Uploaded February 2019 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago
Seattle-based Venkatesh Rao is a renowned strategic thinker whose recent clients have included Tesla and Marc Andreessen. He is the founder of the Ribbonfarm blog, the Breaking Smart tech analysis site and the author of 'Tempo', a book on decision-making.
He holds a PhD in Aerospace Engineering (2003) from the University of Michigan. Between 2004 and 2006, he was a postdoctoral researcher at Cornell University, working on command and control systems. From 2006 to 2011 he was a senior researcher at the Xerox Research Center, Webster (now part of PARC).
Join Venkatesh in this video, as he talks us through what he believes thinking digital to be. Thinking digital is not about using computers more, it's about using clocks less. Human beings have been shaped for 7000 years by the evolution of clocks and in the last 500 years, mechanical clocks have completely transformed our personality. Examples of the relationship between clocks and time, changing once again, would be; television, telephone, watches.
The way Venkatesh interprets Virginia Wolf's idea that human personality changed in 1910, is that we all jumped inside a clock. Around 1910 we all had clocks that covered a city-sized area. Then by 1918, we had the continent-scale standard time, so entire continents were living under the same time culture. By 1930, we had synchronised electric clock time. This was an important move because we went from generating time from huge clocks and sundials to producing time in a central location and distributing it. By 1980 we now have GPS.
Venkatesh then moves on to talk about how we as humans inhabit space and his main question is, what is the reinforced concrete of time? What is the electricity, and elevators and heating and air conditioning of time? The answer he likes to think is information.
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THINKING DIGITAL
Latest news: thinkingdigital.co.uk
Follow: twitter.com/thinkingdigital
Like: facebook.com/thinkingdigital
Seattle-based Venkatesh Rao is a renowned strategic thinker whose recent clients have included Tesla and Marc Andreessen. He is the founder of the Ribbonfarm blog, the Breaking Smart tech analysis site and the author of 'Tempo', a book on decision-making.
He holds a PhD in Aerospace Engineering (2003) from the University of Michigan. Between 2004 and 2006, he was a postdoctoral researcher at Cornell University, working on command and control systems. From 2006 to 2011 he was a senior researcher at the Xerox Research Center, Webster (now part of PARC).
Join Venkatesh in this video, as he talks us through what he believes thinking digital to be. Thinking digital is not about using computers more, it's about using clocks less. Human beings have been shaped for 7000 years by the evolution of clocks and in the last 500 years, mechanical clocks have completely transformed our personality. Examples of the relationship between clocks and time, changing once again, would be; television, telephone, watches.
The way Venkatesh interprets Virginia Wolf's idea that human personality changed in 1910, is that we all jumped inside a clock. Around 1910 we all had clocks that covered a city-sized area. Then by 1918, we had the continent-scale standard time, so entire continents were living under the same time culture. By 1930, we had synchronised electric clock time. This was an important move because we went from generating time from huge clocks and sundials to producing time in a central location and distributing it. By 1980 we now have GPS.
Venkatesh then moves on to talk about how we as humans inhabit space and his main question is, what is the reinforced concrete of time? What is the electricity, and elevators and heating and air conditioning of time? The answer he likes to think is information.
---
THINKING DIGITAL
Latest news: thinkingdigital.co.uk
Follow: twitter.com/thinkingdigital
Like: facebook.com/thinkingdigital
