One of the most powerful and enduring of these tenets in academia and social commentary is that the ‘The medium is the message’, first coined by Marshall McLuhan in 1964.
In this age of digital convergence, the online and real worlds merge.
Communication lines are blurred as physical spaces become increasingly digitised.
The rigid perception of e-commerce versus bricks and mortar business models – most prominent in retail spaces, but also relevant to a wide range of applications across industry and commerce – is fast becoming antiquated in the shift towards modes of true omnichannel communications.
Digital technology and Artificial Intelligence are the new hotbeds of innovation and investment, a natural progression from the focus on online disruptors alongside the rise of big data economies.
IoT technologies – that is the ‘Internet of Things’ including cameras, sensors, televisual screens, smartphones all coupled with computer data processing – have now become affordable to even the smallest businesses and store fronts.
Physical spaces become metaphysical; transforming through technology beyond human perception boundaries and limitations of knowledge.
The prevalence of high-tech digital interconnectivity in day-to-day operations across sectors including retail, education, hospitality, airports and mass transit hubs, stadiums and events, security, stock control, agriculture, real estate, child and aged care and smart buildings, enables them to evolve into something more; something on a whole new plane of understanding.
These physical spaces themselves become platforms for unidirectional informational flow and communications.
It sounds familiar because it is.
This is the very foundation the internet is built upon, and underpins the success of all online business models.
Through technology, actual buildings themselves become a medium, in a similar vein to how computers, tablets and smartphones act as a medium for the internet.
And the medium is the message.
The medium not only shapes perception but frames any content delivery in a predetermined way; the medium itself has more value in influencing desired outcomes than any message itself.
This ability to close time and distance between interacting with a brands message and actual purchase decisions gives credence to commercialisation of the concept of the bricks and mortar building as the medium.
Real time customer interactions through digital screens on site and via their own smartphones, based on parameters such as profiling and proximity triggers transform physical spaces into dynamic marketing platforms to drive profitability, customer retention and ROI for brands through highly personalised consumer experiences.
This is where IoT incorporates highly intelligent, automated advertising through machine learning and big data analytics to empower business, brand and consumer - not only in retail shopfronts but also in any transactional space across industry and commerce.
Taking a further step back such a system also allows highly intelligent, automated messaging and monitoring for almost any application where movement of people or even inventory units or livestock is key to trade.
Recognising these marked shifts now and into the future, Foresense Technologies is pioneering the meld between real and online spaces, aggregating these disparities with AI to empower businesses with the ability to bring real time big data analytics and behavioural science into day-to-day on the ground operations.