or culture is affecting how we used tech more. But one thing I feel in my bones is that everything is changing very rapidly. And to be specific, I’m referring to cultural and technological change.
Last week we emailed about how we’re pivoting our business to focus more on brand coaching, and in parallel I was doing research on the coaching business in general when I stumbled upon a husband-and-wife team who developed the first ever all-in-one software system for coaches. While there are software systems for so many industries and types of businesses, no one had yet created software specific to the needs of coaching professionals — until these two.
What I find fascinating is while the husband is a techie and the wife the coach, that just the two of them could create a piece of software that is so comprehensive and user friendly that it can potentially transform the coaching industry. So, I reached out to them to confirm my suspicions and upon reply from co-founder Laura Roeder learned that it was, in fact, just the two of them that created this product. She wrote, “Paperbell is truly a one-man show on the development side…When we launched Chris did all of the development work and I did 100% of the marketing.”
No India-based coding farm. No Fiverr or Upwork freelancers. And no VC funded industrial office space with 30 caffeine-wired young ones in their 20s working 80-hour work weeks over two years to produce — just a husband-and-wife team.
This is new. And I’ve encountered similar stories in other industries. Small teams producing things that used to require a much larger economy of scale.
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