Unlearning 101

Listen and Unlearn

Recently, I was on a flight and as we were descending the pilot's voice came over the intercom and, tongue-in-cheek, he asked everyone to "turn off their books." It was a funny comment but it does hint at a broader sea change -- more and more people are reading books on their Kindles and iPad's.

This is no surprise.

What might be surprising is just how quickly many authors and publishers will embrace videos; location-based information; and other digital features to create more interactive books. To understand what the book of the future might look like, I invite you to watch this three-minute presentation by Mike Matas on next-generation digital media. (Caution: It may require some unlearning for you book lovers.) 

Unlearning on the Front Page

I don't regularly read the USA Today but whenever I'm traveling I usually pick up a copy in the hotel lobby. Today was just such a day and there were two articles of note on the front page of today's paper.

The first highlighted how Baby-boomers are changing the rules for marketing. Surprisingly, in spite of the fact that Boomers spend a great deal of money, many marketers are refusing to market products to them--instead choosing to focus on younger buyers. This is a mistake and many marketers need to unlearn this habit. (Here's a list of 10 other things marketers might want to unlearn.)

The second article addressed how hospital care is proving fatal to many patients. In fact, it has been estimated that one in seven patients will pick up a new illness or disease after they arrive in the hospital. I have long been a proponent of unlearning in the healthcare sector and this article explains why they need to unlearn.

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To Unlearn: Try Reading the Newspaper Backwards

In my 2008 book, Jump the Curve: 50 Essential Strategies to Help Your Company Stay Ahead of Emerging Technologies, one strategy I encourage people to employ from time to time is that of reading the newspaper backwards. Why? Because it can help you more clearly see where the future is headed. This, in turn, will reinforce why unlearning is so important to your survival.

Yesterday, for example, as I was returning from Dallas where I delivered a keynote presentation on the future of travel and tourism to the Texas Travel Industry Association, I began by reading the marketing section of the Wall Street Journal from back-to-front. Here’s what I noticed. On Page 8, it was revealed that Sarah Palin’s new book won’t be released in an E-book until after Christmas. This is noteworthy for the simple fact that it wouldn’t have been noteworthy as recently as last year. In other words, E-books have now become so popular that when a new book isn’t released in electronic format at the same time as the print version it qualifies as news. It’s clear from this development that e-book sales will only continue to rise at the expense of traditional hardcover books and that the publishing industry must unlearn some of its current assumptions.

On Page B7 there was a similar story, only this one related to the advertising industry: Web Ad Sales in Britain Overtake TV. On Page B6, it was announced that Lemmis Lighting is releasing a 20-year lightbulb. (Imagine this: In the future your kid or grandchild might not be able to change a lightbulb because it is something they only have to do once every two decades!) The broader implication is that both marketers and professionals in the lighting business will soon need to unlearn how they do business.

And then on Page B5 there were two articles of note. First, there was a small article announcing that Princeton University was testing Amazon Kindle’s DX e-book as part of a national pilot program; and, second, there was a larger article explaining that the airline industry is finally getting serious about employing RFID tags to track baggage. Both news stories reinforce the growing prevalence of e-books and RFID technology.

My friends, the future is here. To learn more about it all you need to do is read the back of the newspaper! If you do, I think you'll better understand why we must all continue to unlearn.

P.S. If you keep reading the 9/30/09 edition of the WSJ, on Page 3, there is article explaining why biobutanol might soon replace ethanol as America’s biofuel of choice. (It'd be wonderful if Congress could unlearn its infatuation with ethanol.)

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Unlearning Advertising

The price of 3-D cameras is falling fast. One of the implications of this is that soon advertisers and retailers will be able to produce new and more interactive methods of communication. I have written about this idea before, but I'd really encourage businesses that rely on advertising and marketing to rethink how this new technology could allow them to reach new customers in innovative ways, as well as reach out to existing customers in richer and more meaningful methods.

For example, if you own a popular destination in a touristy city why settle for offering a customer a brochure in a hotel lobby when you can engage them in a more emotional way by having them "experience" your destination. Restaurants could offer patrons a view of the entire restaurant and even allow them to select their exact table, and clothing retailers might offer an interactive mirror and allow potential customers to "virtually" try on a new pair of jeans. The list of possibilities is almost endless.

The technology, of course, is not limited to advertising. It can also give teachers a new way to engage students. However, before the technology and its full possibilities can be truly embraced, a number of people will need to unlearn the idea that billboards and brochures are the only way to advertise or that students can only be instructed from a textbook.

Unlearning the Written Word

What if I told you that you could improve your reading comprehension rate by 20 percent. Would you do it?

Since you are reading this blog, my guess is that the answer would be "yes." Well, you can, but it will require that you unlearn how you currently access the written word.

I recently wrote a longer article entitled, "The Future of Reading," which explains a revolutionary new technology dubbed Live Ink. I invite you to watch a visual demonstration of the technology here; but, in its simplest form, the company's technology displays written text in shorter lines; breaks the text into grammatically meaningful segments; and then indents the text to cue the brain to key phrases within a given sentence.

What immediately appealed to me about Live Ink’s technology was the notion that written text as it was historically formatted was not optimized for the human mind. In other words, while it is true that we can read long line-by-line text that does not imply that it is necessarily the best or only method for the human eye to read words or for the human mind to comprehend written information.

Just imagine the possibilities as ever more schools convert textbooks into electronic formats that can easily handle Live Ink's technology -- student reading comprehension rates could skyrocket. Similarly, any person or business executive who reads a great deal for his or her job and accesses that information on their computer screen or cellphone screens, could begin perusing more websites, electronics books, and magazine and journal articles in a way that places less strain on their eyes and allows them to retain more of the relevant information.

Before this vision can be achieved, however, it is likely that school administrators, book and magazine editors, as well as bloggers will have to unlearn the idea that the written word can only be displayed in printed block format -- in the exact same way that Johannes Gutenberg did it 500 years ago.

(For the record, I have spoken with officials at Live Ink and I am hoping to be able to display this blog in this exciting and revolutionary format at some point in the near future.)

Unlearn the Need for Paper

Yesterday, I watched this five-minute video of futurist Patrick Dixon discuss why the future of paper is bright for the foreseeable future. He could very well be correct, but if you watch the video below it is possible to envision a scenario in which the future of paper is not so rosy. As flexible electronic technology continues to get better, it'll be interesting to see if schools, newspapers, traditional media and scores of other businesses (including the paper industry) can unlearn their old ways of doing business and embrace the new opportunities that this technology portends.